March 11 - 17

  Felix “Campaign D’Arc” Threepaper

Welcome folks, and happy “201st Anniversary of the opening of the first normal school in America” week!

On 11 March 1823, Samuel Read Hall opened America’s first normal school (or teachers’ college) in Concord, Vermont. Its purpose was to train teachers in readiness for opening public schools a few years later. Samuel Read Hall was a great educator who also invented the blackboard and blackboard eraser. You may all celebrate by playing a game where you can rub out text.

This week, there’s a few new games among a bunch of reheated, re-released, and reimagined older games. A lot of folks may be spending time with the Dragon’s Dogma 2 character creator, which Capcom has put out early to build hype for the full release on 22 March.

TRIBES 3: Rivals enters early access this week. It promises a rebirth for this fast-paced, ski-flying, cult classic FPS series that hasn’t seen a new game since 2012. There’s nothing quite like Tribes, with its kinetic pace and sprawling maps, which means it could fill a niche in today’s market and not just be a nostalgia purchase. But, as a multiplayer-only game, it needs a dedicated fan base to stick around and keep it alive. Rivals is avoiding the games-as-service route, so it will be interesting to see if it gets traction.

Outcast: A New Beginning is a sequel to 1999’s Outcast. It’s a third-person action adventure game that takes a lot of inspiration from Breath of the Wild in its map and quest design. Traversal is a breeze as you will have a jetpack and wingsuit to flit about the map, shooting stuff and dropping bombs from up high. It’s a lush-looking game, with crafting, trading, and weapon specialisation offering multiple solutions to scenarios and promoting an open-ended playstyle.

Contra: Operation Galuga is another project to bring back a beloved older game. Classic arcade shooter Contra has had an HD glowup and now features story and arcade modes. The combat, weapons, and upgrades have been zhuzhed up, and there’s some new levels. So it will be like you remember, but a little bit more. And probably easier, if you need it to be.

Also on the nostalgia front is Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection: a 20th-anniversary release that is hoping that fans will repurchase a game they bought in the Xbox era and swarm the servers all over again. It’s been given the barest of texture-smoothing to slightly update the graphics but the backend multiplayer performance should be fine. There’s no cross-play, though.

Dungeon Drafters is a port of a 2023 PC game that combines grid-based dungeon-crawling with turn-based card battles.

As for new games, Crown Wars: The Black Prince is the XCOM template applied to the Hundred Years’ War: you are a recently-deposed French noble who is rebuilding their domain from scratch. This involves sending squads of differently-classed soldiers out on turn-based battles to progress the story, collect stuff for home base upgrades, and earn XP for your soldiers. This is the biggest game yet from its devs, Artefacts Studio, who previously did the Dungeons of Naheulbeuk RPG, which had similar RPG systems but a more whimsical tone. I have no idea how long the game is, but you don’t set a game in the Hundred Years’ War for a quick campaign. The opening looks promising, and the game’s systems are all set up for a lengthy journey.

Cybertrash STATYX is a pixel-art 2D action-platformer where you run, slide, jump, and shoot your way through cyberpunk-themed levels to a synth-heavy cyberpunk soundtrack.

Outcast: A New Beginning looks glorious, but I’m not sure how engaging it is beyond flying around the gorgeous map, and if I wanted that experience, well, I haven’t even started Spider-Man 2 yet! On the other hand, Crown Wars: The Black Prince shows its lower budget in its combat animations and voice acting, but the squad combat, team management, and home base upgrade systems look more likely to get their hooks in. GOTW.

GWJ Word of the Week

Pixel art: A pixel is the smallest element of a digital image in a dot matrix display. Pixel art is images made using this technique, by arranging pixels of different colours on a grid. For videogames in the arcade, 8-bit, and 16-bit eras, when image size and resolution were more limited, pixel art was a necessity: Pac-Man, Atari, and NES games all used pixel art, as did 1980s Sierra games. Now, in an era of 3D animation and polygons galore, pixel art is more of an aesthetic choice. Games often employ it for nostalgia, to evoke the vibe of those earlier eras, also using popular genres from those eras, like 2D action platformers and point-n-click adventure games.

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

PC

• 03-12

• Against Great Darkness Prologue
• CAT & ONION
• Contra: Operation Galuga
• Dragon Island (Visual Novel)
• EMPYRE: Earls of the Deep Earth
• Engineered To Purpose
• Farmer's Father: The Origins
• Ghost Ninja
• Goblin Stone
• MajyoArchive
• No Love Lost
• Passing By - A Tailwind Journey
• Psalm 5:9-13
• Slavania
• Subterrain 2
• The Vault
• TRIBES 3: Rivals
• Ultimate Bicycle Stunts
• Village Farm
• Wrath of the Roothless

• 03-13

• Anominal
• Black Zork
• Cubethon
• dark color
• Easter 2024 Memory
• Easter 2024 Puzzle
• Fantastical Mystery ADV : Ultimate Jumbo Jet Murder Case
• Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story
• MACROSS Shooting Insight
• My Horse: Bonded Spirits - Prologue
• revere
• Sea under the sea under the sea
• Strange
• Super Kye
• Toy Shire: Room One
• Voice Love on Air

