What we’re feeding the Maw
Morning all! The working week once again looms above us like a bulldozer driven by raucous and somehow loveable sheepdogs in top hats and cufflinks. Quickly now, lob a few new PC game releases under the caterpillar treads to slow its passage. It’s not clear where those sheepdogs are going, but your and my wellbeing are clearly of secondary importance.
Monday 14th July
- Today is all about factory games, apparently. My highlights among the mass producers are Kaizen: A Factory Story, a craftsmanlike automation puzzler from former Zachtronics devs, and MoteMancer, in which you build fantastical factories in different dimensions that overlap in real-time. Note: the MoteMancer devs have said that genAI was used to “ideate” the art, though the final art assets were created by regular humans – or “skinloads” as we are known in the trade.
- If you despise factories, please take your resentments to the tiles of Arashi Gaiden, a turn-based ninja slicer. Where is my ninja factory sim, games industry.
Tuesday 15th July
- Today is all about comebacks of one kind or another. Dungeons & Dragons Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition is Aspyr Media’s revamping of one of the D&D RPGs people venerated before “D&D RPG” became synonymous with “Baldur’s Gate 3”.
- Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition is Firefly’s remastering of 2002’s answer to Angry Birds.
- Troubled Bungie FPS Destiny 2 has a new edition and DLC rollout – Year Of Prophecy. The first of the new DLC packs is The Edge Of Fate, which includes a new planet featuring lost humans and forgotten Fallen houses.
- Becoming Saint is today’s token Actual New Game. It’s a pleasantly cracked real-time tactics roguelite in which you try to get yourself canonised before you are martyred.
Wednesday 16th July
- Today, it is time to exsanguinate Pikmin and daub gory geometry in occult squad tactics puzzler Worship, which should remind you instantly of Cult Of The Lamb.
Thursday 17th July
- The Necromancer’s Tale (pictured) is an open world RPG with Disco Elysium-esque dialogue windows in which you are a questing liche (quiche?), building up your rotten retinue (rotinue? Let’s go with it) while going to the occasional ball.
- Fill Up The Hole is a chirpy 2D landfill empire simulator. Can’t spell wholesome without hole, etc.
- Shadow Labyrinth attempts to make a horror game out of Pac-Man, overlooking that Pac-Man is already perfectly horrible. Pac-Man, a game in which you are an insatiable orb in a maze of ghosts.
- The Drifter could be this week’s highlight. It’s a pulp adventure joint inspired by “King, Crichton and Carpenter, with a dash of 70s Aussie grindhouse”, in which you a homeless man asked to investigate his own murder.
Friday 18th July
- Do you enjoy besieging Rainbows? Do you enjoy kicking doors? Have some Phantom Squad, then.
What are we denizens of the Treehouse up to this week? Well, Nic and Jeremy spent a lot of this week’s all-hands meeting complaining about gardening – possibly gardening in a video game. I can’t quite remember, because I was myself too busy complaining about the 1990s. Possibly the 1990s in a videogame – again, I can’t quite remember. This happens a lot at the minute.
Mark has some embargoed stuff on the boil, and James is just back from break, freshly bronzed and hungry for words. Ollie is tidying up some bits and pieces before he, too, embarks on holiday. Graham is staring at us all patiently from the corner of the video call, waiting for people to shut up about their roots. What are you up to this week? Assuming you haven’t been smooshed by sheepdogs.
