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

This week, space insurance agents, amateur football and shotgun cops.

Re-Releases and Ports

The unthinkable has happened. Forza Horizon 5 is now on PS5. Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria, etc. My 2021 Game of the Year can now be played on PlayStation, so you can now fling yourself around Mexico in a beaten up Mini (or your car of choice) and then instantly swap over to Astro Bot if you so wish.

New Releases

Sub-Verge (PC) is a narrative puzzle game about surviving a deep-sea dive with a paranoid crew. Your goal here is to figure out how to convince this crew to agree on taking you down to the depths. I played a review copy of this one, and found it an interesting concept, but one that’s not quite as interesting as I would have liked it to be. Being able to only communicate with the crew by opening valves quickly became repetitive, and each segment of the dive having a single solution meant a lot of trial and error and not much else. It’s a shame, because there’s an interesting idea here, it’s just not great execution.

Leaving Early Access, Wizordum (PC) is an FPS where you play a mage seeking the source of Chaos. It’s basically an indie throwback to Hexen, where you play around with a range of spells and magic items, complete with a destructible environment.

Starvaders (PC) is a roguelike deck builder and while certainly there are too many of those, this one does resemble Into the Breach crossed with a puzzle game. You control a mech that must stop an army of invaders from reaching the bottom of the screen by making smart use of ability cards. Has a great art style.

Freeride (PC, Switch) is a narrative RPG set on a train full of spirits. You’ll run around attempting to solve their problems and help them complete their unfinished business. However, there is also a hidden personality test that keeps track of everything you do, determining exactly what kind of person you are by the end of it.

With a name as direct as Shotgun Cop Man (PC, Switch), you can probably guess what you’re getting here. This is a bizarre precision platformer where you play as a man who’s a cop with a shotgun (surprisingly) heading to defeat the devil himself.

Despelote (PC, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox) is an autobiographical game about the summer of 2002 in Ecuador, focused on a boy’s excitement about the national football team getting into the World Cup. This is technically a football game in that you are kicking a football around, but it’s also an arty narrative game about childhood, long summers and memories.

Game of the Week

Skin Deep (PC) is an immersive sim where you play a poorly equipped insurance assassin.

You are Nina, an operative for an intergalactic insurance company whose job is to protect the ship and its cargo. When space pirates invade your ship, you are broken out of cryosleep and sent to stop them. However, you are missing your shoes and weapons, so must improvise your way through the situation.

I’ve heard nothing but great things about Skin Deep. The premise is interesting and very silly. There are tons of systems that interact with each other which means chaos is possible. And there are cats. What’s not to love?