April 2 – April 8

Section: 

IMAGE(https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/pictures/pictures/picture-5877.jpg)   Greg “DoubtingThomas396” Decker

Okay, I’m going to give a friendly bit of advice to all of you budding game developers out there: If you’re going to make a little indie game that you hope will catch fire like a Minecraft, or an FTL, or a H1Z1 PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds Fortnite, then give it a title that is easy to find with a search engine.

Seriously, I don’t know who the developers behind the alleged game “LIGHT” allegedly are, but MAKING YOUR MUNDANE, ONE-WORD TITLE ALL CAPS DOESN’T MAKE IT EASIER TO FIND ON STEAM. I still can’t confirm the game actually exists, but I’m leaving it on the list so I can mock it as a warning to others who will assuredly come.

But enough of my soapbox. On to my game of the week, which is a run-off between The Adventure Pals and Plug Me. They’re both beautiful platformers with endearing senses of humor and interesting albeit vaguely unsettling premises. The Adventure Pals has you chasing a cannibalistic madman who’s kidnapped your father, while Plug Me has you playing as an anthropomorphic battery-backup device, racing the rapidly dwindling charge bar of the world before the lights go out.

My pick narrowly goes to Plug Me, because it looks the most interesting mechanically, and because The Adventure Pals can’t seem to achieve an acceptable framerate in its own trailer. Another bit of advice to you game developers out there: Optimization isn’t something you tack on to the end of your project plan with a budget of three days. Or maybe it is, since you can just patch it out after release. What do I know?

IMAGE(https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/pictures/picture-111373-1511547841.jpg)   Chris "C" Cesarano

My mood looking at this week – this month – in releases can best be summed up as resting my face upon my palm, eyes half-closed, flesh of my cheek stretching uncomfortably as I stare blankly at a bunch of titles whilst contemplating what I'm going to have for lunch.

Granted, this has been my general mood lately, so it's nothing really against the games.

I'm going to extend an arbitrary pick to Penny Punching Princess on Nintendo Switch, though oddly not because it's a Nintendo game. A top-down perspective brawl-em-up, the art style is that perfect retro aesthetic to fool me into thinking I'm playing a brand new Super Nintendo game. Sold!

IMAGE(https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/pictures/pictures/picture-13445.jpg)   Felix “Abstention Mention” Threepaper

I agree with my colleagues above – this week, Dead Land is not just a zombie shooter coming from mobile devices to consoles, it’s a description of the release list.

Raiders of the Broken Planet: Hades Betrayal is a co-op third-person cover shooter that looks like if Kojima did Borderlands. It’s got a few “different, but is it good?” design choices, like needing to melee enemies to refill ammo.

Minit is a checkpointed roguelike with the gimmick that you die every 60 seconds. Progress depends on remembering what you did last time.

Look, I’d half-heartedly say one of those games is GOTW, but really Imma start another Civ6 game with a new leader.

IMAGE(https://www.gamerswithjobs.com/files/pictures/picture-103324-1484747184.jpg)   Erik "Wordsmythe" Hanson

I'm dropping my $0.02 in for conventions as my pick of the week. PAX East is this weekend, and I'll be with McChuck at C2E2 in Chicago, where we asked sick kids what kind of superhero they'd like to be, and convinced some artists to render the answers. You can read more about that here.

Here's the list, now in release-date order!

PC

  • 04-02

  • +1s
  • Analistica Academy
  • Are You Alone?
  • Bounce
  • Burak Bahar's Unseen Anchor
  • Downhill Deceits
  • Escape from pyramid
  • Eternal Man: Mountain
  • Panzer Doctrine
  • Pokka Man
  • Prim Rogue
  • Putin VS ISIS
  • ReThink: Evolved 2
  • Samba Shooter
  • Seek Or Die
  • Space Vomit
  • STE : Save The Earth
  • Suncore Chronicles: The Tower
  • Super Lula Escape From Prison
  • Woodways
  • 04-03

  • Behind the Screen
  • Bomb Hunter MT
  • Box Maze Extreme
  • Burst Into
  • Craft & Dungeon
  • Crimson Defense
  • Epic Dumpster Bear: Dumpster Fire Redux
  • Escape the Darkness
  • Famousity
  • Farm Quest
  • Firebird: Steam Version
  • Infernium
  • Jungle Jorney
  • KovaaK's FPS Aim Trainer
  • Legend Knight
  • Merlin vs Zombies
  • Minit
  • My Free Farm 2
  • Next 3
  • Outer Rim: Survivor
  • Revenge of the Headless
  • Ria's Hook
  • SpellKeeper
  • The Adventure Pals
  • Toy Generals
  • 04-04

  • Baby's on fire
  • bomber-un
  • Coastiality
  • Downtown Casino: Texas Hold'em Poker
  • Existential Kitty Cat RPG
  • Fatal Burst
  • Forest Fortress
  • FreeFlight
  • Ghostly Horizon
  • Hovercraft Drive
  • Idle Adventure
  • Killer Backflip 5
  • Mob War
  • Pathosis
  • Robots Attack On Vapeland
  • Russian World
  • Sunless Skies: Albion
  • Tile Battle
  • Type
  • 04-05

  • 7Days in Dream
  • AlpenCROSS
  • aMAZE Frozen
  • Anark.io
  • Ashley: The Story Of Survival
  • BadLands RoadTrip
  • Band of Defenders
  • BlueberryNOVA
  • Bump Bump Bump
  • Castle Agony
  • Kaet Must Die!
  • The game that is just called “LIGHT” as if anyone could find that on Steam
  • LOGistICAL: Earth
  • Magika Land of Fantasy
  • Nightmare Pop!
  • Pigeons Attack
  • Plug Me
  • Sling Ming
  • Solitaire Knights
  • Ultimate Select Hero
  • Will To Live Online
  • WIN THE GAME!
  • Word Typing Game
  • 04-06

