The second week of June is going to bring fifteen new titles, with a little bit of everything mixed in throughout the week. The list promises some very good games and great fun.
The first releases of the week come on June 9, and leading the way is 1971 Project Helios, a turn-based strategy that has a group of eight people team up for a common cause.
The game features a mix of ranged and melee combat, and various other ways to dispose of your enemies. You are also faced with the harsh Arctic weather which will slowly eat away at friend and foe alike.
Combining different characters and facing each situation depending on who is currently on the team gives the player tonnes of ways to approach the game and eventually reach one of the three endings.
The game gives off a dark atmosphere, and the tense setting combined with the plot gives the right weight for the gameplay. While it hasn’t had its mettle tested, it shows promise and the potential for a really good and intense gaming experience.
Moving away from strategy and into the world of randomness with Demon's Tier, a Dungeon-RPG roguelike topped off with some arcade and adventure elements.
The game is the youngest in the Diabolical Mind trilogy, combining the best bits of the previous titles, and dishing out a cool story with the possibility of two-person co-op.
You go on a mission to defeat some demons in king Thosgar’s dungeon, adventure ensues.
The game rides the retro bandwagon, but hiding under that is an interesting game that could turn out to be a big hit if the over-saturated retro market has a nice spot the game could claim as its own.
Recotechnology S.L.
Another game riding the retro trend is Jump King, a game where your only goal is to reach the Smoking Hot Babe at the top.
The simple mechanics of the game, combined with the fact you can fall all the way down to the start if you are not careful, makes for an easy to play hard to master type of game.
And with the fact that a small mistake can send you tumbling down indefinitely, it also comes as a high-risk, high reward, if you consider a mythical Smoking Hot Babe a great reward, that is.
A potential heaven for speedrunners, the game might have great appeal to many gamers, both casual and the not so casual.
June 11 brings us another strategy game, Ancestors Legacy, the historically inspired RTS that gives players the chance to play as one of the four medieval nations locked in mortal combat.
The game has a single-player campaign inspired by historical events, the inspired bit is heavily emphasised, because if you are looking for a history lesson, you came to the wrong place.
As it is almost always the case, the historical facts have been heavily skewed for the sake of gameplay, and in some spots, the game is even better for it.
While that fact may deter some hardcore armchair historians, for most players who come into the game for the experience of playing a solid game with good mechanics and an interesting story to tell, the game will probably be good enough as is.
The gameplay is fun and each faction has its own strong-suits and weaknesses, forcing you to play around them, or you could always turn towards the trusty RTS tactic of cheesing the most value for money unit and roll over everything and anybody.
For those who like to use tactics, the game has a nice balance during combat were mistakes, and not thinking ahead, can lose you the game very easily but good planning can make you feel like the talented leader of armies that you are.
1C Entertainment
Moving to a “lighter” setting, Evan's Remains, an adventure, puzzle, platformer that has you searching for a lost boy named Evan.
A seemingly dark tale takes you on a great adventure with a very detailed plot and colourful characters that create deep and dynamic story.
The game has the player solving puzzles by utilizing different platforms with various effects, figuring out the best course of action, and the right order of things to successfully progress the story. The story, being a key aspect of the game, closely followed by the gameplay and mechanics, at first glance looks like a labour of love that was meticulously created to bring the world to life and give a meaning to the puzzles.
For the puzzlers who like to avoid stress and adventure, there is Glass Masquerade Double Pack, consisting of Glass Masquerade and Glass Masquerade 2: Illusions.
The games are designed to be played in a leisurely fashion, enjoying the soundtrack and art.
With beautiful stained-glass depictions of 20th-century surrealism, fantasy, and country-inspired pieces, the art lover in each of us will surely find something to appreciate about the game.
A simple and straightforward game, with beautiful execution, doing what it is supposed to do very well, it will suit almost anyone looking to challenge themselves or just relax with some puzzles. If perhaps you hate relaxing with a passion, then Project Warlock is the title you are looking for.
Heavily inspired by games such as the original Doom, Hexen, and Wolfenstein, it brings the retro shooter back to life with a burning passion.
It represents simple, mindless fun of just taking a shotgun and blowing up demons and robots alike, just to see the sparks and gore fly all over.
