Fading Echo Key Art
Image: Emeteria & New Tales

The great Steam machine is fully up to speed now, and this week has been absolutely jam-packed with impressive new games. Not that last week was a slouch either. There were so many news stories, releases and announcements that we didn't have time to give a full round in the spotlight. Once again, here's a rapid-fire roundup of everything else we thought noteworthy.

Hope you've got cash to spare and a free weekend, because there's a lot of exciting stuff to play:

News: Crisol: Theater of Idols team Vermilia Studios shuts down

As reported by Chris Scullion over at VGC, another hugely talented independent studio has disbanded. Despite the recent Crisol: Theater of Idols being a critically praised, gorgeous-looking survival horror game, it seemingly didn't sell enough to keep the studio running. The company has laid off all employees and ceased operations. This stings all the more, given publisher Blumhouse Games put out the praise-laden accolades trailer for the game above.

Out Now: Helix: Descent N Ascent - Stylish monochrome puzzle adventure

Quietly released to little fanfare, but this one should be on the radar of puzzle fans. A short-ish but densely packed adventure through a monochrome world. Plays a bit like all the puzzle parts from a Zelda dungeon, extracted and refined into their own game, with new abilities opening up whole new puzzle concepts as they unlock.

Out Now: Disgaea Mayhem - Disgaea, Musou style

Nippon Ichi's anarchic Disgaea series of strategy-RPGs might not have the same cultural clout it used to, but its world of cartoon anime excess still has some charm. This spinoff transposes the Numbers Go Up lunacy of the series to a Dynasty Warriors-like hack n' slash formula. Mixed reviews on this one though, mostly citing a short story mode padded out by a lot of grinding out stats. Which is pretty Disgaea, really.

Out Now: Dewdrop Dynasty - The OTHER bug-themed metroidvania

Years in development, this one's a low-fi metroidvania with big chunky pixels and a whimsical world of bugs n' critters to explore. By all accounts, a very solid entry in the genre with some fun gun-recoil-based movement mechanics and great music, but not massively long.

Out Now: Hard Edge - War Zone - Metal Gear (Acid)!?

Worth mentioning just because this one's so conceptually bizarre. A tactical card-battler similar to Konami's tragically un-ported Metal Gear Acid series, built for PvP, and based on obscure PS1 adventure brawler Hard Edge, aka T.R.A.G. in the US. Doesn't look to have sold much, sadly, but I appreciate it existing.

Out Now: Meathook - Gory lightgun-inspired arcade shooter

A short, offbeat take on the old arcade lightgun shooter, designed for mouse-based control. Has a real quirky feel, with physics-based weapons having noticeable heft to them as you swing them around the screen, plus interesting reloading mechanics. Just note that it's an authentically arcade-length game, designed for replay.

Out Now: Pass the Fear - Twin-stick bullet hell roguelike

Yet another contender for the Enter The Gungeon crown emerges. Pass The Fear is a slick-looking take on the twin-stick roguelike formula, with more of a focus on crafting absurd builds through collecting perks, rather than relying purely on your weapons and skill at dodging. Not that you shouldn't be dodging.

Out Now: Birds of War - Free-flying bird deathmatch

'It's like COD, but you're a bird'. Well, really it's more of a free-flying hero shooter, but without the shooting, because birds don't have guns. If nothing else, you should watch the trailer for this one. It's a deeply chaotic trip, featuring shoebills, pigeons and the studio's origins. What happens when an Australian rapper and an eSports pro team up? A game about birds, apparently.

Out Now: Scrap Mechanic - Construction sandbox adventure

Another one that's been in early access for years, finally graduated to full release with a full story-driven main quest. An open-world survival crafting adventure, with farming and optional co-op, but with the big twist of letting you build your own utility vehicles in Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts style. Combat, mining, or farming- they do whatever you build them to do.

Out Now: Staffer Retro: A Supernatural Mystery Quest - Anime investigation adventure

Ah, the curse of the backlog. I've had the original Staffer Case - a lushly illustrated Phoenix Wright-adjacent detective adventure with some interesting logic puzzles - on my wishlist for ages. So long that it went and spawned a sequel that looks even more slick and polished, and this one has a pretty big (Japanese) voice cast, too. I hope to make some time for this one soon!

Out Now: OFFBEAT - Make music with unusual instruments

You can make electronic music with just about anything. Modded Game Boys have become a standard tool of modern DJs, and you can get some amazing sounds out of old floppy disk drive motors. Offbeat is part game (asking you to produce music for clients to buy new gear), but also part synth music studio, using weird gadgets and toys to make the sounds you're feeding into your compositions. Lovely pixel art too.

Out Now: Hand of Fate: Hordes - Deckbuilding bullet heaven spinoff of an indie classic

While I'm a little sad that we never got a second sequel to excellent deck-building hack n' slasher Hand Of Fate, the series still lives with a Vampire Survivors-like Bullet Heaven spin. And of course, the chatty game-master returns, commenting on all the cards picked and choices made. The aesthetic is there, and the vibes are still immaculate.

