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

This week, scared schoolgirls, horny gods and Sonic in a vehicle.

Re-Releases and Ports

Pac-Man World 2 Re-Pac (PC, PlayStation, Switch 1, Xbox) brings back the PS2-era 3D platformer starring Bandai Namco’s pellet-munching yellow orb. Now remastered with fresh new visuals.

Early Access

Stario: Haven Tower (PC) is a city builder about a vertical city where its residents attempt to escape the brutal sandstorm engulfing the planet. You have to build in layers, making sure to keep supply networks open for maintenance, agriculture and tech. Developed by Stargate Games.

It Has My Face (PC) is a horror game from NightByte Games and published by Behaviour Interactive. You have a clone, and it wants to kill you. It’s hiding somewhere in the crowd, and you must find a weapon and then find it before it finds you.

The latest in Amplitude’s Endless universe entered Early Access this week too. Endless Legend II is a 4X strategy game set in an ever-changing world, and your ability to adapt to these changes will be key to your success. Published by Hooded Horse.

New Releases

Bloodthief (PC) is Ghostrunner, but low poly and set in a medieval fantasy world. You play as a vampire capable of impressive feats of speed and agility, and to sustain this momentum you must kill, usually by parkouring off a wall and into their face. Developed by Blargis.

Speaking of speedy first-person games, Mala Petaka (PC) is a shooter built on the classic Doom engine. You’re an amnesiac and the only way to recover your memories is to use warp portals to journey across the multiverse, blasting anyone who gets in your way. Standard stuff, obviously. Developed by Sanditio Bayu and published by Hellforge Studios.

Hyper Team Recon (PC, PlayStation, Switch 1, Xbox) is a 3D platformer starring three alien slimes posing as anime girls. You’ll need to use their shapeshifting abilities to survive the new terrain you’re traversing so you can repair your ship and get home. Developed by Nathan Burton and published by Top Hat Studios.

Consume Me (PC) is an intensely personal life sim RPG about a teenage girl going through it. Inspired by developer Jenny Jiao Hsia’s own life experiences, this is a blend of minigames, dialogue choices and time management, all focused on sharing the experience of living with a complex relationship with food. It’s light-hearted and stressful in equal measure.

CloverPit (PC) is a horror game about paying off debts. You’re trapped in a low poly cell with a slot machine and you must gamble to pay off what you owe. Fail to do so and you’re in the pit below the floor, so you must do whatever you can to make the slot machine give you good outcomes. Developed by Panik Arcade (Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom) and published by Future Friends Games (Europa, Exo One, Gourdlets).

Death on the Nile (PC, PS5, Switch 1, Xbox X/S) is an adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1937 Hercule Poirot novel. It is, of course, a detective game, but the twist is that it’s now the 1970s, and Poirot is dressed for the disco. He’s also accompanied by original detective Jane Joyce who has her own mystery to solve. It’s up to you to uncover both mysteries and discover where they’re connected. Developed by Microids, so expect some jank.

Earlier this year, Strange Scaffold released the third game in the Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion series of match-3 puzzle games. Now, you may be thinking that’s a bit strange, you don’t remember there being two other Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion games. Which is fine, because Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 1 Re-Raptored (PC) is a remaster of the original hit game so you can catch up on where the story began. Now developed by Pedalboard Games, you battle dinosaurs in the creepy redneck mansion using match-3 puzzle challenges. An exciting time for fans of this incredibly real and not at all fictional video game franchise.

Spinning off from a popular Korean MMO, Blade & Soul: Heroes (PC, Mobile) is the inevitable gacha game all about collecting a team of fighters. You play as Yusol, whose clan has been destroyed by the Heaven’s Fall Cult and its leader Yi Chun, and now you must assemble a team to help you enact your revenge. Combines turn-based and real-time combat options. Developed by NCSoft.

Baby Steps (PC, PS5) is a collaboration between Gabe Cuzzillo (Ape Out), Maxi Boch and Bennett Foddy (Getting Over It). In the spirit of the latter, this is another game about struggling with basic movement. You play as a failure of a man who has just discovered a novel concept: walking. The game is a goofy physics-based test of nerve as you figure out how to navigate the world with the walking ability of a toddler. Published by Devolver Digital.

Hotel Barcelona (PC, PS5, Xbox X/S) is a collaboration between two of Japan’s biggest weirdo developers. Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro (Deadly Premonition, The Missing) and Goichi “Suda51” Suda (No More Heroes, Killer7) have joined forces for a side-scrolling roguelike set in a world of horror movie serial killers. You play as US Marshal Justine, who has the spirit of a deranged serial killer named Dr Carnival possessing her, and she has journeyed to the mysterious Hotel Barcelona to track down a figure known only as “The Witch” who may be involved in some shady business. Will have a full review of this going up soon.

Koei Tecmo somehow brings us a second Atelier game this year, as Atelier Resleriana: The Red Alchemist & the White Guardian (PC, PS5, Switch 1) continues the series’ love of absurdly long titles. It stars Slade and Rias, two young people who return to their hometown after an incident where people mysteriously vanished. Together they work to uncover the town’s mysteries while also restoring Rias’ grandfather’s alchemy shop.

Sonic once again decides to take a break and use a car to go fast in Sonic Racing CrossWorlds (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox), the latest in the Sonic Racing series. It’s also the first without the involvement of Sumo Digital, with development shifted over to Sonic Team themselves. This time, the gimmick is teleportation, as the middle lap of every race shifts you onto a different track entirely, inspired by the ring teleportation in the Sonic movies. While the base roster is all Sonic characters, guest characters are set to make appearances through DLC, with Persona 5’s Joker, Yakuza’s Ichiban Kasuga and Hatsune Miku all set to make appearances.

OH, and speaking of Hatsune Miku, allow me to quickly interrupt all these games with a reminder that the Birmingham Anime Film Festival is very much underway right now. Our programme includes a range of classic anime films, along with more recent offerings such as Colorful Stage! A Miku Who Can’t Sing. Please go to baff.uk for more information. Thank you!

Hades II (PC, Switch) leaves Early Access this week, bringing the full experience of Supergiant’s first ever sequel, an unsurprising one after the critical and commercial success of the first Hades. You play as Milinoe, Princess of the Underworld, as she heads deep into the underworld to settle a grudge using her magical powers. Almost certainly a Game of the Year contender.

Game of the Week

Game of the Week is Silent Hill f (PC, PS5, Xbox X/S), the latest in the classic horror series.

It’s been a rough time for Silent Hill for, let’s see, about twenty years or so. Once horror royalty in the early 2000s, a series of mediocre entries and the cancellation of Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hills have left the series dormant, with only last year’s remake of Silent Hill 2 catching any positive attention. But there’s still been trepidation about potential new entries, especially after the terrible Ascension and Short Message.

Silent Hill f looks set to put the series back on track. Developed by Hong Kong studio NeoBards with a story penned by beloved visual novel creator Ryukishi07 (When They Cry series), Silent Hill f moves the series to Japan and puts you in the shoes of a schoolgirl who’s ended up in a horrible alternate world. Hinako Shimizu is an ordinary high school girl who must survive in this haunting new reality, as it bombards her with images of her classmates and family in typical Silent Hill fashion.

I’m legitimately looking forward to this one. I’m a fan of Japanese horror, and When They Cry fans have been extremely vocal about how high their expectations are. Reviews are incredibly positive, which suggests those expectations have been met.