Felix “Wuthering Frights” Threepaper
Welcome folks, and happy “246th Anniversary of the invention of the $ symbol” week!
Historian James Alton James claims that the $ symbol was invented by US patriot Robert Morris on 1 April 1778. While this is apocryphal, the US government adopted it as its symbol for currency when it started issuing its own currency in 1792. A similar symbol had been used as a symbol for the Spanish peso before then, and the US wanted to make its new currency equivalent in value to Spanish money. You may all celebrate by playing a game with currency exchange rates.
After the long weekend, it’s another quiet week, with no big AAA titles or high-profile indies. That’s OK for me and my Pile, because I’ve started playing Dragon’s Dogma 2 and have no intention of stopping until I work out what the hell is going on. With everything. Apparently there are many ladders I should be climbing, for starters.
Saviorless is a 2D action platformer from Cuba. Its main hook is the 3 playable characters to choose from, and switch between at various stages. There’s the defenceless child, who can run fast and jump high, but cannot fight, so must run away from enemies. Then there’s the tanky warrior, who is clearly good at boss fights and fighting in general, and the last character is a quasi-mage that has spells to help with combat and exploration. It also promises a branching story and some tough puzzles and fights. Fans of Blasphemous may enjoy this one.
Withering Rooms is the full release of a 2.5D horror game that’s been in Early Access on Steam since 2022. It’s a roguelite that takes place in a spooky Victorian mansion that is freshly procedurally-generated each night. You go in, and try to find enough material to get back and cast rituals that level you up and preserve your loot for your next run. Along the way, there’s a host of horror enemies to fight and you will want to find the hidden guns, melee weapons, and spells to help you defeat them. The enemies are typical for horror games: ghosts, witches, ghouls, and the like. They have a general artistic theme of “PG Bloodborne”, so while it is spooky, it is not gory. It got a lot of positive reviews during Early Access.
Freedom Planet 2 is a colourful, pixel art, arcade action platformer with health bars, level timers, and coin collection, just like in the old days. Modern features include a ton of customisation options and game modes to tweak the difficulty—there’s even an “Auto-Block” option to help people who struggle with parry systems. Imagine one of those in a Souls game! It also got mostly positive reviews on its initial Steam release in 2022.
Deceit 2 is a port of a 2023 PC game that is a social deduction horror game. It’s a multiplayer game with a bit of Among Us and Werewolf about it. Between 6 and 9 players are stuck in an asylum together. Two of those players are Infected, and the other players have to find out who they are and vote them off before the In-Between shows up and triggers nightmare mode. The Infected have to destroy altars without being noticed in order to gain super power ups when the In-Between arrives. Non-Infected can be Innocents, who have to run around, solve puzzles, and collect stuff, or Guardians, who pick an Innocent to protect.
On paper, it all sounds interesting enough, especially if played with friends rather than internet randos. However, it got very mixed reviews on Metacritic when it first came out, with a common complaint being about the game’s balance, in that it seems heavily weighted in favour of the Infected. There’s no sign that any of these balance issues have been patched for console release.
For me, it’s between Saviorless and Withering Rooms this week. Saviorless looks interesting, especially for its branching story, which you don’t often see in action-platformers. But I am more drawn to Withering Rooms. Its horror is not too grisly for my sensitive tastes, and it looks like a gateway experience to get people into something like Bloodborne. GOTW.
GWJ Word of the Week
2.5D: A perspective in video games where gameplay and movement is restricted to a 2D plane but the game graphics give the impression of a 3D space. Although, technically, isometric games can fall within this category, 2.5D is generally used to describe a side-scrolling 2D game where it looks like there is some depth to the environments. It’s like being in a Renaissance painting that employs tricks of perspective, but you can still only move left or right or up and down, not into the background of the painting. While some games, like LittleBigPlanet, have allowed limited movement into the background, e.g., by letting players sidestep into it, the controls for such are often fiddly and annoying, which is not ideal when most 2D side-scrollers are also precision platformers.
Here's the list, in release-date AND alphabetical order!
PC
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04-02
- Ataraxie
- Bull-Bia Ricky
- CONCRETE VISIONS
- Daugger
- Escape Simulator VR
- Eye of the Void: Unleashed
- Frogmonster
- Golf & Domino
- Interstellar Plunderer
- Kitchen Crisis
- M City
- Minishoot' Adventures
- MrHuh
- NightFeed
- Pixel Gun 3D: PC Edition
- Sacrifice For Sale
- Saviorless
- Skybound: Card Survival
- Slay the Dragon! The Fire-Breathing Tyrant Meets Her Match!
