Felix “9 ways to yeet” Threepaper
Welcome folks, and happy “958th Anniversary of the Battle of Hastings” week! You may all celebrate by playing a game where you give up a great tactical advantage to fall for one of the oldest tricks in the book: pretending to run away.
This week, we have a mixed bag that includes a mulligan and possibly some nice surprises.
Mechwarrior 5: Clans is actually out this week, after being delayed a couple of weeks. I gave it the GOTW 2 weeks ago and the extra wait has only heightened my anticipation.
Starborne: Frontiers is a free-to-play auto-battler which started out as an MMO but has been downgraded to something that wants to grab you like Marvel Snap. There’s a single player PvE campaign to get you started, then a PvP arena with fake opponents and maybe seasonal events for special skins and gear. It’s riddled with gacha mechanics and rewards that encourage you to play every day. Look out.
Neva is by the developers who made Gris, which was an emotional puzzle-platformer in the same quadrant as Journey. Neva is also in this quadrant, but further along the “emotional” axis. You play as a girl, Alba, and her pet wolf, Neva, who must work together to traverse the visually beautiful levels with platforming and light combat. As Neva grows, she becomes stronger but also more headstrong. The devs want you to experience the story, so the combat is not Soulslike and there are plenty of accessibility features to tune the gameplay for progress.
Arsene Lupin is another one of these Netflix spin-offs *touches earpiece* … err, I mean, is based on the original French novels about Lupin, the gentleman thief. The devs, Blazing Griffin, made a couple of decent Hercule Poirot games recently, and if you liked those, they’re giving similar treatment to another renowned literary character. Lupin, being a thief, has different gameplay, revolving around puzzling and stealth. But never fear, the mind palace mechanics from the Poirot games make a return because you also play as Ganimard, the detective hunting Lupin.
On PC, Citadelum is a city-builder set in Ancient Rome. It’s not just SimCity with marble columns—you also send out armies to conquer new territory in auto-battles and you have to keep the gods happy, lest they manifest like Godzilla and wreck your excrementum.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed is a third-person 3D co-op brawler that looks like it was designed to make sure it runs well on the Switch. It’s an all-ages tie-in to the recent Turtles movie.
My first thought at seeing Unknown 9: Awakening on the list was “Why have I not heard of the previous 8 games? Because they were Unknown?” But it’s a new IP, by a new dev that’s been busy establishing a ‘narrative universe’ to loredump you before the game: a trilogy of novels (with 2 out already), comics, and an audio drama. It’s an ambitious way to introduce a new universe—they’re certainly showing their work on worldbuilding. I haven’t dived into this extensive lore, but the gist is that you play as Haroona, someone with unique psychic powers who just wants to learn her craft, but a shadowy faction keeps interfering, so she has plot reasons to infiltrate their bases and take them all down. Haroona is voiced by Anya Chalotra, who plays Yennefer in the Netflix's The Witcher.
The game itself is a linear, action-adventure stealth game that mixes elements of Dishonored 2 and Jedi: Fallen Order to make its own unique flavour.
It has a similar vibe to Dishonored, in that the game’s technology and architecture have a steampunk-adjacent aesthetic. It’s set in a fantasy 1912, with locations based on Portuguese cities, Mauritian deserts and Indian jungles. The combat features a mix of early-modern and fantasy weapons: guns, spears, and magic.
The powers you get are a mix of powers from Dishonored 2 and Jedi: Fallen Order. You can push and pull enemies from afar, resulting in my second-favourite thing to do in any game: yeeting people off ledges. You can also briefly possess enemies—in Dishonored 2, this was an endgame ability at the top of a skill tree, but here it is a core mechanic from the start, and more fleshed out. There’s more things you can do while possessing someone, as different enemy types have different special abilities. You can make a sniper shoot an explosive barrel just as 2 other enemies walk near it, then yeet the sniper into the fire before he realises what he’s done. There’s also fairly robust hand-to-hand combat, so you don’t feel the need to reload every time you are spotted.
Overall, it’s a bag of tricks that looks like it promotes fun, proactive stealth. I like the idea of puppeteering an enemy camp to create a slapstick farce. I wonder if the levels will encourage inventive play, or be more like puzzles with only one solution. The devs are selling it as one where you can choose your playstyle, even avoid stealth entirely (if you must). Could this be an immersive sim?
Although I hadn’t heard of it before this week, I’m excited about Unknown 9: Awakening. I like to reward a developer who comes up with a new IP, especially when it looks immersive sim-adjacent. It gets a GOTW for the promise of its gameplay: interesting-looking magical stealth. With yeeting!
