Hello, new week of PC games! Hey, I thought you’d be taller. Ah, I see what’s happened: the Maw has eaten Friday again, and swallowed next Monday for good measure. As ever, the normies are calling this a “bank holiday weekend”. There are various festivities planned – apparently, some bunny has been running around laying chocolate eggs.
This week isn’t just shorter than average, mind, it’s also more treacherous. Look at April Fool’s Day, parked square in the middle like a garden rake. PSA for PRs: I will be taking any and all announcements you make on Wednesday 100% seriously, and I will accuse you of cancelling projects and contributing to industrial decline if they turn out to be false, because I am a resentful old walrus who hates when other people make fun. Rest assured, readers, that all of the below games, at least, have a paper trail and are thus probably real.
Monday 30th March
- Do you like horror photography series Fatal Frame? Because Paragnosia: Museum is kind of that, but set in museum full of ancient Egyptian and pre-Columbian exhibits, with 130 anomalies to capture and six locks that shouldn’t be unlocked.
- Continuing the occult theme, Bloodletter is a Tarot and medieval-themed deckbuilder in which you exorcise villagers, out this day in early access.
- Endalor is a one to four player open world RPG of castles and caverns with Soulslichenous, stamina-based combat, also out this day in early access. What do you think of “Soulslichenous”? My runner-up choice was Soulsliquorice.
- Goodness me, Lakehopper is a seaplane courier sim. This one’s an early access joint too.
- Aether & Iron (pictured) is a narrative RPG set in anti-gravity art deco New York, from a writing team with credits on Mass Effect and Sovereign Syndicate. You are a detective and there is turn-based vehicular combat.
Tuesday 31st March
- Subliminal is a psychological Backroom-style horror with a “bouncehole”. I will not be taking questions.
- Crown of Greed is a fantasy real-time strategy game in the Majesty mould of not being able to issue direct orders to units. Instead, you must lure them with gold.
- Legacy of Kain: Ascendance is a 2D action platformer set in the world of Nosgoth, feat. Soul Reaver’s Raziel when he was young and hot.
- Super Meat Boy 3D quite literally fattens up Team Meat’s classic 2D platformer, then shoves it into a variety of sawblades and lasers.
- It’s bizarre and uplifting to think that gaming culture can sustain more than one game that resembles an illuminated manuscript. Legends of the Round Table is the latest, offering turn-based Arthurian cavalry battles.
- No time for manuscripts, pilgrim, because we’re off to the Eldritch west to six-shoot a Shoggoth in top-down action-RPG Tombwater.
- How can you six-shoot a Shoggoth when you’re made of copycat fungus? Metroidvania Grime 2 casts you as “an art mimic, absorbing creatures and summoning molds in their shape”. Must resist urge to belabour generative AI parallel. I like fungus.
Wednesday 1st April
- Well well well, if it isn’t the day of LIARS. Sea, Sun & Salt looks real enough – it’s a “gentle” island city-builder in which the waters rise when you let your people down.
Thursday 2nd April
- Darwin’s Paradox is a plush side-scroller from Konami in which you are an octopus. Indeed, a Decoy Octopus, because there’s a Metal Gear Solid tie-in.
- Who likes space combat? Come get your Wrath and Retribution, then. Beware that it contains generated AI voice-acting.
- Modulus: Factory Automation is a factory game in which your factory 3D-prints the modules of which it is made. I like the emphasis here on building “aesthetically pleasing” factories.
- In roguelike puzzler Cursed Words: The Word Game That Isn’t, you can meddle with the starting Boggle-style rules using chess pieces, poker hands, and other fiendish stratagems.
Friday 3rd April
- We enter Friday, the eaten day, but there are still games to be had, tumbling through the abyss. Games like All Will Fall, an island city builder in which structures have real-time physics, and may teeter over into the sea.
- Stiff Neck is a first-person psychodrama featuring a small town police detective, several romanceable characters (one of whom may be “the Flayer”), a tower full of cursed dolls, and some cool papercraft art.
- If the last recommendation had too many convolutions, perhaps you will prefer the MadWorldly hack-and-slash of Kijutsu Rider.
Phew! I think that’s a ripe haul. I’m sorry we won’t be around on Friday to cover the last three.
As noted, next Monday has fallen down the Maw’s gullet too, so there will be reduced service at RPS from Friday till Tuesday 7th. Any plans for the ‘bank holiday’ yourself? I’m taking a few extra days for a long hike next week, so somebody else will have to feed the Maw for a while. I will decide who that person is via the established RPS method of picking a name that rhymes with either Rules Femdom or Shmark Warben.
