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

This week, Final Fantasy, Crash Bandicoot and Aliens!

It’s an odd one this week. While there is a massive release that’s probably going to take most of the attention, the rest of this week’s releases are odd spin-offs and indie games in fairly bog-standard genres. Hope you like survival games in space, because we have all of them!

As such, this week I won’t be listing many highlights. I guess The Bookwalker looks interesting, but the trailers seem reluctant to show the actual game in motion, which is concerning. Other than that, it’s my Game of the Week, which you likely already know a lot about.

So not a super exciting week right now, but hey, we get medieval fantasy kaiju fights, and that’s what matters.

New Releases

You wait around forever for a futuristic survival game (I assume) and then two come along at once, both in Early Access on Steam. Forever Skies is all about journeying across a ravaged Earth looking for resources, while Mars First Logistics is all about controlling rovers to manage resources on Mars.

Not in Early Access, but we’re not done with survival and management games in space. Nova Lands (PC) is about setting up a colony on an unexplored planet.

Feed All Monsters (PC) is a cute puzzle game about building efficient routes to groups of monsters who need to be fed.

Despite its name, Trepang2 (PC) is not a sequel to anything. It is, however, a throwback to FPS games of the PS3/360 era. You play as an amnesiac who has ludicrous combat capabilities, and now you’re heading out to rip and tear. Not a deep premise then, but that’s clearly not the point.

The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) is a narrative adventure about a thief who can dive into fictional literary worlds to retrieve items such as Excalibur. Looks like a neat concept, but I’ve yet to see the game properly in action.

In the first of this week’s trio of odd spin-offs, Dr Fetus’ Mean Meat Machine (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox) is a match-3 puzzle game set in the Super Meat Boy universe. I have no idea why this exists, but here it is.

I will admit, when I think of Aliens, I don’t generally associate it with the RTS genre. That’s exactly what Aliens: Dark Descent (PC, PlayStation, Xbox) is though. You control a squad of space marines as they descend into xenomorph-affected areas, and do your best to keep them all alive.

Everyone’s favourite PlayStation mascot Crash Bandicoot is back this week. The problem is, Crash Team Rumble (PlayStation, Xbox) is a MOBA for some reason. By all accounts there is some fun to be had here but I don’t know how many Crash fans wanted this. This Crash fan certainly doesn’t care, especially after Crash Bandicoot 4 set such a good foundation for future platformers

Game of the Week

Game of the Week this week is Final Fantasy XVI (PS5). The 16th numbered entry in Square Enix’s popular RPG franchise goes in a different direction to its predecessors. This time it sheds the sci-fi fantasy of its stablemates and presents a straightforward medieval fantasy inspired by Game of Thrones.

You play as Clive, a guardian of the Rosaria kingdom, who witnesses the death of everything he holds dear, and then sets out for revenge. Unlike other Final Fantasy games, you are only in control of Clive himself, and the combat system draws from bold character action games like Devil May Cry.

I was sceptical of this at first but I checked out the demo on PS5 and massively enjoyed it. The combat is a lot of fun and the story is interesting enough despite my normal lack of interest in this genre. Plus it has a massive fight between two of Final Fantasy’s most iconic summons, and that was rad. The cast is excellent too, with actors including Ralph Ineson (The Office, The Witch), Susannah Fielding (This Time With Alan Partridge, Forza Horizon) and the kids from A Plague Tale.