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

This week, let’s solve some mysteries!

Another packed week for me last week, so I was unable to post a roundup again. Which means that once again, here’s a double bill, covering releases across both weeks. It works out as this week is a fairly quiet week, so it helps beef up what would be a pretty empty schedule.

Re-Releases and Ports

MySims: Cozy Bundle (Switch) brings together the MySims cosy games from the 2000s about rebuilding a town and a kingdom.

Speaking of things coming to the Switch, Stray has been ported over, allowing you be a cat in a sci-fi post-human world on Nintendo’s system. This is an adorable little game that will make you cry, even if the “being a cat” aspect wasn’t quite as deep as I would have hoped it would be.

Early Access

Releasing in Early Access, Towers of Aghasba is a survival game about bringing life back to a wasteland. Part of the game involves rebuilding villages for your tribe and the other part involves fighting off corrupted creatures and nurturing the land back to life by planting crops.

Dungeon Clawler is a roguelike dungeon crawler with one major unique twist – all your weapons and attacks are obtained from a claw machine. Of course, I’m sure this has the potential to be an RNG nightmare, but it’s always good to see devs attempting something different with a tired genre.

New Releases

Critter Café (PC, Switch) is this week’s cosy game, dedicated to travelling through mysterious rifts to free cute creatures. You can then gather them together in your café that you must manage.

I’ve gotten to the point where I skip a lot of deckbuilding roguelikes at this point, because of how samey they’ve gotten. However, Toads of the Bayou (PC) at least has an interesting premise. You control a group of toads who’ve gotten lost in the bayou and warped to a strange land inhabited by voodoo spirit Baron Samedi. Using turn-based mechanics the toads must escape their fate and defeat Samedi to return home. Some excellent art on show here too.

30 Birds (PC) is a narrative puzzle game set on the sides of rotating lanterns. Inspired by Persian art, this is a detective game where you’re trying to save the mythological bird Simurgh by uncovering plans to kidnap them.

Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 (PC, Xbox X/S) is the latest of Microsoft’s long-running flight sim series, promising to be the most advanced and realistic of all of them. However, initial reports suggest it’s currently in a messy state due to server issues, so maybe give this a miss for a while.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl (PC, Xbox X/S) released this week, despite its Ukrainian team facing severe difficulties during development. The latest in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series where supernatural anomalies are showing up around the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. It’s a bit janky, but there’s a lot of love for this series out there, so if you’re looking a blend of FPS and horror, this should be for you.

Game of the Week

Game of the Week for last week is Loco Motive (PC, Switch), a point and click mystery.

The game is set on the Reuss Express where someone has been murdered, and the three playable characters are the prime suspects. You play as Arthur, a serious lawyer, Herman, a crime novelist turned amateur sleuth, and Diana, an undercover spy. Each of them is looking to prove their innocence and catch the culprit once and for all.

Loco Motive is a game that caught my attention for simply being a classic point-and-click adventure. It’s got a goofy sense of humour and is also a classic Christie-style murder mystery to boot. And, I have to be honest, a big part of the appeal is in that title. It’s genius. Well done.

Game of the Week for this week is Neon Blood (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox), which continues my apparent detective theme for the week.

Neon Blood is set in 2053, where former police detective Alex McCoin finds himself wrapped up in a scheme to overthrow the corrupt government and restore freedom to the people. The game mixes point-and-click style investigative portions with a turn-based combat system for when the city fights back.

This one caught my attention because, of course, it’s a mystery game so it naturally appeals to me. But also, it’s a visual treat, with a gorgeous voxel-based cyberpunk aesthetic that instantly grabbed me.