Few more:

Just in case if somebody missed the article, Vampire Crawlers is bit simple deckbuilder reimplementation of Vampire Survivors. There's some fun to be had with combos, but it's bit too easy to form a routine.

Dungeons of Dusk had also recent article. This one is closer to dungeon crawler, but it's Dusk themed. Shooting is not as satisfying as in original Dusk and at least first floor is one big sewer level. Skill tree and consumables could maybe offer some variation, but of course first floor didn't show much what they actually have to offer.

Everything is Grab [External Link] is fun take on evolution as game mechanic in roguelite form. Evolution is shown as different set of random features what you can choose from and you have to eat to level up in order to evolve. What you choose visually affects your player character. The boss battles are bit of challenge, so I guess you have to choose wisely how you evolve. Though you might have to pick something to survive in more extreme biomes, so there's plenty of hard choices to be made.

Far Far West [External Link] is multiplayer extraction shooter. What makes is fun is that gunplay is fun and there's different combos and spells. Also jokers you can collect offer either something funny or useful. Levels also have side quests and secrets. There were also some puzzles. Works as single player, but leaves feeling that it's more fun as multiplayer.

Snacktorio [External Link]. (there's also recent article) This one is basically side scrolling Factorio mixed with a puzzle game. After tutorial levels, there are few actual levels where you make a factory that makes a dish that you feed to a monster or two.

Bit rough around the edges. I constantly had items in the hand, which blocked using the hotbar. Also thrash could have a warning before it deletes the items. Problems is that you can't build some of the essential things yourself if you get full stack at the beginning of the level. Still, mostly fun, though I didn't get feeling that I would want to play more after I finished it.

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I didn't notice any bugs. I guess the biggest problem for me was that I wasn't having that much fun. Though maybe getting enemies stuck in acid pools was bit fun.

Partly it might be that it's somewhat simple. There are some hints things getting more complex, but I felt that I didn't need to progress to second floor.

Another reason is that there's sort of uneasy feeling all the time without any kind of release. Probably something to do with sound design. I stopped playing Ring of Pain for the same reason.

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I thought at first that it doesn't have much meaningful choices, but at least card order does matter. Tutorial didn't hint though that you can drag the cards into order you want and then just press g to play them all.

Still, maybe like in original Vampire Survivors, it requires few unlocks to get truly interesting. Though at least it's slightly intriguing to see how certain things are implemented in Vampire Crawlers. Plenty of the basic things from Vampire Survivors are there to be unlocked.

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Timing doesn't work for me at all this month as I have plenty of other things to do.

I still had time to try two demos and another one is even participating in the Next Fest.

A Planet Full of Cats [External Link] one of those hidden object games and there has been quite many in the series already. This one has metroidvania influences. As it's sci-fi themed this time around, it's probably closer to Metroid. And demo indeed has some hidden tools and routes.

Poly Bricks [External Link]. This is kind of Lego brick builder without step by step instructions. You can just rotate the original model and see what the individual pieces look like. Needs bit of patience, but still oddly satisfying.

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I took until April before I started playing this years games.

The Roottrees are Dead [External Link] was first notable release that I played. If you enjoy gathering clues and putting things together, you'll probably enjoy it. For people who have played Return of Obra Dinn, it might feel somewhat familiar.

If you like more of point and click adventure type of the game, there's The Drifter [External Link]. It's a mix of tense time limited sections and calmer traditional point and click stuff. Sadly I got preoccupied with something else, I have few chapters still left.

Tiny Bookshop [External Link] was bit of surprise. I found it from a bundle with another game I wanted, played the demo and I was hooked. Didn't know that I like running a bookshop, but the game has few things. Book sale lootbox thing where you roughly know what you might get. Selling of books is mostly automatic thing that happens in the background, but people come asking for book recommendations. That has you frantically browsing descriptions of real books and deciding if you actually have anything. There's small advantage if you have read the book yourself as then you know the suitability on bit more deeper level.

There's lot of other things going on, but those are not as cool as the actual bookshop things. But still they add some lore about people and places.

Lastly Ball x Pit [External Link] is fun mix of scrolling Arkanoid style block smashing with all kind of bonus things. And even town building on top of that which uses partly same mechanics.

Played few more games that are worthy of at least mention:

• Boltgun: Words of Vengeance [External Link]


• Spilled [External Link]


• Axe Ghost [External Link]


• Universe Horizon [External Link]


• World of Goo 2 [External Link] (Steam release was this year)


• DogWalk [External Link]


• Brutal John 2 [External Link]


• Is This Seat Taken? [External Link]


• Replicat [External Link]


• The Royal Writ [External Link]

Some of them don't have articles here, but list is so long that I don't have time right now to add longer descriptions.

As for Megabonk, I'm bit on the fence with it. It's quite a meme game with lot of jankines. But it does copy enough of the Vampire Survivors formula so I have already played it almost three hours. There's lot of things to unlock if you want to spend the time.

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Quoting: F.UltraNote that this is not the old Microprose from Sid Meier fame. This is an Australian individual that bought the rights to the Microprose logo in 2018. The last original Micropose studios closed shop in 1999 and the brand/ip have travelled through Spectrum HoloByte, Hasbro Interactive, Infogrames, Atari Interactive, Cybergun Group, Tommo and then finally to David Lagettie from Australia who AFAIK only bought the name and not the IP.

Out of curiosity, I did some digging and there are few things to add. It's bit more than just the name, "Wild Bill" Stealey joined the company unofficially to help out. Which maybe makes more sense as I think he was more the military simulator guy and Sid Meier is probably busy doing something for Firaxis anyway.

Also David has been buying all the IP that he has been able to buy. I can't list all the Microprose military simulations by name from memory, but there seems to be quite a few of them.

There's an article from several years ago [External Link] that opens up the situation lot more.

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Frame seems to provide meaningful upgrade to Index with the wireless. My tether is already quite tangled...

Though will probably wait for a review or two to see how it works in practice.

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did they forget to add content or something? I don't understand what is going on with this website there seems to be no actual data?

Works for me. Maybe they can't handle the load? Or maybe something else, but I don't know what would be as likely.

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Sorting by "Steam OS + Linux" just gets me a blank, black page now after the update. And the tile art no longer loads for that category button. Did they just remove it?

If they removed it, they didn't do it properly. Error code it throws is 500, which would indicate that the server is trying to do something, but the code crashes. For pages that truly don't exist, it just redirects to the store front page.

Maybe somebody pushed code to production that wasn't ready yet.

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I played the demo and, it have problems. Not only things feel generic, but it also have two major sins in a beat'em up game: you cannot grab a opponent and the strike's sound is very disappointing, like punching a pillow.

And looks like this is by design and they will not change it. Which is a shame, because it had the potential to be better than the TMNT game they released a couple years ago, but it is not.

I was wondering why people complain about not being able to grab. Played the demo again and found the answer. It's character specific.

Started with Wolverine and Venom. With both I was throwing opponents around all the time. Switched to Rocket Racoon and Captain America. Rocket Racoon throws a bomb instead of grabbing. Captain America throws a shield. I remember for earlier playing that She-Hulk is pretty much a wrestler and throws opponents around.

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