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

This week, a game freed from Apple Arcade, gacha dress-up and Marvel Overwatch.

It’s December and while normally I’m using this month to cover a few stray indie releases and gearing up for the end-of-year Top 50, this week is surprisingly stacked. It’s alarmingly busy, with a huge amount of cool-looking indies, a decent number of big ticket releases and also Fitness Boxing is here too.

However, despite December being busier than usual, this will still be the penultimate Games Release Roundup of the year. That’s right, there’s only one more after this for 2024!

New Releases

Symphonia (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox) is a Metroidvania with an emphasis on platforming challenges based around classical music. You play as the conductor Philemon as he attempts to gather the orchestra divided across the world and bring music and life back to the land. Looks beautiful and music looks like it’s woven into the gameplay.

Uncle Chop’s Rocket Shop (PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox X/S) is a roguelike spaceship repair game. You play as a fox-headed alien in a shady space truck stop. You have limited time to repair a selection of random spaceships that land in front of you. It’s an interesting take on the roguelike genre, as your success depends on being able to clean, refuel and identify issues with all the craft in front of you. Sometimes you even have to deactivate a bomb or two.

Diesel Legacy: The Brazen Age (PC, PS5, Switch, Xbox X/S) is a fresh take on the fighting game genre. It’s a 2v2 game for a start and takes a lot of cues from the brawler genre with three planes of combat and a story mode clearly inspired the genre. It also features a bold steampunk aesthetic that’s so inspired by the 1920s there’s even a robot ripped straight out of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. It’s also an incredibly expressive game thanks to all its character animation built from traditional hand-drawn techniques, and I’m always a fan of that.

Something to pick up ahead of the fattening Christmas food season, Fitness Boxing 3: Your Personal Trainer (Switch) is the latest of Nintendo’s rhythm boxing series designed to get you fit. The big change this time is the ability to pick a virtual personal trainer and build a bond with them as you move through your programme.

Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island (PC, Switch, Xbox) sees you playing as a backpacker who’s washed up on the shores of Ambrosia Island, the final refuge of the Greek Pantheon. However, they’ve lost their memories, so it’s up to you to help them recover them while finding your own way off the island. This one’s from the developers of Roki, a game I loved back in 2020, so you can expect a similar vibe here, I would imagine.

Hot on the heels of last year’s Pizza Tower comes yet another Wario-like. Antonblast (PC) sees you playing as the explosive Anton (or his co-worker Annie) as he heads into Hell to retrieve his spirit collection. It’s loud, it’s in your face and it looks chaotic in all the best ways. Was almost picked for Game of the Week, in fact. A Switch version of the game is set to release on the 13th.

Marvel Rivals (PC, PS5, Xbox X/S) is Overwatch with superheroes. Or, according to former Blizzard exec Mike Ybarra, it’s a total knockoff, right down to Black Widow being a copy of Widowmaker (who wants to tell him?). Of course, in reality, it’s an Overwatch-inspired hero shooter where the heroes are all licensed characters from Marvel Comics. Expect all the big-name favourites (Spider-Man! Captain America! Wolverine with the world’s tiniest head!) and a few surprises like Squirrel Girl. Good if you’re into that sort of thing, I suppose.

Infinity Nikki (PC, PS5, Mobile) is another one of those Chinese gacha games I hear are popular these days (he says, as if he didn’t make a HoYo game GotW earlier this year). Infinity Nikki is an open-world sandbox with dress-up mechanics and 3D platforming. It is, in essence, a cosy game set in a strange magical world of wonder. Genuinely has a lot of people hyped.

Game of the Week

Game of the Week is Fantasian: Neo Dimension (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox X/S), which is finally free from its Apple Arcade prison.

Fantasian is the latest game from Mistwalker, the development studio founded by legendary game designer Hironobu Sakaguchi, best known as the creator of Final Fantasy. It’s set in an alternate world known as the Machine Realm, where a stranger to the world finds himself suffering from amnesia. His quest sees him trying to recover his memories while bringing allies to his side as they take on a great evil.

There’s a lot to love about Fantasian from everything I’ve seen of it. It’s the kind of game fans of classic Final Fantasy have been desperate to play for years, and its visual style is unusually built using photos of real-world dioramas. All this plus a soaring score from fellow Final Fantasy veteran Nobuo Uematsu makes this an exciting prospect.