GWJ Word of the Week
Auto battler: a sub-genre of strategy games where players place their units on a battlefield grid before battle, then the battle plays out automatically, based on your units’ stats, instead of tactically moving your units around within battle. It’s like fast forwarding to the best part of a Total War game: when the armies are just smooshed together, no one is obeying any commands any more, and you just have to watch it play out. This is a reflection of the lineage of the auto-battler: it was popularised by Dota Auto Chess, which was a gameplay mod of Dota 2, which is based on a mod of World of Warcraft III.
Here's the list, in release-date AND alphabetical order!
PC
-
10-14
- A Work of Art
- Abolish
- AUTO_BATTLER_RPG
- Benchmark
- Boom Boom KONBINI
- BURGGEIST
- CatClimber
- Doodle Harmony Idle Merge
- Earth Daddy
- FRAY Game
- Lost Paradise Karuta
- Manual
- Multiplayer Ninjas
- Mystic Gals
- oct 14
- Phantom
- PRIZE ANIMALS
- Quantum Sleeper
- Scotland Yard - Hunting Mister X
- Starborne: Frontiers
- The Button Game
- The Stone of Wisdom
- Tiny Shooters
- Up to Par
- Wings of Redemption
-
10-15
- Bread (The Royal Bakery)
- CAPTURED
- Drova - Forsaken Kin
- Elven City Simulator
- Find the Demon
- Grapple Gunners
- Jill O' Lantern: Final Cut
- Love Love 2024: The Love Election
- Miner Open Chests
- Motion sensing car
- Neva
- New World: Aeternum
- Noonna The Rock
- Tombstone Tally
- TRAILCAM
- Turbo Fat
- Yugo: the non-game
-
10-16
- An Engineer and the Great Machine
- Cats Hidden in Germany
- Dimensions of Subconsciousness
- Earthquake: Margarita School
- MechWarrior 5: Clans
- Neon Testament
- Pancake Patrol
- Place of Decay
- Protostar Twilight
- Spot The Difference: Haunted House
- The city of eyes and the girl in dreamland
- The Patient
-
10-17
- .redruM
- A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead
- Arizona Sunshine Remake
- Arsene Lupin - Once a Thief
- Blazing Strike
- Blue Rabbit, Black Future
- Captain of the Guard
- Citadelum
- Cookie Survivors
- Dead-End City Blues OD Edition
- Don't Wake Up The Dead
- Elf Archer and The Disappearing Giant Tree - R18
- Elven Trip
- Garden Snap
- Glusiverse
- Half Billion: Love Choice
- I've Fallen For You!
- Ink and Intrigue
- Jet Fighters with Friends 3
- Killing Time: Resurrected
- Kimi ga Nozomu Eien: Enhanced Edition
- Limb
- MagicStone
- Mask Quest
- Moorhuhn Jump and Run 'Traps and Treasures 3'
- National War Three Kingdoms
- Professional Baseball Spirits 2024-2025
- Records of the Flycatcher
- Sniper Killer
- Sock Pets
- Spellchanted 2D Hidden Object Puzzle Adveture Tile-Matching
- Sweet Hunt
- The Human Test / Restart
- Toby's Topsy Tale
- Velvet 89
- Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr - Hierophant Class
- woxinjianghu
- Yakiniku Party Survival
- Youniverse
-
10-18
- Aery - Midnight Hour
- Dark Blue Dungeon
- DOOMSDAY (JARWorks)
- Edda Physics 1
- Gensou Gold Rush
- Guitar Fretter
- Hammer of Pain
- Inversed
- Kakenuke * Seishun Sparking!