The game built on what its predecessor started, and preserves the legacy with hot lead and spilt demon brains. A wonderful game to have, if your idea of fun is unloading two thousand bullets per minute in all directions, just because you can.
And if just mutilating your opponents with a military arsenal of a small country was not enough, you have amazing warlock superpowers that can do all sorts of crazy stuff, and allow you to continue you destruction fest with even more ways to obliterate your enemies.
gaming company
Last for the day is Magazine Mogul, a story about becoming the greatest fake news magazine in the world. Not really, it is a simulator about running your own magazine, creating media and scavenging the local area for the biggest piece of the year.
Apart from the new theme, the game is pretty standard as simulators go, it simulates in a creative way an approximation of what the job actually looks like, and gives players a chance to put themselves in the role of the boss.
Like many other simulators, it has the potential to be a very fun little game, even one you could sink countless hours in and not realise you have spent the last sixteen hours working a fictional job.
The last day of releases for the week, June 12, brings us seven titles and they are a really mixed bag; you have everything from simulators to action arcade games.
And fist up is House Flipper, a simulator in which you buy houses, flip them and sell for a profit.
As many other simulators, this one also has its own little niche market it could, and probably will cover, but besides that, there is nothing to it, a simple simulator for people who like simulators. It does what it sets out to do, and it makes a game out of simulating someones job, simple, easy and nothing too special.
Moving on to something with a bit more substance, Pew Paw, a top-down, bullet hell in which you and your canine companion fight countless hordes of zombies that want to consume yous succulent brains. It would be an okay little game at best, if not for the fact that it feels, looks, and is a mobile game.
Now, there is nothing wrong with that, but it just feels a bit off. The pacing, the gunplay, and everything about it just looks like its meant to stay on the phone screen.
But if you have no gripes with that, you will be getting a game good for killing time, with no real story or bigger objectives, except kill countless zombies and then the boss, over and over again.
Kairosoft
Have you ever wanted to know what the film series Cube would look like in-game form? HALF DEAD answers that question in detail. Now it is obvious the game got its idea from the film series and tried its best to replicate the tense atmosphere and the dread of opening the next door.
With two-player co-op, you and a buddy of your choice can work together to find your way through the perilous maze of rooms filled with deadly traps, specifically made to make that task near impossible.
Although not the best looking game out there, its goal is to make the players on edge and constantly wary of every little noise and movement, and if it stayed true to the material used as inspiration, then it should have an easy time doing what it’s supposed to.
If every week had a contest for the most interesting game idea, Spacejacked might be this weeks top contender. The 2D tower defence game utilizes fun tricks to keep the player under pressure, and thinking the whole time.
The game has the player rushing across different rooms, building and rebuilding towers to defend against each wave while simultaneously calculating which towers they need to take down as to be able to defend the next room.
Intense and fun, just how tower defence games should be. It is a well-made game all around with multiple fun aspects, from the mechanics to the story, it does a great job at drawing you in and keeping you glued to your seat.
Dots 8, despite being a perfect way to waste countless hours is also an amazing, friendship destroying game that will have you going mad at your friends, or even yourself when you miss that perfect encirclement because you made one wrong move.
The game digitalises the classic pen and paper game of dots, improving upon it tenfold, giving you the options to play either occupy territory or capture enemy dots with up to eight players per game.
Even the tempo can be set, form high speed to slow, and methodical mind game speed, even offering different themes for playing during the day or at night. A very fun, strategic game you can play to relax, compete, or just have fun with people.
Ratalaika Games
Another top-down, bullet hell makes its way onto the list, and its name is Rogue Robots, allowing for up to four players to go around causing mayhem across the city.
The game is simple by design, having you and your buddies face endless waves of cops that are trying to put you out of commission, and destroying the city along the way. A pretty self-explanatory game, just mindless fun for a couple hours.
Last but not least for the week is Warborn, an action strategy game that has you controlling big robots so you can fight other big robots.
Your objective is to gain ground, dispose of the enemy and win, that much is obvious. To do that you have various mechs, weapons, and reinforcements, which you have to strategically manoeuvre around the playing field so you can achieve your objective in the most efficient way possible.
