Hello! Welcome to the latest Geeky Brummie Gaming Roundup!

This week, please enjoy a release roundup.

New Releases

In re-releases, Before Your Eyes comes to PS VR 2, as revealed in Sony’s State of Play a few weeks ago. The game is controlled with blinking, as someone watches their life flash before them, and scenes advance through time whenever the player blinks. Generally considered a beautiful, emotional experience.

If you like managing stuff, this is a good week for you. Masterplan Tycoon sees you building network hubs with nodes to manage resources. Outlanders is a town builder where you can only nudge your villagers into the right direction, you can’t control them directly. And Relic Space is a 4X space game about exploring a star system. All these games are PC-only releases.

Figment 2: Creed Valley (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox) is the sequel to 2017’s puzzle adventure game set in a dream-like world full of quirky characters and surreal landscapes.

Oni: Road to be the Mightiest Oni (PC, PlayStation, Switch) is a cute little adventure game set on an island used as training for demons. You play as one of these demons, Kuuta, as he takes on various challenges to increase his strength. It’s a blend of combat and exploration with a focus on narrative.

Paranormasight: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo (PC, Switch) is a visual novel about spooky curses and mysteries around urban legends in Japan. Expect a lot of exploring scenes for clues and a story full of twists and turns.

Game of the Week

This is the second time this year that I’ve given Game of the Week to a game that is a brand new release from our British perspective, but is not a new game by any means. Previously, that game was Like a Dragon: Ishin, a remake of a Japan-only Yakuza spin-off. This time around, I have a much stronger emotional attachment to the Japanese-only release that has only just reached European shores.

As I made clear on YouTube at Halloween, my favourite horror game series is Project Zero, or Fatal Frame to the Americans. I hold a lot of affection for the original trilogy and while Maiden of Black Water is riddled with flaws, I still like it despite everything. However, for fifteen years there’s one game that I’ve been unable to legally play because it never left its home country. That was until September when Nintendo confirmed in a Direct that the fourth game in the series was getting a remaster, and this time it wouldn’t be stuck in Japan.

And this week, Project Zero: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox) has finally released, and I have no choice but to make it Game of the Week. I have waited fifteen years for this thing, please indulge me.

If you’re unaware of the series, it’s a survival horror franchise, sometimes placed alongside Resident Evil and Silent Hill as the shining examples of the genre. Unlike those games, it’s much more Japanese in its feel, set in old crumbling mansions and villages full of ghosts that would be familiar to fans of J-horror movies such as Ringu or Ju-On. Also, your only weapon is a camera, meaning that fighting the ghosts means getting all up and close to get the best shots of them for maximum damage.

The fourth game, Mask of the Lunar Eclipse, sees a group of girls returning to an island of their childhood after two of their friends have died. They don’t remember their time on the island and are hoping they can unravel the supernatural mysteries by returning. A detective also returns to the island to find out why the girls have come back. And of course, what they find involves spooky rituals and curses and many, MANY screaming ghosts.

I am so incredibly happy that this game is, finally, officially available in the West after fifteen years. The series is a brilliant spooky time that I have nothing but love for, and getting a proper experience after the wonky emulation I experienced last year is going to be glorious.

So yes, it’s Game of the Week. There was no other choice. And I’m not sorry.