Hello! Welcome to the latest Geeky Brummie Games Release Roundup!
This week, squid kids, elemental manipulation and hungry queens of the underworld.
I feel obligated to bring this up since half of this collection is the subject of my biggest YouTube video. Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster comes to Switch 2 this week, but in classic Square Enix fashion, it does not have an upgrade path for those who own the Switch 1 version, there are no cross saves and the game is basically the exact same but maybe some technical improvements. That’ll be £45 please!
That said, Final Fantasy X is one of the great Final Fantasy games, and its sequel, while deeply misunderstood, is also a fun romp. So if you somehow don’t already own this, you probably should give it a go. If you do already own this, maybe don’t bother.
Aquapark Tycoon is exactly what it says in the title. You have been put in charge of a water park and need to keep it running. Think Rollercoaster Tycoon but you’re building water slides and pools instead of Mr Bones’ Wild Ride. Developed by Boxelware.
Oh look, a train game late for last week’s party (Avanti strikes again, I guess). EverRail is a survival game about navigating a frozen wasteland from your train base. I’m not going to ask where the tracks came from if this place is so under-explored. Developed by Aesir Interactive.
Colossus: Eternal Blight is an action RPG built around intricate, precise combat. You play as a man named Lucian whose brother has disappeared while the world is slowly consumed by the Blight. Your journey will open up choices that decide the fate of the world. Developed by Rustic Panda Games and published by LevelUpGaming.
Do you like Dynasty Warriors but are fed up with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms setting? Do you want something more European? More specifically something…Scottish? Tears of Metal has you covered, as you take your Scots battalion to destroy invading hordes, hacking and slashing with wild abandon. Developed by Paper Cult.
Our small releases kick off with the spooky section. Dive or Die: Children of Rain (PC / Drop Rate Studio, Dear Villagers) imagines what if Dave the Diver had less restaurant management and more cosmic horrors, Doomsday Diner (PC / Space Rock Games) is a post-apocalyptic cooking game where you run a diner while stopping bandits from wrecking your business and Shift at Midnight (PC / Bun Muen, Kwalee) is a co-op horror game about working a late shift where some of your customers may not be human.
In platformers, Dewdrop Dynasty (PC / Goodgis, Firith Studio) is a Metroidvania starring a bee with a gun, Dodo Duckie (PC / BornMonkie) is a perspective-shifting platformer about a duck who takes on aliens, and Lifted (PC / Adventure Works) is a 3D platformer starring a Rayman-looking guy who travels through time to steal a priceless artefact. And while not a platformer, Helix: Descent N Ascent (PC / Badass Mongoose) is in this section for starring a cute lil guy solving puzzles to figure his way through a monochrome world.
In visual novels, Advent: Dawn (PC / Spire Games) sees seven strangers trapped in a cave where everyone has a secret but you can only become close to one person in each run while High Times (PC, PS5, Switch 1, Xbox X/S / Yangyang Mobile) is about managing a donut shop and developing relationships with your customers via your skill at donut baking.
Revealed among all the big hitters at Geoff’s Big Summer Fete, An Eggstremely Hard Game (PC) is a co-op game where you and a friend have to carry an egg to safety. It has a wacky physics engine so chaos is inevitable. Developed by BBear Studio and published by Devotion Interactive.
Scarlet Deer Inn (PC) is a story-driven adventure game set in a medieval village. You are Elise, you are nothing special, but dark secrets lurk within the town waiting for you to uncover them. This side-scrolling adventure is notable for its visuals, with every sprite hand-embroidered for a stop motion feel. Developed by Attu Games.
Gurei (PC, PlayStation, Switch 1) is Hollow Knight but Japanese-inspired (but not Bo: Path of the Teal Lotus, which is the other one). You play as Rei, a human bound to the spirit world and tasked with taking down the Kami. One interesting mechanic is that enemies that give you trouble early on could reappear as the game’s final boss. Plus it has a blade-wielding woman wearing a fox mask which is always a way to get my attention. Developed by Lobo Sagaz Studio and published by Astrolabe Games.
Tormentum 2 (PC) is a labour of love from Polish developers OhNoo Studio, a sequel to their previous game Tormentum. This horror-themed point-and-click sees a man named David trapped in a twisted simulation he has built. Inspired heavily by the works of H.R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński.
Dinoblade (PC) is a Soulslike. It appears to play like so many others in the genre. Ordinarily nothing special, a symptom of an industry that likes to recycle ideas a little too often, even within the indie space. But as the title suggests, this one is doing something no one else in the genre has dared to do: they gave a dinosaur a massive sword. You are a Spinosaurus, armed with a Great Sword, who has come to learn of a great calamity set to befall the dinosaurs (you know the one) and so he sets out to try and stop it. If this dinosaur doesn’t parry a meteor with that sword by the end, I’m going to be very upset. Developed by Team Spino.
After years of tactics games, the Disgaea series has decided to branch out with Disgaea Mayhem (PC, PS5, Switch), an action RPG set within the universe. You play as N.A., a mercenary working for the new Overlord of the Super Duper Netherworld who is angry that her flan has been stolen. Yes, a flan. Disgaea doesn’t have a reputation for being serious, in case that wasn’t clear. Developed by Nippon Ichi Software.
Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game (PC, PS5) takes a bunch of characters from the popular Nickelodeon show Avatar: The Last Airbender and throws them into a 2D fighting game. Features a story mode with an original narrative by the show’s creators, plus hand drawn animation for all the characters. Developed by Gameplay Group Intl and published by PM Studios.
Since my main game is technically a major release, my Indie Game of the Week is Fading Echo (PC), developed by Emeteria, an internal studio of new publisher New Tales.
This is an action platformer where manipulation of water is key to solving the challenges ahead of you. You play as One, a young woman who can turn into a liquid form and mess with the environment. She can even manipulate other liquids beyond water. Features the voices of Sam Beart (Karlach from Baldur’s Gate 3) and half the cast of Critical Role.
I love a game that commits to its visuals, and Fading Echo features a bold cartoony art style that’s used to great effects for all the water abilities. It looks like a game full of imagination, stretching water manipulation into as many directions as possible. Plus, I’m a big fan of games where the player can turn into a liquid-based form. Speaking of which…
The big Game of the Week is Splatoon Raiders (Switch 2), the latest in Nintendo’s squid-based shooter series.
You play as The Mechanic, an Inkling that’s crash landed in the Spirhalite Islands with the idol group Deep Cut (as seen in Splatoon 3), and now you have to escape and get back home. To do this, you’ll head out in search of treasure and salvage, allowing you to upgrade your ship and uncover the mysteries of the island. Unusually, this is a primarily single-player experience, a huge contrast to the multiplayer-driven entries in the Splatoon series to date.
I don’t feel I need to justify myself here. I wouldn’t own the entire Splatoon Amiibo line if I wasn’t deeply embedded in this goopy world of squid kids. And this is effectively an expansion of the Salmon Run horde modes of the main games, retooled into a single-player adventure (with optional co-op), so I’m excited to see how that plays out. And you get to go on a whole adventure with Shiver, Frye and Big Man, so how can I turn that down?
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