August 12 - 18

  Felix “Guano Simulator” Threepaper

Welcome folks, and happy “173rd Anniversary of the invention of the Singer sewing machine” week!

On 12 August 1851, Isaac Singer patented a sewing machine that would take the world by storm. He didn’t invent the sewing machine though—his design was a modification of a machine made by Elias Howe. Singer’s machine sold more, partly because Singer also worked out that people preferred to pay $100 in monthly instalments of $5 rather than $50 upfront. Howe won a patent infringement suit against Singer and collected royalties from Singer sales for the rest of his life. You may all celebrate by playing a game with costumes that couldn’t possibly have been made in the period they are set in.

We have just seen the close of a monumental sporting event: my AFL fantasy season. It ended with a whimper, as I was bundled out of the finals for a non-medaling 4th spot in the league. The end of AFL means the beginning of NFL, which also means Madden. It’s made by the same branch of EA that made the recent college football game, which has been going gangbusters. Madden NFL 25’s new features include a Telltale-style “X will remember that” system in franchise management mode, to make your team’s storylines more dynamic. Also, during the draft, players will wear suits and shake hands with the Commissioner. This sounds underwhelming compared to the college football game’s dynamic injury system, but YMMV. Confusingly, this is the second Madden NFL 25—the first one came out in 2013 and was so titled to mark 25 years of Madden. I think they are re-releasing that as well, so make sure you get the right one!

There’s some expansions for some popular games of yesteryear: Cult of the Lamb: Unholy Alliance is a free update that introduces local co-op and other mysterious things that the devs won’t tell us yet. DREDGE: The Iron Rig introduces base-building in the form of an improvable offshore oil rig, as well as more conventional expansion fare: more gear, more types of fish and more boat upgrades.

Cricket: Jae's Really Peculiar Game is a party-based RPG with hand drawn animation. Combat is turn-based with timed attacks, like in Costume Quest and probably other, bigger games that I haven’t played.

Just Crow Things is another shenanigans game where you’re a mischievous crow, gadding about town and wreaking havoc. Yes, there’s a pooping mechanic, but that’s not the only way to cause chaos. You can also pick up and use objects with your beak, such as a baseball bat or flamethrower. Hopefully hilarity will ensue.

Ever wonder what the Crysis devs have been doing since finishing the Crysis series (besides remastering Crysis)? Hunt: Showdown, that’s what. It originally came out in the Xbone/PS4 era and has been remastered for re-release together with a new expansion, 1896. It’s multiplayer cowboy-era shooting that combines PvP and PvE. Its most popular mode is Bounty Hunt, where up to 12 players fight through monsters and bosses, and eventually each other, to get the prize. Of course, once you get it, you have to escape to the extraction zone. There’s room for a variety of tactics, including stealth. It sounds like Red Dead Redemption multiplayer, but with movement and shooting mechanics that are actually good. And you know the visuals will pop.

Rewind Or Die is a survival horror game set in a VHS video rental store, with 1990s-era graphics to evoke the time when VHS was king. It’s a combination of store clerk chores, like dealing with customers and putting tapes back on the shelves, and being chased by a serial killer wearing a pig’s head.

The big next-gen consoles also get Green Hell, a re-release of a 2019 survival crafting game set in the Amazon jungle. It certainly looks pretty, with a graphical fidelity that’s too high for the Switch. Otherwise, it looks like standard survival fare: hunting and collecting materials to build stuff, managing your hunger, disease and sanity along the way. You’ll start with a ramshackle lean-to and end up with a small fortress, if you last long enough against the animals, parasites and aggressive tribes. Realistically painful, or painfully realistic?

Overboss is an adaptation of a tile-placement board game where you are a monster boss building your kingdom. You place landscape tiles to try and maximise your power and generate monsters. There’s no adventurers to squish, though you can do stuff to disrupt your opponents’ domains. The original board game has a 7.3 on BoardGameGeek.

Castaway is a bite-sized indie adventure game inspired by, and looking like, the original 2D Legend of Zelda. The story mode has 3 bosses to defeat, then you unlock the survivor mode: a 50-floor Tower of Death.

Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery is a hidden object game that is more than just perusing a fixed picture like a Where’s Waldo book. The scenes are animated, and you will have to open doors and drawers to find things. There’s also a day/night cycle to consider.

Otherwise, on the Switch, as with most weeks, the release list is full of ports of every half-successful indie game that came out on Steam in the last 12 months.

There’s a lot out this week but nothing is demanding my immediate attention, given how many goodies there are from recent weeks. My son will be excited by Cult of the Lamb: Unholy Alliance, as it gives him a chance to rope me in. I can dig shenanigans games, but they’re a “sometimes” food, and one came out 2 weeks ago. That being said, Just Crow Things is the game I’d most likely play from this list, just not for a few months. I’ll give it a delayed-action GOTW.

