7 min read
So we’re back on track, this is technically the correct week for the third roundup, which means I’ve been doing this for six weeks now, that’s fucking mental. I mean, I did take a while off in between the first and second one, but I managed to crank this out in just a week. It definitely didn’t have anything to do with me having already spent a lot of time with Arco, which is really good by the way go buy it. A quick aside, most of the images in this article are from game pages or press kits, I took screenshots but Steam deleted them. Lesson learned, I’m going to use the built in captures on Windows Game Bar from now on.
Arco
Arco is available for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch
Arco is getting its own review because its earned it, but here’s the elevator pitch: a beautifully crafted pixel art world, a well told story of revenge and colonialism, and tight turn based combat. Arco feels like a fantasy western take on Into the Breach if that game was a story driven RPG adventure and not a bite size roguelike.
Arco tells the story of four characters who are natives to a continent in a fantasy world with a strong mesoamerican influence. ‘Newcomers’ represent European settlers who have come and changed everything. Your four characters are all tied together by a need for revenge against a group called ‘The Red Company’. The story is simple but there is a lot of intricate world building going on in the background, it’s drip fed through dialogue and even the environments you encounter, rather than heavy exposition dumps. Small things like new structure being built over time to reflect the influence the ‘Newcomers’ have on this land.
The combat and RPG mechanics are streamlined, combat encounters feel frenetic and rhythmic, with quick restarts encouraging players to experiment. Creativity is rewarded and the approach taken to the quasi-turn-based combat makes everything feel fluid. Turns play out over a few seconds, and you can usually take your time deciding what to do next, whether it’s dodging, using a weapon or some other ability. It manages to make it feel unlike other turn based tactical games, especially since you’re usually just controlling one character.
Is Arco worth a look? Hell yes!
Electric Fairyland
Electric Fairyland is available for PC
Electric Fairyland is a cute little 3D platformer inspired by 90s games of the same genre. Your goal is to collect glitter, clovers and save fairies in a forest. There’s other collectables to find like marbles, and collecting enough clovers gives you red keys which are also used to progress through the game. You can run, jump, bounce and glide around levels to uncover all the bits and pieces you need to find. I found the platforming to be pretty fun for the most part. The camera is a bit weird and depth can be hard to gauge making precise jumps hard, but the glide gives you some leeway to line up your landing. Collecting the glitter and other bits was simple, but sometimes they wouldn’t spawn in or would be so well hidden that they took way too long to find, halting progress.
The art style is very cute, it’s like something out of a storybook. The main character, Stix, is shrunk down by some mushroom magic (I think?) and has to find their Gameboy (I THINK?!) but this means that the levels are made up of big fruits, vegetables, flowers and bugs to jump around on. Every level feels like a little diorama, a bite sized piece of a person’s garden. The music, by BARCHboi is excellent, and fits the vibe of the game very well.
Find Electric Fairyland on Steam or Itch.io
The Nameless City
The Nameless City is available for PC
The Nameless City is based on a novel by HP Lovecraft, whose work I am only familiar with in passing. Lovecraftian horror is a very popular sub-genre of horror. It relies on a fear of the unknowable and the uncaring breadth of existence, and failing that, tentacle monsters. The Nameless City certainly leans towards the former rather than the latter, creating very unsettling environments populated with idols and architecture that are deranged by design. The art style draws heavily from PS1 era games, going so far as to emulate the low render resolution and lack of texture filtering. It’s a throwback for sure, and the game isn’t so long that it outstays its welcome. A controversial aspect of the game is the inclusion of AI generated images, which the developer speaks about here.
The gameplay is very basic, you walk around and explore this long forgotten city. The game appears to be split into three “acts” with the first two having you explore some quite diverse and interesting locations. You even learn ancient words which are used to cast spells, dissolving magical barriers in your way. The third act lost me completely however. It feels intentional, but it’s a mad descent into the crypts under the city but for me too much time was spent trekking down stairwells and hallways that all look the exact same. For the price I paid, I think it was a neat experience!
Find The Nameless City on Steam or Itch.io
Swelter
Swelter is available for PC
Swelter is a mod for the 2007 game Half Life 2: Episode 2, released in 2023. It’s still absolutely wild to me that people are making mods for Half Life 2 and its episodes almost 20 years later, and that the quality is so high. The makers of the mod understand what makes a Half Life game great too.
Half Life 2 still has some of the best shooter gameplay ever, and Swelter happily builds on that solid foundation by adding in sighted weapons and tweaking certain weapons to feel better. It retains a lot of the core Half Life formula, there’s a journey in here. What I love about Half Life 2 is that for the most part it’s all one unbroken story during the length of a game. When you need to get somewhere, it isn’t a convenient fade to black or scene transition, you have to make your way there yourself. Swelter does follows the same philosophy. It makes a relatively linear game feel a lot more open and engorged. Every level has out of the way areas to explore with extra health, ammo or a bit of environmental storytelling. It’s well paced and all of these levels are quite well designed, with beautiful Central Asian vistas, the Source Engine almost looks downright modern in some areas.
The story is short, but for a free mod it’s hardly worth complaining about since what is there is still good. The writing is a bit lacking but I think a lot of that comes down to translation. It’s also entirely voice acted which is super rare for a mod. The music is all really high octane and is the kind of shit that gets me PUMPED to kill inter-dimensional fascists. Some puzzles can be a bit obtuse, with interactable objects not being very easy to find and objectives being unclear. Overall though, this is a fantastic FREE mod that you can play right away if you already own Half Life 2 and Half Life 2: Episode 2 (I believe it requires both) which can be bought for a pittance during a Steam sale.
Find Swelter on Steam! Get Half Life 2 here! and Episode 2 here!
There’s not much else to say that I haven’t already covered, UFO 50 comes out in a few days, and I will absolutely be playing it. I’ve also been having a great time with Caravan Sandwitch and Judero has just released, which has been on my radar for a while too. There are so many interesting, well made and just straight up fun games coming out it’s going to be hard to play them all, but I’ll give it my best shot. It’s a damn good time to be writing about games that are JUST GOOD. GET IT?