Hello! Welcome to the latest Geeky Brummie Games Release Roundup!
This week, monsters in Manhattan, the horrors of a Scottish town, and some retro cyberpunk.
The latest in Nightdive’s mission to revive a bunch of PC games from the 90s for a modern audience is Sin Reloaded (PC, PS5, Xbox X/S). Originally released in 1998 for PC, Sin was built on the Quake II engine and dropped players into a dystopian 2037 where megacorps rule the roost and you, equipped with the perfect retro future name of John Blade, are tasked with eradicating Freeport’s drug problem. This remaster beefs up the graphics and gives the game that pioneered knocking weapons out of enemy hands a new chance to shine.
Let’s kill off our rapid fire section with the usual cosy collection. Dressmaker (PC / Cozy Lives, Free Lives) is a cosy game about running a dressmaking shop where you can customise to your (or your customer’s) heart’s content. Otterly Lost (PC / Soulworks Interactive) is a game where you play an otter who’s found himself swept away from his friends, journeying to get back and encountering a cast of quirky characters along the way. The Rabbit Haul (PC / Caldera Interactive) is a cute little farm game where you play a bunny growing crops, and then at night it becomes a tower defence game about protecting your crops from hordes of raccoons.
Surprisingly a lot of puzzle-based adventure games out this week. Nomori (PC, Xbox / Enchanted Works) is a mind-bending puzzle game about creating portals and flipping the world around, starring a girl named Kiko wandering through a land of spirits. Echoes of Mora (PC / Selkies Interactive) is a story-driven puzzle game where you explore a drowned village, enter portals to the past and discover the secrets hidden within. And finally, Rivage (PC, PS5, Xbox X/S / Exnilo Studio, Raw Fury) is a puzzle adventure set on a space station where you figure out what’s happened to the missing crew, but there are no portals in this one (as far as I know).
Then the final batch of smaller games. StuntBoost (PC / Byting Games) is a fast-paced stunt game built around fingerboards throwing themselves around cardboard circuits. Eagle Knight Paradox (PC / Playstorm Studios, Visual Protocol) is a run-and-gun side scroller featuring mech battles and a city full of social links you’ll need to nurture on top of blasting bad guys. Yami Kids (PC / Yanako RPGs) is sadly not a game about children from the Black Country but instead if a retro RPG about taming oni and figuring out who killed your parents.
First there was Untitled Goose Game, then there was Just Crow Things and Little Kitty Big City, and now the latest animal to wreak havoc on their surroundings is your own pet dog. Doggy Don’t Care (PC) see you controlling a mischievous puppy whose owner has left him home alone, so now is the time to make his mark on his surroundings. And yes, that does mean peeing on everything. Among other things. Developed by Rohan Nowell and published by Rotub Games.
Mad Metal (PC) is seemingly an indie attempt to provide a new Twisted Metal game where Sony adamantly refuse to. Choose your vehicle, customise it to your liking and go online to blast each other to smithereens in an apocalyptic land laid waste by AI. Developed by Mad Mechs and published by indie.io.
I don’t exactly know who this is for, but it exists, so here we are. Garfield: Escape from Monday (PC, PS5, Switch 1, Xbox X/S) sees you playing as beloved(?) comic strip cat Garfield as he finds himself in a nightmare fighting off vegetables. Also, he gets a turkey, surfer and cowboy outfit, and I mainly know this because all the marketing material mentions it constantly. Developed by OSome Studio and published by Microids.
With most of their expertise forged in the fighting game scene, Qliphah in Providence’s Shadow (PC, PS5, Switch 1) is a surprising release from Arc System Works (with development by UnitePlus). Set in 2030 Tokyo, the world is being contaminated by creatures known as Aberrations. You play as Souma Hoshigami, a man afflicted with Aberration traits and adopted by an investigator with the Tokyo police force. Features highly tactical time-manipulating combat where placement in both space and time will lead you to victory.
Graveyard Keeper 2 (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox) is a management sim where you tend to a graveyard. As you improve it, you also get the opportunity to improve the town in the process. And if that all sounds like too much, don’t worry, you can simply resurrect the corpses at your disposal to become your undead workforce. Developed by Lazy Bear Games and published by TinyBuild.
Well Dweller (PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox X/S) is the week’s big sleeper hit. Emerging out of seemingly nowhere to a chorus of 90+ review scores, this is a metroidvania set in a dark fairy tale. You’re a tiny bird armed with a matchstick who sets out to defeat the dark queen threatening his family. It’s very Hollow Knight. Developed by Kyle Thompson (Crypt Custodian) and published by Top Hat Studios.
Nighthawks (PC) almost didn’t release this week as Steam inexplicably decided it was pornography and blocked it temporarily, simply because it has sexy vampires and classifies itself as a visual novel. You are a fresh vampire and setting out into your new life by running a nightclub. Wadjet Eye Games (Blackwell series, Unavowed) are involved in this one, and their history with excellent point-and-clicks should be a good sign here.
Konami’s current strategy of annual Silent Hill anthology titles shipped out to different horror devs continues this week. Silent Hill: Townfall (PC, PS5) is from Screen Burn, formerly known as No Code (Stories Untold, Observation) and takes us to the most horrifying place imaginable: the UK. Set in the Scottish island town of St Amelia, you play as a man named Simon who has found himself in the town with no memory, a medical wristband and a portable TV that urges him on to “make things right”, whatever that may mean.
Game of the Week is Control Resonant (PC, PS5, Xbox X/S), because of course the latest Remedy game is Game of the Week from me.
The sequel to 2019’s Control, Resonant sees the containment procedures of spooky government agency the FBC completely break down. Now all the paranatural horrors they tried to keep the public safe from are spilling out across the city of Manhattan, including a parasitic mould that really wants you to eat it, a resonance that possesses you and gravity shifting anomalies that are in the process of folding New York like origami. You are Dylan Faden, brother to Jesse from the first game, as he attempts to find her and contain the horrors in a fast-paced melee action game.
Look. I know I am incredibly biased here, I get it. Ever since I became obsessed with Control in 2019, I have been instantly on board with anything Remedy wants to make (hey look, here’s a video I made on Alan Wake 2 recently), and Resonant is no exception. It’s a departure from the first game, with a different protagonist, more melee-focused combat and the fact that we’re outside now, but the vibes are 100% the same. I’ve played the prologue and while it definitely feels different with the melee focus, it already looks set to be just as weird and incomprehensible as ever. Hell yes.
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