• 03-14

• Acorn Cop
• Crown Wars: The Black Prince
• Darkness Machine
• Dream Escape
• Eternal Spring VR
• Find Cats With Friends
• Forest Keeper 2
• Guardian
• Highwater
• jabara princess
• Lonely Knight - Idle Roguelike RPG
• Midnight Monitor: Aldercourt
• Paint the Town Red VR
• Seal of Mobius
• Shadowfall
• Skelethrone: The Prey
• The Feast of Terror: A Night Hunted by Beauties
• the head well lost
• The Scarlet Chaos
• Voice over
• Wildlife Matters
• Winter Games Challenge
• World Air War

• 03-15

• Amygdala
• Battlethorne: Survivors
• Bloody Hallowfest
• bunny hungry
• Dice-Zee!
• Dragon and Nature
• Exit: Left or Right
• Grym Wonder
• Kamihiyori ~Time Cage Edition~
• Kotoko's a Little Weird
• LIO
• My Bestie is a Femboy Streamer
• Not Alone in the Space
• Olive
• Out of the Park Baseball 25
• Outcast: A New Beginning
• Outflow
• PJ Masks Power Heroes: Mighty Alliance
• The Circle Tales: Elvenwoods
• The Last Stop
• The Stalked
• The Warden's Paradise
• Twilight Manor: Roguelite FPS
• Wrath of the Three Kingdoms

• 03-17

• Blue rain
• FourPoint:prologue

Xbox Series X

• 03-12

• Contra: Operation Galuga
• For The Warp

• 03-13

• Cybertrash STATYX
• Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story
• Violet Wisteria

• 03-14

• Bing in Wonderland
• Cartel Tycoon
• Crown Wars: The Black Prince
• Dungeon Drafters
• Highwater
• Rebel Transmute
• Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection

• 03-15

• Outcast: A New Beginning
• PJ Masks Power Heroes: Mighty Alliance

Xbox One

• 03-12

• Contra: Operation Galuga
• For The Warp

• 03-13

• Cybertrash STATYX
• Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story
• Violet Wisteria

• 03-14

• Astebros
• Bing in Wonderland
• Dungeon Drafters
• Highwater
• Rebel Transmute
• Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection

• 03-15

• PJ Masks Power Heroes: Mighty Alliance

PlayStation 5

• 03-12

• Contra: Operation Galuga
• Little Cities: Bigger!
• Melatonin

• 03-13

• Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story
• Violet Wisteria

• 03-14

• Cartel Tycoon
• Crown Wars: The Black Prince
• Dungeon Drafters
• Highwater
• Ib
• Paint the Town Red VR
• Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection
• WHAT THE GOLF?

• 03-15

• Outcast: A New Beginning
• PJ Masks Power Heroes: Mighty Alliance

PlayStation 4

• 03-12

• Contra: Operation Galuga

• 03-13

• Cybertrash STATYX
• Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story
• Violet Wisteria

• 03-14

• Asonde Mahjong ga Tsuyokunaru! Ginsei Mahjong DX
• Dungeon Drafters
• Highwater
• Ib
• Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection
• WHAT THE GOLF?

• 03-15

• PJ Masks Power Heroes: Mighty Alliance

Nintendo Switch

• 03-12

• Contra: Operation Galuga
• EMPTY SHELL
• Passing By - A Tailwind Journey

• 03-13

• Crypt of the NecroDancer: SYNCHRONY
• Cybertrash STATYX
• Llamasoft: The Jeff Minter Story
• Violet Wisteria

• 03-14

• Anime Girls: Sun of a Beach
• Balloony
• Bio Inc. Redemption
• CarX Highway Racing
• Death Trick: Double Blind
• Dungeon Drafters
• Escape Game The Abandoned Hospital
• Fantastical Mystery ADV : Ultimate Jumbo Jet Murder Case
• Fantastical Mystery Adventure Ultimate Jumbo Jet Murder Case
• GYLT
• Highwater
• Lawn Mowing Simulator
• Lazriel: The Demon's Fall
• MACROSS Shooting Insight
• Manga Girls Bishoujo Kaiten Puzzle
• Match Village
• Monster Tribe
• Pogo Joins The Circus
• Pool Blitz
• Rebel Transmute
• Shougakusei no Uchi ni Oboetai Kobun Tango
• Simple Number-Based Color Sense IQ Test
• Sphinx - Riddles of the Nile
• Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection
• Tiny Tales: Heart of the Forest
• UNABLES
• Ys II: Ancient Ys Vanished - The Final Chapter

• 03-15

• Baron of Blood
• Cozy Hamlets
• Dreamland Solitaire: Dragon's Fury
• Hot Rider Racing Simulator
• Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Royal Edition
• Lawn Mowing Simulator: Landmark Edition
• Orion Haste
• PJ Masks Power Heroes: Mighty Alliance
• Rainbow Moon

• 03-16

• DOG RACING - LOVELY PET FRIENDS PAW
• Truck and Forklift Logistic Simulator

• 03-17

• Sky Runners Infinite: Parkour