January 29 - February 4

  Felix “Compensated Art” Threepaper

Welcome folks, and happy “429th Anniversary of the first performance of Romeo and Juliet” week!

Some scholars believe that 29 January 1595 saw the debut of Romeo and Juliet. Given that there are no surviving records of it, we don’t know why they believe it was on this day. They can’t even say for sure where it was first performed. We probably don’t even know who these scholars are. But it’s comforting to put a date on things; it keeps everything in order. You may all celebrate by playing a dating game.

On the AAA front, the biggest release is Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League but it’s also the most predictable. It’s a games-as-service looter-shooter with open-world supersmashing and one-liners. It’s also Rocksteady’s first game in 8 years. You’d think it would have more buzz, but the devs didn’t send out review codes before release.

Dead by Daylight: Alan Wake has the Dead by Daylight devs riding the coat-tails of all that Alan Wake 2 GOTY sheen by patching in Alan Wake as a playable Survivor. Alan’s signature weapon is a flashlight that can buff friends and debuff baddies, and he gets a Deadline power that boosts his stats when he gets injured. Apparently, though, the patch includes a bunch of nerfs and changes to other Survivors that has some players up in arms.

Song of Nunu: A League of Legends Story is the second-last game to be published by Riot Forge, which was shut down by Riot Games earlier this month, shedding around 530 jobs. Riot Forge was set up by Riot Games to bring in prominent indie developers to make games based on League of Legends IP. The plan was for each indie dev to make a game for each Champion in League of Legends. For example, Song of Nunu is by Tequila Works, who made the critically-acclaimed time-loop puzzler The Sexy Brutale.

The problem with the plan, as noted on Remap Radio episode 31, is that all of these games have so far sunk without trace. After 6 games (out of a possible 167 Champions), Riot Games has cut its losses and closed the project.

Song of Nunu is about the Champion Nunu, who is a boy who rides a giant Yak called Willump. The story explores and reinforces the friendship between the two and includes some cameos from other Champions as fanservice. The gameplay is exploration and puzzling using Nunu’s and Willump’s different skills to get through, with a smattering of combat encounters. At around 7 hours, the aim is clearly to deliver a Nickelodeon-style kids’ adventure story, rather than fiendish puzzles or challenging combat. So while the visuals are quite impressive and cinematic, don’t expect deep systems.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink is the first heavy-hitter RPG for 2024. Granblue Fantasy makes the jump from mobiles to the big consoles and the 3D environments they can crank out. It’s a gorgeous-looking game but not an open world—you have various stages and a central hub town. The storytelling sticks to anime conventions with a real-time combat system that speeds up the playtime. The story mode is about 20 hours and, like Diablo, is designed for you to audition a character to take into the multiplayer, endgame and survival modes—which is where the devs really want you.

Persona 3 Reload is a comprehensive remake that glows up the graphics and retrofits some mechanics that appeared in Persona 5.

On the “games of popular anime” front, One Punch Man: World is out on PC and mobile platforms. It’s an arcade brawler with mobile upgrade mechanics, like a gacha system to unlock skills and characters. There’s also Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash, a fighting game with a cursed release date, given that Tekken 8 is still selling like hotcakes. Its point of difference is that it focuses on 2v2 tag-team battles and has loads of fanservice, probably.

Brotato is a Vampire Survivor game that comes to consoles this week. It first came out on PC in June 2023 and is a smash hit—I totally missed it because it came out the same week as Final Fantasy XVI. It’s got the same complex build features that people love about Vampire Survivor games, but with guns instead of magic and shorter, smaller waves.

On the indie front, Ten Floors To The Roof is a walking simulator, but in 2D and with puzzle elements. It’s like walking through an early Sierra game but you have no verbs. I commissioned some stickmen is a hidden object game with 15 pretty neat, unique artworks, all by separate artists and commissioned for the game. The artists hid the objects in there themselves. The game part is an excuse for you to stare at these pictures for hours.

None of this week’s games are in my wheelhouse. Half my brain is still in holiday mode. So I choose I commissioned some stickmen for the vibes. It’s Where’s Waldo? on edibles.