GWJ Word of the Week
PvP/PvE: short for “player vs player” and “player vs environment”, respectively. PvP is when you take on other players in a game, and PvE refers to when you take on computer-controlled enemies or the environment, like in a platformer. They are most commonly used to refer to different modes in multiplayer games, although technically every single-player game is a PvE game. Most modern multiplayer games will have a combination of both of these. They can either be separate experiences, like the story mode in a Call of Duty game versus the multiplayer maps, or combined, like in Dota 2 where players fight each other and computer-controlled units and towers. Even in combined modes, though, PvP will usually be fenced off in a way that requires players to agree to participate. This is because nothing scares a casual player away faster than being terminally griefed, and that isn’t great for retaining players, especially if a game has a subscription or microtransaction model, which is most multiplayer games these days.

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

PC

• 08-12

• 7 Meters away. Oscar and the Cell of the Soul
• A Crown of Thorns
• Arthur Owl's Word Block
• Bearnard
• Bloody Sky
• Collectibles!
• Cult of the Lamb: Unholy Alliance
• Dawn of Survivor
• Defiance Survivors
• Diamond Club: Royal Monarch
• Dictionary Blaster
• Exploding Kittens 2
• Family Secrets: Sweet Sister
• Forgotten Skies
• green ogre gives you terrible life advice and dies
• HardCube 2
• iZolated
• Legends of Kailrate
• Love in Login
• Medieval Marathon: A Quest for Gold
• Modern Fear
• MT Force Aliens Uprising
• MULTIVERSAL TIME SURVIVORS
• MWNeus
• Old School RPG
• Operation: Polygon Storm
• PEDRO!
• Pickup Point Simulator
• Psychotic Nightmare
• Rebirth of a Little Shrimp
• Shoulders of Giants: Ultimate
• Sidecar Evolution 2024
• SNAP SNAP
• STUX.net
• Torture
• Ultimate Monkey Race
• Why Me

• 08-13

• 3D PUZZLE - Pizza Shop 1
• Black Hole Survivor
• Canto I
• Dark and Deep
• Dungeon Divers Prologue
• Guayota
• Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery
• Hook-a-Duck VR
• Invasion of the Mushroom Men of Planet Y!
• KIBORG: Arena
• Leximan
• Memento Mori
• Prop Hunt Planet
• RERODENT
• SGS Battle For: Shanghai
• Silk Suki - Chat Messaging Game
• To the Stars

• 08-14

• ALEPH (Fin Deevy)
• Arderico's Journey
• Banishing You
• Best Gun
• Climbing with Silly Cat
• Crime Scene Cleaner
• Desvelado
• Doner Master Simulator: Prologue
• Fantasy Valley - Season 1
• Fear Calibration
• FLOORS
• Frog World
• Frontline Crisis
• gun maker
• Hakudo
• Home Snatch
• Ice Cream Wars
• Laser Tanks
• Love, Ghostie
• LuniaZ
• Marine Quest
• Monster Adventurer X
• Monster hunter by VR
• OrganGame-MergePuzzle-
• Pixeplorer
• Project Evolve
• Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse Remastered
• Strandzha Adventures 3D
• Tetris Crush
• The Last Hollow
• Tiny Pixels Vol. 1 - Ninpo Blast
• Tritime Space
• VHS: Recovered Tapes
• Wonder Loop Village

• 08-15

• Ameiz
• Arco
• Armadillo Assault
• Block & Shot
• Boxed In
• Dadish Collection
• Dawn of Defiance
• Daydream Mosaics 5: Crimson Veil
• DREDGE: The Iron Rig
• Dropped into the Modern World: Surviving the Red-Light District
• DyingNoise
• Earniverse
• Ether
• Forget
• Galaxy Too Far
• Get Down
• GOD'S GIFT
• Gourdlets
• Hunt: Showdown 1896
• I Am Your Beast
• Idol Party
• Idolverse
• Imitation
• Intravenous 2
• Just Crow Things
• Lord's journey
• Mages of Osmea
• MATCH
• Mother Bunker VR
• ODDADA
• Outta Hand
• Overboss
• Phantom Spark
• Play Chess with Lady Bongcloud
• PokerBall
• Raccoon on a boat
• Reach The Beat
• Real life day: Threesome
• Red Silhouette
• Shattered Dreams: that one time when all my applications got rejected, so I started my own company. My life became an idle / clicker game where I must increase all incremental values and squeeze my employees for every last bit of soul they have left.
• Slash Quest
• Squiggle Drop
• Sticky Business: Camp Zinnias
• STRONG FORTRESS
• Super Antonio
• Synaxarion Christian Stories: Holy Martyr Neophytos
• Taking The Cross
• The Crimson Diamond
• The Perished
• The Precinct
• The Upper Hand
• Tokyo Mafia Simulator Prologue
• Unbodied
• ZonZon

