Hello! Welcome to the latest Geeky Brummie Games Release Roundup!

This week, Contra, mutant camels and circus murder. Hell yeah, brother.

Hi, no time for an intro this week. Please understand.

New Releases

Kingdom Come: Deliverance Royal Edition comes to the Switch this week. Already a big hit on PC, PlayStation and Xbox, Kingdom Come: Deliverance is an action RPG where realism is king. You play a blacksmith’s son forced to fight against impossible odds as your home is invaded by a rival nation’s army.

Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection brings the original duo of Star Wars Battlefront games to modern PCs and all consoles. It features all classic and bonus maps, plus full online multiplayer support and the original single-player campaigns. This remastered collection comes from Aspyr, who’ve remastered other Star Wars games and the classic Tomb Raider trilogy.

Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox) is a compilation dedicated to the work of Jeff Minter, a British game designer who produced a ton of games during the microcomputer era. It also includes a documentary about the man himself. Developed by Digital Eclipse, who developed the similar retro compilations Atari 50 and The Making of Karateka.

Subterrain: Mines of Titan (PC) is a survival RPG set in a mining camp on the moon of Titan. You’ll find yourself delving deep under the surface of the moon, discovering horrors and attempting to stay alive. Developed by Korean studio Pixelore and published by Freedom Games (Coromon, Airborne Kingdom, HumanitZ).

Passing By: A Tailwind Journey (PC, Switch) is a cosy survival game about delivering mail to floating islands in a hot air balloon. You have to manage your balloon’s trajectory as you figure out where to deliver a mysterious letter. Played the demo of this, which involved 30 minutes of figuring out where I was going, exploring islands full of carrots and apples and generally feeling like I didn’t get much chance to get into the meat of it. Still a neat little game though, with a unique concept perfect for anyone looking to leisurely drift through the clouds. Developed by new German developers Studio Windsocke and published by Dear Villagers (The Forgotten City, The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk, Fort Solis).

Goblin Stone (PC) is a narrative-driven roguelike card battler all about a band of goblins trying to avoid being murdered by terrible adventuring parties. A quirky little game about managing a squad of your own goblin pals, just what you’ve all been waiting for. Developed by Filipino-based and American-led studio Orc Chop Games.

Remember Contra? It’s back, in new game form. Contra: Operation Galuga (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox) is a reimagining of the original Arcade/NES classic, taking the central premise and cramming it full of elements from later Contra games. I played the full thing for a review, and it’s pretty rad. It’s bastard hard though, which is to be expected, I suppose. But the first level opens with the main characters saying “hell yeah brother” to each other before shooting some terrorists with laser weapons, if you need to know what the vibe is. Developed by WayForward (Shantae series, River City Girls, Contra 4) and published by Konami.

Game of the Week

Game of the Week this week is Death Trick: Double Blind (PC, Switch), a murder mystery set in a circus featuring two playable sleuths.

Hattie, the star performer at Morgan’s Travelling Circus, has been murdered. And now, only two people can solve this mystery. One is an enigmatic fellow magician, posing as Hattie to find answers within the inner circle, while the other is an amnesiac private eye hired by the owner to tidy this up as quickly as possible.

I love a good murder mystery, and Death Trick: Double Blind has impressed me with its demo. It’s a visual novel in the style of the Ace Attorney series, where you journey round the circus digging for clues, asking questions and sniffing out contradictions. You have limited actions each hour, which means planning your time wisely to uncover the truth before the final performance ends.

The time management aspects add an interesting dimension to this, opening a ton of paths to take and a lot of leads to follow. The setting is also interesting, with a circus providing a neat backdrop you don’t see often in these stories. Promises to be a great time that likely will offer quite a bit of replay value.

Developed by two-woman Chinese studio Misty Mountain Studio and published by Neon Doctrine (Simulacra series, My Lovely Wife, The Legend of Tianding).