GWJ Word of the Week: Vampire Survivor: In videogames, the name of the first game to establish a genre often becomes the name of the genre, at least until a better name is found (which is usually years later—see also: Metroidvania / Castlevanioid). Vampire Survivor refers to Vampire Survivors, a 2022 game presented from a top-down perspective, where your character is swarmed by endless waves of enemies, and you use weapons and abilities to clear the waves, lasting as long as you can. The longer you last, the more gems you earn to buy powerups and characters for your next run, and if you survive for 30 minutes, you survive the stage and get super bonuses. The new part about the gameplay is that there is no aiming involved: you can only move around while your weapons and abilities go off automatically. The metagame, and the part that hooks you in or not, is about upgrading and combining your powerups to best effect. Vampire Survivors was a surprise smash hit in 2022, so now we are starting to see other games that reproduce this set of mechanics, with little twists and embellishments. When describing such games, Vampire Survivor is easier to write than “roguelike, wave-based, no-aim shmup with timed survival”.

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

PC

• 01-30

• Alien Horizon
• Dead by Daylight: Alan Wake
• El Dorado: The Golden City Builder - Prologue
• God of Riffs: Battle for The Metalverse
• GuyzGamez A Nightmare on GuyGamez Street: The Cursed Forest of Doom
• Hex Racer
• Hexseeker
• Is it different or not?
• Long Steel
• Lost Surreal Hell
• Morganica
• Murders on the Yangtze River
• Next King
• One Punch Man: World
• Paradaice
• Psychopomp
• Rush Commander
• Simulator Of A Person Who Is Taking Online Course To Study How To Lose Weight
• Skateboard Gravity
• The Lost Legends of Redwall: Feast & Friends
• The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout - Anthology
• Trois Mouvements perpetuels
• Twilight Oracle

• 01-31

• 2 Volt
• A Christmassy Christmas
• Alex's Hope & Alex's Solitude
• Angelic * Chaos RE-BOOT!
• Apocalypse Inc
• Asteroids Neon
• Aurelia
• Beast Park
• Black stone
• BlazBlue Entropy Effect
• Blitz & Blaze
• BMX Gravel
• BoboInvasion
• Burning Dead Reloaded
• CapitalismCraft
• Chicken Cluck Cluck!
• Clean Up After Your Dog
• DEEPEST REGRET
• Denpatou
• Divine Twins
• Eastward: Octopia
• Elegy of Fate
• Escape From AMEXS-137
• Eternum Dreamland
• Ex Vitro
• Exodus (Ranger Studio)
• Fantasy Clash
• Five elements for 24!
• Forged In Dungeon
• Fractured Horizon
• Freak House
• Glory's Fools
• Granblue Fantasy: Relink
• Gunslinger Duel
• Hotel Simulator
• I SCREAM
• Idle Trillionaire
• Kalpa of Sword
• Kottabos VR
• Lang Ops: Greek (intro to learn language)
• Ludicrous Leap
• Match 3 Fantasy
• MIX IT!
• Money Maker
• Mothman
• Nebula Nomads
• Nexus PI
• Ninja - waltz of night
• Paco El Hare vs Los Marcianos Siderales
• Paradise Cleaning!- Tutor X Hypnosis -
• PawPrint
• Project WAND: Festival Of Futas
• Psychic Inn
• Roommates
• SaGaS
• Sea of Phantom Flowers
• Sergei and the Tax Return
• Shards of Chaos
• Shining War
• Simple Mosaics - Nonogram Puzzles
• Skibidi Toilet Skibidi Boom
• Solace Inc.
• Solar Quiz VR
• Speed Crew
• Spellbound FPS
• Street Totocher
• Suicide Runners
• Sushi Bar Moebius
• Sword of the King - The Classic of Mountains and Seas
• Table Tennis Toon!
• Tails of War
• The Forgotten Demons
• The Forgotten World
• The Harvest
• Tidal Therapy
• Timeray
• Totally Shmup
• Tower Tales
• Training Elves
• Ultimate Match 3D
• Until It's Undone: Unmastered
• Upward (Core Games)
• Year 3055

• 02-01

• 99 Waves
• ALAA-MOGUS MUST DIE
• Arena 9th
• Batsugun
• Bionic Rebirth
• Black Abyss
• Blocked In
• Boxes: Lost Fragments
• Chushpan Simulator
• Exotic Fighter
• Fan Zhuan 21 Ke
• Feline Shenanigans
• FixEight
• Fragmented leaves-Before the Storm
• G.O.P.O.T.A 2
• Gu Long Feng Yun Lu
• Home Detective - Immersive Edition
• Island of Fear
• Kadomon: Hyper Auto Battlers Prologue
• Lights Off: Director's Cut
• Magic Smasher
• My Recycling Center
• Mylene and the Lust temple
• Neon Fantasy: Horses
• Pangolin Cassowary
• Princess Polly
• Purrfectly Hidden Cats - Kittenbay
• Reincarnation Tower
• Return of the USSR
• Rubber Hose Rampage
• Schrodinger's Cat Experiment
• Sensual Slots
• Six nights to die
• STRATAGEM
• Supergalactix
• The Braves: Beginning
• The Great Rebellion
• Tiger-Heli
• Under A Star Long Cold
• Vimana
• Yunlan Jiuge

