Gold-Plated Games

Don’t let the Day of the Dev festivities fool you, there are indeed Weeklong Deals hidden away in their shaded corner of Steam. They’re a unique mix, too, featuring some divisive titles that don’t often surface like Where the Water Tastes Like Wine. I’m also surprised to see Savage Lands back in development, one of the older Early Access disappointments, but it remains to be seen if anything of note will come of it.

We’ve got a busier week than usual, thanks to some new releases coming up! On Tuesday at noon PST I’ll be running another pre-recorded premier for The Room Three on our Twitch channel. It’ll be a short one, about 75 minutes, but I’ll be giving away a key for the game that the developers graciously gave for just that purpose! I’ll also be posting a review for The Room Three on Tuesday after launch, and then continuing with reviews on Wednesday and Friday. Look out for my thoughts on The Colonists this week, as I was utterly enthralled by it over the weekend.

Tonight we’ll be streaming more of HITMAN at 9pm PST, and then on Wednesday we’ll be dealing up a pair of card-based roguelikes for the Roguemas stream, Slay the Spire and Card Quest. Finally on Friday it looks like we might have some fresh indie horror creeping back into the queue, so be on the lookout for that!

All in favor

Sunless Sea (Review) – A glacially-paced open-ended adventure through one of the most unique cosmic horror settings around

Sanctum (Review) – Neat attempt at a first-person tower defense game, only really eclipsed by its sequel

Bunker Punks (Review) – Fast-paced retro-FPS roguelike that’s big on style and light on depth

Where the Water Tastes Like Wine (Review) – A daring game with lofty narrative goals that suffers on the gameplay side for pursuing them

Rocketbirds: Hardboiled Chicken (Review) – Classic Prince of Persia-style shooter with clever gimmicks and a metal music video aesthetic

Silence of the Sleep (review) – Clever horror adventure from the maker of DISTRAINT

Ash of Gods: Redemption (Review) – Brutally dark fantasy epic with the Banner Saga combat system and a regrettably rough translation

All opposed

Hero of the Kingdom III (Review) – A striking, disappointing swerve into drudgery for this otherwise excellent series

Savage Lands (Review) – Apparently they’re back to developing this survival crafting riff on Skyrim, but at this point you’d be a fool not to wait for the full release

Between Me and The Night (Review) – Surreal side-scrolling adventure game that doesn’t really get how surrealism or smart encounter design work