May Horace save and protect you, my fellow Metamedia Sorcerers, for I come with bad tidings. We are entering a news-lull. While there are some curious, possibly even attention-worthy PC games out this week, none of them are Big. None of them have that triple, quadruple or even quintuple-A bullshit frosting the Maw so delights to batten upon. Last week gave us Tokyo Game Show, a time of relative bounty, but this week, there is a dearth of obvious headline material, and the Creature is already showing signs of discontent.
Its guts stiffen and strain like paralysed icebreakers. Its eyes widen in every mirror. How could it get worse? Oh hell’s teeth, I’ve run out of coffee. We’re doomed! Rohan has deserted us! Theoden has betrayed me! Abandon your posts! Flee, flee for your lives!
I don’t have a Gandalf to stride in here, whack me with a staff and rally the troops. James would have played the part, I’m sure, but he’s not in today. Perhaps he’s out buying coffee. Please let that be the case. Also, please let somebody buy EA or equivalent so that we have a chunky morsel to appease the beast, before it ruptures the continuum and turns Mars into Belgium again. Casting my gaze wildly at the events calendar, I see only the GamesIndustry.biz HR Summit 2025 on 2nd October. I can’t feed HR people to the Maw! After all, they’re vitally needed for approving my holidays. Please, let somebody post a link to something straightforwardly huge in the comments. While you scrape around for ideas, here’s the latest new game round-up.
Monday 29th September
- Boneparte’s Bluff is a free and simple-looking abstract strategy game in which the pieces lie to you.
Tuesday 30th September
- Final Fantasy Tactics – The Ivalice Chronicles is a revamp of the venerable PS1 strategy RPG. Dom over at Eurogamer says it’s pretty good.
- It seems likely you’re in the mood for xenomorphs, after Alien: Earth, so maybe cock a squint at Alien: Rogue Incursion‘s Evolved Edition (pictured), the new headset-free version of a VR horror game that is apparently a bit mid.
- LEGO Party! is a four-player minigame bonanza with an unnecessary and frankly condescending exclamation mark. People should know well enough to supply their own dang exclamation marks when they play “party” games.
Wednesday 1st October
- Flick Solitaire is a solo card game with a lot of decks from different artists. It’s free-to-play and launching in early access. There are in-app purchases and season passes, but “all core gameplay, collecting decks, and completing them can be experienced for free”. A suspicious CTRL+F of the Steam page reveals no mention of NFTs.
Thursday 2nd October
- Éalú is an atmospheric puzzler with hand-made, stop-motion animations. It’s about a wooden mouse trying to escape a maze.
- Digimon Story Time Stranger is a monster-taming RPG about those collectible creatures who aren’t Pokemon and also aren’t currently being sued for trying to be Pokemon.
Friday 3rd October
- Castle Of Heart: Retold is a prettied-up version of a lush Slavic side-scroller in which a knight must continuously murder vodniks to stop his body turning to stone.
There’s your cue. Fill me in on any important breaking news, or major games releases not mentioned here. Please, I beg of you. I’m literally writing this from inside the Mawmouth, peering out at you through a forest of quantum strings as thick as baleen. It smells awful in here. I’m sitting on a rancid chunk of Borderlands DLC, attempting to wipe the kaiju dribble off my laptop screen. Time to test out this Boneparte Bluff game, I guess, while Mark embarks on an emergency expedition to locate any massive standalone mods we’ve forgotten about.