  • American Farmer
  • Boltzmann Brain
  • Brick vs. Paddle
  • Chineze
  • Dueling Dungeon
  • Elude
  • Evil Dead
  • Fare Thee Well
  • Farm Manager 2018
  • Find someone else
  • Gray Cat
  • Impossible Jumpy Quest
  • Lucky VS Aliens
  • Mini Golf Arena
  • Poker Simulator
  • quadrantica
  • Royal Adventure
  • Royal Battleships
  • Season Up
  • Space Flowers
  • Stickman: Fidget Spinner Rush
  • Tank Ball
  • The Snowboard Game
  • Third Front
  • Truth Of Falchion
  • Vector Born
  • Viki Spotter: Shopping
  • WAY HOME
  • YEARN Tyrant's Conquest
  • ZYTERNION
  • [h3]04-07/h3]
  • Rabbit: Jigsaw Puzzles

PS4

  • 04-03

  • Dead Land
  • Epic Dumpster Bear: Dumpster Fire Redux
  • Infernium
  • Island Time
  • Minit
  • Of Mice and Sand: Revised
  • TERA
  • The Adventure Pals
  • 04-04

  • Dangun Feveron
  • Metropolis: Lux Obscura
  • Raiders of the Broken Planet: Hades Betrayal
  • 04-05

  • Bunny Must Die: Chelsea and the 7 Devils
  • Flight of Light
  • Impact Winter
  • Raining Coins
  • The King of Fighters '97: Global Match
  • 04-06

  • Enigmatis 3: The Shadow of Karkhala
  • Rememoried

PSVR

  • 04-03

  • Crisis on the Planet of the Apes VR
  • Island Time VR

Xbox One

  • 04-03

  • Minit
  • TERA
  • The Adventure Pals
  • 04-04

  • Dangun Feveron
  • Metropolis: Lux Obscura
  • Raiders of the Broken Planet: Hades Betrayal
  • 04-05

  • Impact Winter
  • 04-06

  • Dead Ahead: Zombie Warfare

Switch

  • 04-03

  • Penny-Punching Princess
  • The Adventure Pals
  • 04-04

  • Metropolis: Lux Obscura
  • 04-05

  • ACA NeoGeo: Samurai Shodown III
  • Animated Jigsaws: Beautiful Japanese Scenery
  • Arcade Archives: Ninja-Kid
  • Infernium
  • Johnny Turbo's Arcade: Bad Dudes
  • Octocopter: Double or Squids
  • Sally's Law
  • Sling Ming
  • Sumer
  • Super Rocket Shootout
  • Urban Trial Playground

3DS

  • 04-05

  • Alter World

Vita

RIFT

  • 04-02

  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR
  • The Take
  • 04-03

  • Crisis on the Planet of the Apes VR
  • Fairly Certain Doom
  • Island Time VR
  • MineSweepVR
  • TOGETHER VR

Vive

  • 04-02

  • A Story of Distress
  • Frol Blok
  • The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim VR
  • The Take
  • 04-03

  • Crisis on the Planet of the Apes VR
  • Island Time VR
  • MineSweepVR
  • Space Slingshot VR
  • TOGETHER VR
  • 04-04

  • Zombie World
  • 04-06

  • Tanks VR

Comments

IMAGE(https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/495560/header.jpg?t=1522064050)

FM18 looks like a legit take on 2013's Farming Manager, a surprisingly competent city builder / management sim.

I've been watching a few YouTube gameplay previews and the game looks really promising.

Aaron D. wrote:

IMAGE(https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steam/apps/495560/header.jpg?t=1522064050)

FM18 looks like a legit take on 2013's Farming Manager, a surprisingly competent city builder / management sim.

I've been watching a few YouTube gameplay previews and the game looks really promising.

I’ve been largely ignoring non-giants farm games on the assumption that anything with “farm” in the title that isn’t from giants is European shovelware trying to cash in on Giants’ success.

That may have been to my detriment.

No, you're not too far off.

Most non-Giants games with the word Farm in them are trash shovelware. But it does appear that some devs are upping their game as the Farming Simulator franchise continues to broaden its base beyond Mundane Vehicle Sim nerds.

Techland's recent Pure Farming 2018 didn't quite stick the landing, but it showed ambition and was way better than the trash being released like 5 years ago.

So it's safe to stick with Giants Software for the time being, but luckily games like Farm Manager are different enough from the Farming Simulator formula to at least warrant a look. I hope it delivers 'cause I quite enjoy the colony management genre and seeing one set in farm environment looks right up my alley.

Good to know.

I’ll keep a more open mind going forward, though right now I’m all about gold.

Yup.

I keep waiting for that damn game to go on sale based on your recommendation alone, lol.

I'll get there one day.

Aaron D. wrote:

Yup.

I keep waiting for that damn game to go on sale based on your recommendation alone, lol.

I'll get there one day.

Don't wait. There's something very cathartic about shoveling the dirt. I'm still strip-mining the first area, but my excavator chops have progressed tremendously. I only wish you didn't have to manually remove and "wash" the mats.

The Vita block looks like a cut and paste from the Vive block.

That’s because it is.

Or, rather, was.

Penny-Punching Princess is another NIS game coming out that for some reason I completely missed. And the $40 price tag puts it in "wait for sale" category. I miss when they released their weird side projects for half as much money...

Still, definitely looks ... different:

IMAGE(https://media.giphy.com/media/Xoh9wLvcIOVhe/giphy.gif)

Wow. Just that marketing gif made my soul sad.