April 15 - 21

  Felix “Claymation Dude” Threepaper

Welcome folks, and happy “269th Anniversary of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary” week!

On 15 April 1755, Samuel Johnson published “A Dictionary of the English Language” in London. It wasn’t the first ever English dictionary—there had been about 150 published before this—but it was far and away the most comprehensive and also the first to include examples of usage, for example, by providing literary quotes where the word had been used. And, despite what Blackadder would have you believe, it did include the word “sausage”. You may all celebrate by playing a game with a glossary.

It’s another week of no big names, just lots of smaller indie titles, ports, and DLC. I’m back into Dragon’s Dogma 2 this week, after enjoying a detour with last week’s GOTW, Broken Roads.

DAVE THE DIVER comes to Playstation this week so PS users can finally experience this compelling blend of fishing and restaurant management.

Dead Island 2: SoLA is the second piece of DLC. It’s the usual fare: a new area, new weapons, new missions, new zombie types, new music, and so on, but some fans are hoping it will resolve the cliffhanger ending for the main game.

Harold Halibut is an adventure game with a stop-motion aesthetic. It looks incredible: the devs physically built all the sets and characters, then 3D-scanned them and used motion capture to create further animations. It’s a unique look for a videogame, similar to Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, which is why many previewers are calling this the ‘Wes Anderson game’.

You play as Harold, who is the lead scientist on an ark-like, city-sized spaceship that was sent from Earth and has landed deep in the ocean of an alien planet. There will be some light puzzling, but the story and character work are the strongest parts of the game. The voice acting sounds solid.

Sker Ritual is a wave-based zombie shooter that’s been in Early Access for a few years and going to full release this week. It’s an FPS spinoff of Welsh horror game, Maid of Sker.

Harold Halibut is this week’s GOTW. I’ve fallen off adventure games over the years, but the aesthetic here is so unique, and the story looks strong enough that I am intrigued.

GWJ Word of the Week

Adventure game: For me, this is a genre that is synonymous with PC gaming in the 1980s. They started in the 1970s with text-only games, like Zork, where the game described a scene to you and you entered words to tell it the action you wanted to perform. Then as graphics became a thing, you got games like Sierra’s King’s Quest, which would present your character in a graphically-rendered environment, and you could move the character about with keyboard inputs, but still had to type in text to perform more complicated actions. Thankfully, the invention of the mouse helped to make the adventure game controls a lot easier, so the developers could concentrate on devising increasingly impossible puzzles. Usually, these involved combining inventory items in the most anti-intuitive ways possible.

LucasArts made adventure games where you couldn’t get stuck, but the puzzles were still crazy hard in places. Devs in those days often made more money from selling hint books and hint hotlines than the games themselves. Then came Myst in the 1990s, with minimal UI, just logical (but hard) puzzles, and a story that unfolded as you went. Myst inspired a whole new generation of adventure games that focused on stronger stories and exploration, and puzzles that weren’t just about smooshing all your inventory items together. Nowadays, adventure games are a great way to tell a story and promote exploration in any setting or environment, especially when you don’t want to lean heavily on shooting or slashing things. As strong as the genre is now, it’s too late for me—still badly scarred from all the times I had to restart my game in Space Quest and Police Quest because I missed something hours earlier.

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

PC

• 04-16

• 11F
• Barnacles Beers and Brawls
• Chasm Crawl
• EMULATED: OpsRunner
• Further
• Gensokyo Odyssey
• Harold Halibut
• Life Eater
• Mojito the Cat
• Monster Bullets
• Monsters and Sprites
• Multiplayer Spiders
• Pet Shop Simulator: Prologue
• Police on Duty 2
• Solar Survivors
• The Twisting Trail of Clues
• The World of Gangs
• Twizzle Puzzle: Rodents
• Unnamed Project

• 04-17

• 44 The Jail
• Assassin's Belief
• Before The Dawn
• Clone War
• Cyber League Football
• Dead Island 2: SoLA
• Ember Point
• Gym Manager: Prologue
• Just a Cute Capybara Puzzle
• Kingsgrave
• Ladies Restroom
• leaving the hospital
• Madhouse Madness: Streamer's Fate
• Morels: The Hunt 2
• Next Jianghu II
• Press Any Key
• Puzzle - LINES AND KNOTS 2
• Rauniot
• Reigns Beyond
• Reigns: Beyond
• Resonance ReMix
• Resurrection Island: Love and Victory
• Rolando - Deluxe Edition
• Shikhondo: Youkai Rampage
• Star Wings
• Stolen Memories
• The Highlands of Jurgald
• The Mildew Children

