🕹️ Pirates and Monsters

🆕 On the Shelves

🦸 Marvel Rivals

Published by NetEase Games

Marvel Rivals is a Super Hero Team-Based PVP Shooter! Assemble an all-star Marvel squad, devise countless strategies by combining powers to form unique Team-Up skills and fight in destructible, ever-changing battlefields across the continually evolving Marvel universe!

• This was actually released in December last year, but is just making it to my (slow) radar.
• I was very big into Marvel: Snap (like, spending $100 on a few cards 🤫, don't judge), but haven't touched this one.
• It's a team PvP game similar to Overwatch, and so if that is something you're into, check it out!

🏴‍☠️ Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii

Published by SEGA

Embark on an over-the-top, modern-day pirate adventure with an ex-yakuza, now pirate captain & his crew. Engage in exhilarating combat on land and sea in the hunt for lost memories and treasure.

• I've never actually played any of the Like a Dragon games (something to fix this year, maybe?), but I am familiar enough to know it follows the story of Ichiban Kasuga, a member of the Yakuza. This version of the game, as the Steam blurb mentions is an over the top adventure set in the Like a Dragon world. (Yes, it is supposed to be canon).
• In a Polygon review, the game is likened to a mass collection of mini-games with the actual open world adventure being a kind of afterthought, or sub-mission of the whole game:

Within my first ten minutes of Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, I was tending to a garden. After an hour, I’d learned to cook. While I’d eventually reach the title’s promised buccaneering, I had, by that point, played a pair of Sega Genesis games and learned enough “Intro to Small Business Management” to maintain high employee satisfaction amongst my company of swashbucklers.

🦖 Monster Hunter Wilds

Published by CAPCOM

The unbridled force of nature runs wild and relentless, with environments transforming drastically from one moment to the next. This is a story of monsters and humans and their struggles to live in harmony in a world of duality.

• Another series I've never played 😬. Though, I know it is hugely popular over here in Japan. One of my students recently did a presentation on how Monster Hunter 4 nearly ruined his life due to its addictive nature.
• I'm surprised to see the tag "Dating Sim" on the Steam page! I guess teaming up with people to go kill large dragons and monsters has a camaraderie element that can seep over into love?!

🚫 Expelled

Published by inkle Ltd

A School Prefect has been pushed out of a window, and everyone's blaming YOU. Can you find the culprit - or someone to take the fall - before you get EXPELLED? Mystery with a wicked twist, from the creators of Overboard!, 80 Days, Heaven's Vault and A Highland Song.

• A visual novel game where you are trying to solve a mystery in an all girls school.
• If IF is your kind of thing (that's "interactive fiction, btw), give this one a look!

🧯 Itch.io’s wildfire relief fundraising bundle

• The bundle contains over 100 games for just $10.
• Stand out games in the collection:
  • Tunic
  • Octodad
  • Skatebird

🧘‍♀️ Cosy Games

• Whilst not a game, this list of cosy games with a twist is well worth a look. Some highlights:
  • Wanderstop
  • Dredge (Which I mean to pick up at some point)

📡 On the Radar

🤓 Mario Kart World

• During a recent Nintendo Direct, a whole slew of games were introduced for the new console (as well as an eye-watering price tag for both console and games....). Of them all though, the one that stands out the most is the new Mario Kart, as it comes bundled with the Switch 2.
• As well as the standard races, Nintendo also introduced an open-world mode known as the Knockout Tour where "racers have to drive across the open world to different checkpoints from course to course, and get knocked out if they're below a certain placement when they reach checkpoints. And there's a free roam mode where you can just drive around for fun, no racing involved, with friends if you like" (source: IGN).

🎮 In Rotation

💧 Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

• I'm still playing this one with my son. We have done most of the main quest and are now going around collecting all the armor sets, and doing the side missions. It's a really beautiful, interesting world you can explore to your heart's content.

🏴‍☠️ Return of the Obra Dinn

Late 1802,the merchant ship Obra Dinn set out from London for the Orient with over 200 tons of trade goods. Six months later it hadn't met its rendezvous point at the Cape of Good Hope and was declared lost at sea.
October 14th, 1807, the Obra Dinn has drifted into port at Falmouth with damaged sails and no visible crew. As insurance investigator for the East India Company's London Office, dispatch immediately to Falmouth, find means to board the ship, and prepare an assessment of damages.

• I got gifted this game for my birthday.
• It's intriguing, but hard! You essentially see freeze frames of how the crew of the ship died at various points of the journey, and you have to piece together who they are and their causes of death using clues from the environment and what people are saying at the time. Of course, you'd like people to be like "Oh no, John, don't die..." but they don't really mention names very often. Instead, I'm listening to accents, languages, and cues like "boss."

🧪 Parallel Experiment (Demo)

by Eleven Puzzles

Dive into the secrets of the Parallel Experiment in this 2-player co-op puzzle game. Join forces as two detectives to finally catch the infamous Cryptic Killer. And remember - communication is key!

• I recently completed their previous game Unboxing the Cryptic Killer which is a two-player coop in the vein of other games like We Were Here and The Past Within.
• You can't play these games alone, you need someone on the other end of a Discord call with a copy to join you.
• As a language teacher, I have been using these games as tools for speaking practice as the core mechanic for playing revolves around oral communication between players. They represent "information gap" activities where both players pool their information together to solve the puzzle.
• This one is not as hard as some of the games in the We Were Here series (which really frustrated me in the later stages), but is more akin to The Past Within (perhaps the best of the bunch).