• 02-02

• Aim Down Screen
• DEEPER CREEPER LUST
• DianQi
• Energy Fighters
• I commissioned some stickmen
• inFINIte Robotics
• Instruction
• Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash
• Kevin (1997-2077)
• Legendary Hoplite
• Modern Pink Elf RPG
• Otoko Orgy at Maid Boy Manor
• Persona 3 Reload
• Run and Retry
• Russian Hut Simulator
• Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League
• Survive In Strange World
• Team Disorder
• Ten Floors To The Roof
• Toward Pianist
• Vita: Rift of a Nation

• 02-03

• I'm in Love With Your Dead Grandmother

• 02-04

• Black Gunner Wukong
• Detective Ridelle
• DINOS vs ROBOTS
• Half-demon Kamia
• Memory Of Courage
• Party PooperZ
• Red end
• Surveillance Work
• Universe Millionaire: The New Era of Energy

Xbox Series X

• 01-30

• Brotato
• Dead by Daylight: Alan Wake
• The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout - Anthology

• 01-31

• Rising Lords
• Song of Nunu: A League of Legends Story
• Speed Crew

• 02-02

• GINSHA
• Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash
• Mighty Aphid 2
• Persona 3 Reload
• Project Downfall
• Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League

Xbox One

• 01-30

• Brotato
• Dead by Daylight: Alan Wake
• Teppo and The Secret Ancient City

• 01-31

• Song of Nunu: A League of Legends Story
• Speed Crew

• 02-01

• Knights of Braveland

• 02-02

• GINSHA
• Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash
• Mighty Aphid 2
• Persona 3 Reload
• Project Downfall

PlayStation 5

• 01-30

• Brotato
• Dark Light
• Dead by Daylight: Alan Wake
• The Lost Legends of Redwall: The Scout - Anthology

• 01-31

• Song of Nunu: A League of Legends Story
• Speed Crew

• 02-01

• Piggy Gambit

• 02-02

• Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash
• Persona 3 Reload
• Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League

PlayStation 4

• 01-30

• Brotato
• Dark Light
• Dead by Daylight: Alan Wake

• 01-31

• Song of Nunu: A League of Legends Story
• Speed Crew

• 02-01

• Piggy Gambit

• 02-02

• Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash
• Persona 3 Reload

Nintendo Switch

• 01-31

• Big Watermelon Match
• Eastward: Octopia
• KUBIC
• Miniland Adventure
• Paper Trail
• Seven
• Turret Rampage

• 02-01

• Angou Shikake no Sekai
• Candy Shake Cup
• Ceiba
• Defense Master
• Downhill Driver Extreme Racing Simulator
• Harpoon Shooter! Nozomi
• Knights of Braveland
• Knights of Braveland: Around The World
• Knights of Braveland: Fantastic Beasts
• Knights of Braveland: Fun And Memes
• Knights of Braveland: Hero Pack
• Mori no Naka no Mayoika Kara no Dasshutsu
• Nazotoki imi Kowa Mystery - Zotto Suru imi Kowa Nazotoki Mystery Toshi Densetsu Kaidan Game -
• Oku Dake Sutadi Kihon no Kagaku-shiki
• Piggy Gambit
• Shikeishuu no Kidoku Kyoufu to Senritsu no Nazotoki Toshi Densetsu imi Kowa Tekisuto Adventure
• Tale of Immortal
• Teppo and The Secret Ancient City
• The Enigma Machine & Alterity Experience

• 02-02

• Dr. Frank's Build a Boyfriend
• Dreamcutter
• Farm Day Simulator 2024
• Jujutsu Kaisen: Cursed Clash
• POSTAL: Brain Damaged
• Project Downfall
• The Pigeon - Simulator

• 02-03

• Morto - Chapter 2
• Snow Moto - Racing Adventure
• Torn Away