• 08-16

• 100 hidden Cthulhu fish 2
• 7th Domain:Tree of Chaos
• A Pair of Feathers Squawk Together
• Anomalum
• Baby Boomer 2: 35 Years Too Soon
• Castaway
• City Park Play Date
• Dog vs Cat Othello
• Elevator Warp
• EternAlgoRhythm
• Exoracer
• Farewell North
• Feed the Deep
• Goblin Quest: Remake
• House of Golf 2
• Hue Hop
• Kitchen Quest
• Madden NFL 25
• MoonBeam
• Mute Crimson DX
• NARIBIKIMURA
• Neonova
• PeakPals
• planktonic
• Salvo Shuffle
• Shifter (Stolen Portals)
• Sugoi Adventure! DragonSlayer
• Trapped in a School at Midnight
• Underground Turtle Races
• When The Devil Takes Hold
• With Eyes Closed - Season 1

• 08-17

• Knights of the Road
• The Silence

• 08-18

• 3D PUZZLE - Courtyard
• BeatShooter
• Get To The Gate
• Kingdom's Architect
• Orbit Puzzle
• Parse-O-Rhythm
• The Hunter Cursed by Night
• Titanslord

Xbox Series X

• 08-12

• Cult of the Lamb: Unholy Alliance

• 08-13

• Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery

• 08-14

• Cat's Request
• Green Hell
• Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse Remastered

• 08-15

• Cricket: Jae's Really Peculiar Game
• DREDGE: The Iron Rig
• Farewell North
• Hunt: Showdown
• Hunt: Showdown 1896
• Just Crow Things
• Kena: Bridge of Spirits
• Kena: Bridge of Spirits - Deluxe Edition
• Overboss
• Phantom Spark
• The Precinct
• White Day 2: The Flower That Tells Lies - Complete Edition

• 08-16

• Castaway
• House of Golf 2
• Madden NFL 25
• Madden NFL 25 (2013)
• Rewind Or Die
• SunnySide
• Turn to Mine

Xbox One

• 08-12

• Cult of the Lamb: Unholy Alliance

• 08-14

• Cat's Request
• Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse Remastered

• 08-15

• Cricket: Jae's Really Peculiar Game
• DREDGE: The Iron Rig
• Just Crow Things
• Kena: Bridge of Spirits
• Kena: Bridge of Spirits - Deluxe Edition
• Overboss

• 08-16

• Castaway
• Madden NFL 25
• Mute Crimson DX
• Rewind Or Die
• Turn to Mine

PlayStation 5

• 08-12

• Cult of the Lamb: Unholy Alliance
• Shoulders of Giants: Ultimate

• 08-13

• Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery

• 08-14

• Green Hell

• 08-15

• Cricket: Jae's Really Peculiar Game
• DREDGE: The Iron Rig
• Hunt: Showdown
• Hunt: Showdown 1896
• Overboss
• Phantom Spark
• The Precinct
• White Day 2: The Flower That Tells Lies - Complete Edition

• 08-16

• Castaway
• House of Golf 2
• Madden NFL 25
• Madden NFL 25 (2013)
• Rewind Or Die
• SunnySide

PlayStation 4

• 08-12

• Cult of the Lamb: Unholy Alliance

• 08-14

• Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse Remastered

• 08-15

• Cricket: Jae's Really Peculiar Game
• DREDGE: The Iron Rig
• Overboss
• Phantom Spark

• 08-16

• Castaway
• Madden NFL 25
• Rewind Or Die

Nintendo Switch

• 08-12

• Cult of the Lamb: Unholy Alliance

• 08-13

• Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians
• Bus Simulator 2024: City Driver - Premium Edition
• Guayota
• Hidden Through Time 2: Discovery

• 08-14

• Astral Ascent: Yamat - The Breach Traveler
• Cat's Request
• Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse Remastered
• Tiny Pixels Vol. 1 - Ninpo Blast

• 08-15

• Aery - Ancient Empires
• Amazing Drawing: Coloring Book Simulator
• Arcade Tanks World: Tank Battle Simulator
• Arco
• Cricket: Jae's Really Peculiar Game
• DREDGE: The Iron Rig
• Farewell North
• Just Crow Things
• Magical Delicacy
• Minami Lane
• Overboss
• Parking Masters
• Phantom Spark
• Space Raft
• Squiggle Drop
• Supermarket Manager 2024
• Synaxarion Christian Stories: Holy Martyr Neophytos
• Tactical Strike: Special Forces Shooter
• The Godfeather: A Mafia Pigeon Saga
• Ultimate Fishing Supermarket Simulator 3D

• 08-16

• Castaway
• Cup Killer - Sandbox Game
• Dadish Collection
• Elrentaros Wanderings
• Lunar Nightmare
• Murder Is Game Over: Streaming Death
• Mute Crimson DX
• Parking Jam
• Rewind Or Die
• The Sirena Expedition
• Thief Puzzle
• Turn to Mine

• 08-17

• Bizarre
• Exit Station 7

• 08-18

• D.C.K.: Dock Chess King