- Mariana
- NO HAPPY DAYS
- Presidents vs. Aliens
- RetroRealms: Ash vs Evil Dead
- RetroRealms: Halloween
- Revert
- Sneebles The Half Cat
- The Big Adventure
- The Memory Machine
- Together We Live
- Unknown 9: Awakening
- VHS Collection: Goodnight Me
- Wally The Seal 2
-
10-19
- Inferno Sentinel
-
10-20
- Be touch-and-go
- DEVIL'S WAY
- FALL
- Monday the 14th
Xbox Series X
-
10-15
- Aaero2
- Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition
- Drova - Forsaken Kin
- Just Dance 2025 Edition
- Neva
- New World: Aeternum
- Nikoderiko: The Magical World
- Squirrel with a Gun
-
10-16
- 8-Bit Adventures 2
- Purpose 1951
-
10-17
- A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead
- Arsene Lupin - Once a Thief
- Killing Time: Resurrected
- MechWarrior 5: Clans
- Tinkertown
-
10-18
- Hot Wheels Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem
- RetroRealms: Ash vs Evil Dead
- RetroRealms: Halloween
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed
- Together We Live
- Unknown 9: Awakening
Xbox One
-
10-15
- Drova - Forsaken Kin
-
10-16
- 8-Bit Adventures 2
- Crow Country
-
10-17
- Arsene Lupin - Once a Thief
- Killing Time: Resurrected
- Tinkertown
-
10-18
- Aery - Midnight Hour
- Hot Wheels Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem
- My Bakery Empire
- RetroRealms: Ash vs Evil Dead
- RetroRealms: Halloween
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed
- Together We Live
- Unknown 9: Awakening
PlayStation 5
-
10-15
- Darksiders II: Deathinitive Edition
- Drova - Forsaken Kin
- Just Dance 2025 Edition
- Neva
- New World: Aeternum
- Nikoderiko: The Magical World
- Squirrel with a Gun
-
10-16
- 8-Bit Adventures 2
- Purpose 1951
-
10-17
- A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead
- Anomaly Agent
- Arizona Sunshine Remake
- Arsene Lupin - Once a Thief
- Blazing Strike
- Killing Time: Resurrected
- MechWarrior 5: Clans
- Professional Baseball Spirits 2024-2025
-
10-18
- Hot Wheels Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem
- RetroRealms: Ash vs Evil Dead
- RetroRealms: Halloween
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed
- The Seed: Unit 7
- Together We Live
- Unknown 9: Awakening
PlayStation 4
-
10-15
- Drova - Forsaken Kin
- Neva
-
10-16
- 8-Bit Adventures 2
- Crow Country
-
10-17
- Anomaly Agent
- Arsene Lupin - Once a Thief
- Blazing Strike
- Killing Time: Resurrected
-
10-18
- Hot Wheels Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem
- RetroRealms: Ash vs Evil Dead
- RetroRealms: Halloween
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed
- The Seed: Unit 7
- Together We Live
- Unknown 9: Awakening
Nintendo Switch
-
10-14
- Viking City Tycoon
-
10-15
- 9 R.I.P.
- City Bus Simulator
- Drova - Forsaken Kin
- Just Dance 2025 Edition
- Mortal Kombat 1: Cyrax
- Mortal Kombat 1: Noob Saibot
- Mortal Kombat 1: Sektor
- Mourning Tide
- Neva
- Nikoderiko: The Magical World
-
10-16
- 8-Bit Adventures 2
- Beyond Border
- Crow Country
- Farmer Survivors
- NAIRI: Rising Tide
-
10-17
- Aery - Midnight Hour
- Alchemist: The Potion Monger
- Amelia's Garden
- Arsene Lupin - Once a Thief
- Blazing Strike
- Blind - The Unseen Truth
- Core Keeper
- Dungeons 4
- Eternights
- Football League Cup: Arcade Soccer Simulator
- Frogo Deluxe
- Fruit Party: Suika Casual Puzzle
- Kantan Kawaii o Katadzuke Lesson
- Killing Time: Resurrected
- Little Legs
- LYNE
- MetroLand
- Pharaoh's Riches
- Recolit
- Shougakusei de Shiritai Shikujiri Ijin-den
- StormEdge
- Super Mario Party Jamboree
- Supermarket Grocery Simulator
- Tales From The Arcade: Fartmania
- Tintin Reporter: Cigars of the Pharaoh
- Undead Line
- Ynglet
-
10-18
- Hot Wheels Monster Trucks: Stunt Mayhem
- Idle Command: Supply Frontline
- Moorhuhn Jump and Run 'Traps and Treasures 3'
- RetroRealms Arcade
- RetroRealms: Halloween
- Rookie Boxing
- Stick Combat - Fighting Platformer
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutants Unleashed
- The Seed: Unit 7
- Together We Live
-
10-19
- Simply Cubic
Comments
The two games I really want to be good are Neva and Unknown 9.
MechWarrior 5: Clans looks like it could be too complex for me but I do enjoy fighting with a squad so it might be a game I could get into.
Edit: Neva has been purchased. It looked too gorgeous to pass up.
We do what we can, when we can - Usami Fuji, Shōgun.
RetroRealms: Ash vs Evil Dead is silly fun.
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