• 04-18

• Abyss (Old World Labs)
• Artificer's Tower
• ASTROLANCER
• AVOPUG SHOW
• BIG SHOTS
• Body Pay
• Bud Masters - Peace Edition
• Buggy Derby Arena
• Cargo Master Transporter
• ColorBlend FX: Desaturation
• Commute
• Crazy Chicken - Traps and Treasures 2
• Entropy Survivors: Prologue
• Evergreen: The Board Game
• Exodus (Peleg Harel)
• Fate/Samurai Remnant - Record's Fragment: [Redacted] Sword Chronicles
• Ghost Talker
• Hidden Riddles. The Amazon Mystery
• Highway Gas Gas
• Homing Instinct
• Idle Battle RPG
• Illusion~Dream Comfort~
• Karga
• Monstronomy
• Necrophobia (Sapphire Comics)
• Project13: Nightwatch
• Pyxole
• Repair this!
• Shadow Brawl
• Sker Ritual
• Soul Covenant
• SUNSOFT is Back! Retro Game Selection
• Tenfold Loop
• The Shell Part II: Purgatorio
• Trackline Express

• 04-19

• Aery - Cyber City
• Akatori: Chapter One
• Ants Took My Eyeball
• Cats in Boxes
• Central Killing Agency
• Crossing The Sands
• Diary of a Stoner
• Digital Diamond Baseball V12
• Elementaire
• Fairy Biography5 : Demon
• FoolHut Pack - 3 games in 1
• Grand Gardens
• Gunstorm II
• Hidden Facade
• Hoshikage no Kan Satsujinjiken
• I commissioned some mice 3
• Internet Cafe Evolution
• Joe 'n Jo
• Last Ride
• OUTMINER
• PuzzMiX
• Ready, Steady, Ship!
• Rent A Car Simulator 24: Prologue
• Stellfire
• Sticky Clicker!
• The Collage Atlas
• YAYS - Your Adventure Your Story

• 04-20

• Baseball Legacy Manager 24

• 04-21

• Broadvay
• DNA: Episode 4
• Dreams and bubbles
• Is It Wrong To Try To Rescue Monster Girls From The Inquisition?
• Monster Charmer Prologue
• NINJA KATO 3
• Pirates. Naval battle
• Race Elcano
• Room 817: Director's Cut
• Sumorbit
• The Demon Lord Dungeon

Xbox Series X

• 04-16

• Harold Halibut

• 04-17

• Dead Island 2: SoLA

• 04-18

• Pocket Clothier
• Pocket League Story
• Sker Ritual

Xbox One

• 04-17

• Dead Island 2: SoLA

• 04-18

• Pocket Clothier
• Pocket League Story

• 04-19

• Ready, Steady, Ship!

PlayStation 5

• 04-16

• DAVE THE DIVER
• Grounded
• Harold Halibut
• Planet of Lana

• 04-17

• Dead Island 2: SoLA

• 04-18

• Fate/Samurai Remnant - Record's Fragment: [Redacted] Sword Chronicles
• Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide
• Pretty Girls Escape PLUS
• Sker Ritual
• Soul Covenant
• Umurangi Generation
• Umurangi VR

• 04-19

• Ready, Steady, Ship!
• Richman 11
• Whisker Waters

PlayStation 4

• 04-16

• DAVE THE DIVER
• Grounded
• Planet of Lana

• 04-17

• Dead Island 2: SoLA

• 04-18

• Dokyusei Remake Csver
• Fate/Samurai Remnant - Record's Fragment: [Redacted] Sword Chronicles
• Pretty Girls Escape PLUS
• Umurangi Generation

• 04-19

• Ready, Steady, Ship!

Nintendo Switch

• 04-16

• Grounded
• Planet of Lana
• Rose & Camellia Collection

• 04-17

• Mr. Prepper - Animal Farm DLC
• Reigns: Beyond
• The Mildew Children

• 04-18

• 4 in a row
• A Tale of Paper: Refolded
• Aery - Cyber City
• Archer 3D: Bow Shooting Range
• ArcRunner
• Bunny Garden
• Dokyusei Remake Csver
• Epic Dumpster Bear 1.5 DX: Dumpster Fire Rebirth
• False Dream
• Fate/Samurai Remnant - Record's Fragment: [Redacted] Sword Chronicles
• Hanzai Profile Han'nin wa Dareda!
• Hydlide II: Shine of Darkness
• Ikki Danketsu
• Ikki Unite
• Lunar Axe
• Motorcycle Driver
• Motto Shiritai Hichou Nara
• Motto Shiritai Sangokushi
• Odd Hue Out!
• Pretty Girls Escape PLUS
• RISKY CHRONICLES and the curse of destiny
• sh*ttetara Kakkoii Shougakusei Nandoku Kanji Quiz
• Sokobalien
• Sokobond Express
• Stone Age (2008)
• SUNSOFT is Back! Retro Game Selection
• Trackline Express
• Unboxing - Idle Factory Simulator
• Which Country Is Larger?

• 04-19

• Corn Kidz 64
• Figment 1 & 2
• Gas Station Simulator - Can Touch This DLC
• Gas Station Simulator - Party Time DLC
• Magical Girl Dash
• Ready, Steady, Ship!
• Scheming Through The Zombie Apocalypse Ep2: Caged
• Where is Drake?