Despite the best efforts of all concerned, there are once again new PC games this week. See how they frolic among the days ahead, trampling all over our life commitments and need for tranquility like boisterous, fugitive oxen. Please equip yourself with a broom, weighted net and klaxon and help me herd them back into the pens, for proper disassembly. Here are a few I’ve rounded up already.
- Champions Tactics Reforged may yet prove a routine turn-based PvP battler, but it does have exceptionally handsome tabletop figurines. The kind of thing I wish I’d been able to paint back when I played Mordheim.
- Here be some “Enhanced” editions of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow Of Chornobyl, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky, and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call Of Prypiat.
- The Siege and the Sandfox is a sidescrolling stealth metroidvania affair with some moderately bewitching pixelart visuals.
- Jumping Jazz Cats is a feline racing game, if such a thing can be credited.
- Kathy Rain 2: Soothsayer is a private-eyeful of point-and-click, involving a serial killer and a biker detective.
- Twoot twoot! Monster Train 2 is pulling up to the station with another confusing payload of tower defence and roguelite deck-building.
- FANTASY LIFE i: The Girl Who Steals Time is one for the Animal Crossers and Zeldarlings, a “slow life” RPG about doing up a neglected island and/or fighting monsters in the surrounding open world.
- Break the traditional construction grid in City Tales – Medieval Era, out this day in early access.
- Deliver At All Costs is about barging through a 1950s toy-town in the style of a GTA game. I played about 40 minutes at an event last year and found it a bit shrugworthy, but the scenery is nice.
- Sure, go on then – a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tactics RPG from Clickolding and I Am Your Beast outfit Strange Scaffold.
- Did you miss the original Onimusha 2? It’s back with new controls and gossamer HD visuals in Onimusha 2: Samurai’s Destiny.
- 9 Kings is about using cards to build kingdoms, and hurling rocks at armies.
- Let’s make it two detective game reccs this week. Duck Detective: The Ghost of Glamping asks you to “throw bread to the fine beak of lady justice”. Commendable!
What are the denizens of the Treehouse up to this week? Well, James has been making forbidding noises about Computex 2025, the latest appalling rebirth of the Taipei, Taiwan-based tech show. Expect a few headlines with unpronounceable acronyms in them, and probably a lot of unreportable guff about genAI. Speaking of events: I’m attending Summer Games Fest for RPS in a couple of weeks, so I’m trying to clear out a few features before I’m deluged in fresh interview material.
Nic and Brendy are juggling various review commitments, like brilliant hell jesters on unicycles. Graham is forming terrible plans and chewing his way through another stack of freelance edits. Ollie continues his quest to write a complete instruction manual for all of existence, aka our guides section, and Jeremy is still blissfully on holiday. What are you up to this week? Playing anything fun?
