November is…done! The tawdry moveable feast that is Videogaming shudders and rolls beyond the canopy, out into the whitening dunes and fathoms of December. Now for revelry! Strike your trumpets! Blow your drums! Possibly the other way round! The folk of game development exit their wagons and sprint weeping amongst the dissipating trees. A bunch of narrative and game designers put on eight-inch stilettos and form a high-kicking cabaret line. The stilettos fly off and perforate Take-Two’s entire executive board. A miracle! Saint CJ be praised!
What wonders await us out here in the climactic month of the year? More PC games, apparently. Here are a few that deserve scrutiny, maybe even celebration.
Monday 1st December
- People keep yelling at me in comments that Dotemu’s Marvel Cosmic Invasion (pictured) is an awesome throwback beat ’em up and we are perfect dunces for ignoring it. Fine, those people. Here’s an Official RPS Mention. Now get the hell out of my office.
- Wild Growth is an intriguing and snazzily pigmented incremental fantasy strategy game in which you play healer to a Norse warband. I like games that explore the healing profession. I’m not massively into these incremental clickers, though.
Tuesday 2nd December
- Tingus Goose is that frightful game about goose trees that sprout babies. Mark inflicted this on us a few months ago. The very title gives me hives. I’d successfully obliterated it from my memory, but then Julian went and recommended it over Slack this morning.
- Sleep Awake is the horror game in which people vanish when they sleep, and everybody has accordingly gone nuts for want of shuteye/energy drinks. Wimps!
- Horses is Santa Ragione’s grotesque psychosexual farming fable inspired by Surrealist film and featuring human slaves.
Wednesday 3rd December
- Don’t Scream Together is not a polite reminder to only scream by yourself in the privacy of your own home, but a Blair Witchy co-op horror game with mandatory mic usage. Don’t talk too loud or you’ll become what’s chasing you.
Thursday 4th December
- Blood: Refreshed Supply is Nightdive’s revamp of Monolith’s 1997 Build engine shooter, featuring 42 levels of demonic mischief, a new scenario, and originally cut features such as weather.
- Routine is a long-in-development sci-fi horror in which you explore a trashed Moonbase from the 1980s. One for the Alien: Isolation and Observation lovers.
- Floating city-builder Flotsam leaves early access today. Sim Waterworld, they’re calling it, despite the commendable absence of Kevin Costner.
- Octopath Traveller 0 is a town-building prequel to Square Enix’s “HD-2D” throwback RPG that includes stuff from the free-to-play Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent.
Friday 5th December
- Agreeee is about trying to agree to the terms and conditions so that you can play the dang game.
Also coming this week: some new DLC for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, Total War: Warhammer III, Destiny 2, and Mechwarrior V. Plus: various embargoed things. We are entering the final Events season of the year. The silvery shoals and drifts of December hide many secrets. Like hungry sand fleas, they wriggle towards the footfalls of the game devs carousing on the forest’s edge. Eesh! Anyway, let us know if there are any promising new games we’re missing.