A quick look at games for February from James
🆕 On the Shelves
🌱 Grunn by Sokpop Collective
Grunn was released last October, but I just learned about it now.
In it, you play as gardener who gets hired for maintenance work over the weekend. A simple task, but strangely some tools are missing… The owner of the garden isn't around, and their house is off-limits. Perhaps new tools can be found in the mysterious town, or maybe some of the reserved townsfolk have seen them?
🐊 Lil Gator Game: In the Dark
I was not aware of the original game that was released in 2022. This is the first DLC published for the game in the same universe. It reminds me a lot of A Short Hike—cosy, exploration, cute, chill.
🐻 Grizzly Man
A gorgeous visual novel from a studio that seems set on being the forerunner for this genre of game.
1983, Alaska... During the Salmon Run, a deadly figure known as The Grizzly Man terrorizes a group of tourists led by Bob, an amnesiac former Man in Black. Survive the journey or become the catch of the day in this breathtaking pixel-art interactive fiction with heart-pounding pace!
💡 Hyper Light Breaker by Heart Machine
Enter the Overgrowth, a new realm in the world of Hyper Light. Play alone or with friends to explore open worlds, create new builds, rip through hordes, and overcome the Crowns and the Abyss King.
It's the sequel to the excellent Hyper Light Drifter which was a 2D action roguelike. This time, the game is set in a 3D environment, but keeps its manic beat-em-up vibe.
📡 On the Radar
🪐 Children of Saturn
A found footage coming-of-age story about a group of teenagers growing up under an orange sky. I found out about this on Polygon.
It's speculative fiction about teenagers growing up in a time of extreme climate catastrophe. But really, this game might be a bit too close to home to be considered speculative.
The demo is short, but is a total vibe. 90s-style video, PS1-style graphics, indie/punk rock on the radio, red glow to the sky, red fog in the distance...
⚔️ Earthblade [Cancelled!]
The follow-up game to Celeste from Extremely OK Games has been cancelled, according to an official blog post. Co-founders Maddy and Noel shared the news in an emotional blog post, marking the start of 2025 with what they described as a "heartbreaking yet relieving failure."
🧟 Dead Letter Dept.
A Typing of the Dead style game with, yes, a horror aesthetic. It looks sweet!
Working at a data entry job in the big city, you type up and transcribe the lost mail and letters that have nowhere else to go. But as the days carry on oddities in the mail start to emerge, and cracks begin to appear.
🎮 In Rotation
🛌 Citizen Sleeper
Been meaning to get into this game for a while and having heard an announcement for the sequel—which is out now—I thought it would be a good time to start.
Roleplaying in the ruins of interplanetary capitalism. Live the life of an escaped worker, washed-up on a lawless station at the edge of an interstellar society. Inspired by the flexibility and freedom of TTRPGs, explore the station, choose your friends, escape your past and change your future.
🌅 Horizons by Punk Cake
Let me start by saying that I love these guys. Horizons is a scrabble, space exploration game. Yeah, sounds weird, I know. This is a lovely mix of genres (as the Punk Cake team are wont to do!)
You are dealt a handful of letters and must make words on an empty grid. Letters replenish with oxygen after you use them, and so you have to make new words, to find new oxygen. The grid might not be empty anymore but don't fret, it is as boundless as the universe itself. Oxygen on the other hand...
In Mission mode, set your own difficulty with 28 unique modifiers and try to beat the game by mining up resources.
In Journey mode, set out to explore the galaxy. Stop at various space stations to acquire and upgrade items to help you along on your wordy journey. Stretch your web of words as far as possible and discover as many planets as you can.
🖼️ Picture Perfect
Not in rotation per se, as it's just a 10-minute game, but worth a look still. It was made for GMTK2024 GameJam
A quick, cosy game about taking pictures of a family member in front of famous monuments. Plus it plays in the browser!
🪦 Cryptmaster
I only played the demo, but had a lot of fun with this immersive, typing RPG
SAY ANYTHING in this bizarre dungeon adventure where words control everything. Fill in the blanks with text or voice to uncover lost abilities, embark on strange quests, and solve mindbending riddles. Can you conquer the crypt and uncover the mystery at the heart of CRYPTMASTER?
🔤 Lok
This is on iOS, so I picked it up. It's a word puzzle game where you spell a word, and unlock a lil dude that you can use to remove tiles. Removing tiles then allows you to complete the same word in a different place, unlocking dudes, and so on.
Fairly chill, and has a bunch of different levels with different words to be spelt, unlocking different lil dudes with different abilities.
The goal of each puzzle is to find Lok keywords and use their special effects to black out all cells in a grid. On top of that, you must also figure out most of the rules by yourself, deducing them from the carefully crafted sequence of more than 90 puzzles, contained in the main storyline, 2 expansions and many off-page enigmas. The result is a deep and rewarding experience with surprising twists and insights.
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