A dispatch on games for August from a vacationing James
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🆕 On the Shelves
🦍 Donkey Kong Bananza
Nintendo
The first big 3D game for the Nintendo Switch 2 and it was created by the team behind Mario Odyssey. I'll definitely be picking this one up, but I'm deep into FFVII and a few other games right now.
According to the folks at Polygon:
This is the first time it has made a Donkey Kong game in-house in Japan in 20 years. The result is a gloriously impactful symphony of destruction, as the lovable oaf strong-arms his way through the fabric of the game itself, punching through walls and tearing up the ground. Every detail of the game channels both DK’s physical strength and his charmingly blunt personality, from the one-word dialogue options to the way menu buttons shatter when you select them with a thwacking sound. It’s a delightful new flavor from Nintendo: violent, heedless, and joyously dumb.
🗻 PEAK
Team PEAK
PEAK is a co-op climbing game where the slightest mistake can spell your doom. Either solo or as a group of lost nature scouts, your only hope of rescue from a mysterious island is to scale the mountain at its center. Do you have what it takes to reach the PEAK?
Heard about this one from another Polygon article. The team behind it had trouble getting it off the ground, but then decided to just go hardcore on it for a month and see what they could come up with:
“Our general routine was to wake up and go for coffee, come back and work until lunch, go out for some food and discuss the game, come back and work, go for dinner and discuss, and then come back and playtest and take notes for the next day,” Galen Drew, art director at Aggro Crab, tells Polygon.
The result is a really polished, fun coop game that stands out in the world of such games, for me at least. It starts off as a kind of survival sim, as you gather food and water, then start to collect items that will help you on your journey into the forest and looming peaks in the distance. Lots of funny deaths, with friends, guaranteed.
🐸 Hopshot
mysticat
A Precision Platformer where you Can't Move.
As introduced on Remap Radio:
Earlier this year, Patrick fell down a well. Hours of work vanished in an instant, thanks to a single jump. This all happened in Hopshot, a tremendous (and very hard) platformer from designer Mysty “Mysticat” McCallister. Did you also know she’s a super popular Minecraft creator on YouTube with nearly two million subscribers?! Mysticat joined Patrick to talk about crafting challenge, why young people are so interested in being YouTube creators, and more.
🎮 In Rotation
😙 Threshold
CRITICAL REFLEX
In a lonely station atop a mountain, a train rumbles its precious cargo to places unknown. Now is your shift. Keep the pace. Uncover a mystery. Fight for your last breath. The air is thin up here.
I didn't actually play this one but watched a bunch of lets plays on YouTube after seeing it won an award at Amaze 2025.
Totally weird one.
You have to blow a whistle to keep a train going at the correct speed. But every time you blow the whistle, you run out of breath and will suffocate to death unless you bite into a glass canister of oxygen... yeah. Body horror, too, I guess?! It is also a puzzle game where you are trying to escape, or at least figure out what is on the train, and why it is being sent through the wall.
🟢 Final Fantasy VII Remake
Square Enix
Still playing this one, though I think I'm getting closer to the end now. I'm sort of getting used to the controls, but It's not as intuitive or as easy to use as the original... Some of the bosses in this game are a real pain, too.
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