- The Legend of Skye
- Twilight Survivors
- Withering Rooms
- Wizarre
- YasaiGame
-
04-03
- 13 Floors: Anomalies
- Anonymous Hacker Simulator
- Auto RiskRisk
- Bent Oak Island
- Beyond Terra
- Bludgeon (Darkware)
- Cubus
- Loathful
- Moon's Creed: Prologue
- Planetiles
- Quit Today
- Savage Age
- Seren Nova
- Sister's Curriculum
- Solar Storm
- Spider Fox
- Star Leaping Story:prologue
- Strategy game but with a penguin who has a sword
- Void Crawler
-
04-04
- Brutal Ball
- Bug Heroes: Tower Defense
- Cartridge the Tiger
- Crazy Chicken Jump 'n' Run Traps and Treasures
- Crime Scene Cleaner: Prologue
- CROAK CROAK ON THE SEA
- Deadrock Redemption
- Divine Rush
- Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons - Sacred Reunion
- Glitch Maze.exe
- Hearts 3D Premium
- Homeland
- Honey Moon -- Mystery Journey
- Last Hope Bunker: Zombie Survival
- LUNARBALL
- Mad Viking Games: VR Experience
- Madhouse Madness: Streamer's Fate
- Maximum Gas!
- Mutant Boxing League VR
- Nasty Zombies
- Nora Wanna Rise
- Odoya
- Osiris (Hoolio Enterprises)
- Player Non Player
- Quad Bike Crazy Driver
- Roadway Traffic Racer
- RollTale
- The Apartment
- Three Kingdoms: Dominance of the World
- Tiny Balls
- Toy Toy Up!
- Turbo Golf Racing
- Village Dealer
- YIIK Nameless Psychosis
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04-05
- 15th Floor
- AsteroidTD
- Auto Sale Life: Fresh Start
- Banshee Hunt
- Biomorph
- BlitzBot
- BMX Streets
- Desolatium
- Endless Mountain
- Fruit Switch
- GESTALT: The Fifth Day
- Home Construction Sim
- KILLMAGE
- LOST INSIDE Act 1
- Monsters Domain
- RATKING CHAPTER ZERO
- Sea Rover
- Sons of Valhalla
- Spy Guy Hidden Objects Deluxe Edition
- Sugar Tanks 2
- The Courage to be Disliked
- The Outsider TD
- Tian Ji Lu
- To The Flame
- Which Country Is Larger?
- you feel normal.
-
04-06
- Kyber Kraft
-
04-07
- Answer To Survive
- FellaTrain
- Forgotten Magic Tower
- Shadow Strikers
- Source of the Nile
Xbox Series X
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04-02
- Withering Rooms
-
04-03
- Alchemist: The Potion Monger
- Deceit 2
- Knowledge Keeper
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04-04
- Cafeteria Nipponica
- Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons - Sacred Reunion
- Freedom Planet 2
- Ninja Village
- Turbo Golf Racing
-
04-05
- Dreamland Solitaire: Dark Prophecy
Xbox One
-
04-03
- Alchemist: The Potion Monger
- Knowledge Keeper
-
04-04
- Cafeteria Nipponica
- Construction Simulator - Gold Edition
- Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons - Sacred Reunion
- Freedom Planet 2
- Ninja Village
- Turbo Golf Racing
-
04-05
- Dreamland Solitaire: Dark Prophecy
PlayStation 5
-
04-02
- Saviorless
- Withering Rooms
-
04-03
- Deceit 2
-
04-04
- Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons - Sacred Reunion
- Freedom Planet 2
- Turbo Golf Racing
PlayStation 4
-
04-04
- Construction Simulator - Gold Edition
- Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons - Sacred Reunion
- Freedom Planet 2
Nintendo Switch
-
04-02
- Saviorless
-
04-03
- Flightpath
- Girl Genius: Adventures in Castle Heterodyne
- Knowledge Keeper
-
04-04
- 1-Bu Mirudake! Nyan ko Shashin de Kioku-ryoku Test
- Bubble Bunny
- Colony Defense - The Ultimate Minimalist Tower Base Defense Game
- CrashOut Xtreme
- Deadland Chronicles
- Doll Explorer
- Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise of the Dragons - Sacred Reunion
- Erogods: Mirage
- Freedom Planet 2
- Hakokoro V
- Korean Rail Driving Tour - LRT Uijeongbu
- Make it! Ikayaki
- Neko Girls Puzzle
- Savage Age
- Sorosoro Sushi o Tabenai to Shinuze! Yunibaasu
- SUSHI SOUL UNIVERSE
- Tengoku Struggle: Strayside
- The Brazil
- The Gap
- WWII AIRPLANE FIGHT - Battle War Squad
-
04-05
- Devil's Calling
- Hair Dye
- Heisting
- Kitchen Crisis
- Kudzu
- Life of Slime
- No Umbrellas Allowed
- Offroad Jeep Quest: Mountain Trails
- Spy Guy Hidden Objects Deluxe Edition
- Stunt Scooter Simulator
-
04-06
- Find Room 96
- Fire Race
- Last Bloody Snack
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