Out Now: The Dream Of A Cockspur - A point-and-click cosmic nightmare

Surreal and unsettling. A point-and-click puzzler with an ever-shifting art style (including some unhinged photo-collage stuff going on) set in a parallel timeline where mankind found mysterious new materials on the moon, leading to accelerated space exploration. Then things go badly wrong. Everything here just feels slightly wrong, in a very compelling way.

Out Now: Codename Cure II - A free zombie-grinding co-op FPS

Free stuff's cool, especially when it's a surprisingly polished zombie-grinding FPS (in the vein of the Killing Floor series) that won't cost you a penny. Well, not unless you want it to. Codename Cure 2 has some rough edges, but nothing that can't be overlooked at the price, especially if you can rope in four friends to play with you. There's one piece of paid DLC that adds a couple more weapons if you really like it.

Announced: Critterville Goes Bankrupt - Cozy yet satirical town management

Technically announced a while back, but this is the first long-form gameplay trailer we've had for this charming, slightly unhinged town management game. You've been assigned as administrator of Critterville, a town inhabited by cute little cartoon critter-folk. They are not good for the economy. This one's headed to Kickstarter soon, and I reckon it'll do great.

Out Now: Tormentum II - More unsettling point-and-click puzzling

Yet another spooky point-and-click adventure, this time cribbing more than a few notes from H.R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksiński, at least in aesthetics. Set inside a warped, gothic cyber-world, you're playing as a programmer trapped in his own simulation. While there's a similar tone and style here, you don't need to have played the first Tormentum either, though it is a good'un.

Out Now: Fading Echo - Platform action-RPG with fun elemental magic

A very cool but undersold little gem that launched this week. A slick, high-energy platform adventure set in a techno-fantasy world coming apart at the seams. You play as One (who shares an actress and personality with Karlach from Baldur's Gate 3), a shapeshifting water-mage able to suck up properties from fluids when in her cute, bouncy Splatoon-inspired liquid blob form. A good looker with great movement.

Demo: Low-Budget Repairs - Chaotic home 'improvement' set in '90s Poland

A great demo, putting a slightly unhinged, cost-cutting spin on DIY home-improvement sims like House Flipper. You're a bottom-rung handyman in impoverished '90s Poland, and so long as the job gets done, every corner cut means more money in your pocket at the end of the day. So improvise and don't sweat the occasional mistake or twenty.

Out Now: Foghorns Drown - Nautical but nasty short horror adventure

Released alongside the excellent MOLDRISE this week (and in a discounted bundle with it), Foghorns Drown is a short, increasingly nightmarish story (under two hours for most) about being the ferryman for a strange, isolated village in a fog-shrouded lake. All delivered in crunchy, retro 'Haunted PS1' aesthetics.

News: Future? No Thanks! delayed by ultra low-fi nudity fears

One game I was looking forward to this week was hit by a last-minute delay for the silliest of reasons. The satirical comedy adventure about a grouchy old man tapping out of life in a future utopia that's grown too comfortable is stuck in Content Verification hell, according to developer Molleindustria. Apparently Valve needs more time to thoroughly vet several seconds of scandalously bare-yet-untextured polygons roughly resembling two boobs and one bum.

Out Now - Dreadweave - Solo extraction shooter in a supernatural hellscape

Making a strong early access debut, Dreadweave is the latest single-player take on the extraction shooter genre, taking equal inspiration from STALKER, Escape From Tarkov, and maybe a dash of Stranger Things or Silent Hill. Scavenge and survive in a haunted world with a turbo haunted, fog-wreathed nightmare flip-side. All without the fear of a camper headshotting you from a mile off.

Out Now: Meowgic - Voice-controlled feline co-op wizardry

The latest in a growing genre of voice-controlled spellcasting games, this one's downright adorable. You and your pals are chubby little cat wizards, raiding magical strongholds for their loot. Microphones are required, as your spells require you to say the magic words... although you can rewrite the words if you want to get even sillier with it.

Out Now: Cat Gladiator - Monster Hunter: Flash Style

There's something weirdly nostalgic about the chunky, vectorized, segmented sprites of this one. Reminds me of the days of flash-based browser games. Cat Gladiator is obviously inspired by Capcom's Monster Hunter series, but boils it down into an arcade arena brawler, playable solo or online - cute little cat warriors against giant monsters.

Out Now: Ludus Magnatus: Gladiator Manager Simulator - Bloodsport business management sim

Two gladiator-themed games, back to back? This one's a little darker and grimmer, obviously. Making a decent first showing in early access, this one's a hands-off business management game about running a gladiator school in ancient Rome. Hire the best, keep your stars alive, and work your way up through the leagues.

Out Now: Soulbound: Online - Indie action-RPG MMO

This one had a rough early access launch, but seems to be slowly finding its footing. Understandable, given the game's ambition. Launching an MMO is daunting enough for big corporations. Doing so as a tiny indie studio is even more daunting. This one's a fast-paced action RPG with a shared overworld, huge enemy swarms, and instanced dungeons that you can tackle solo or drag a party in with you.

Out Now: Gurei - Non-linear platform boss rush

Turns out there were two interesting boss-rush hack n' slashers released this week. Gurei manages to stand apart from Rubinite by being side-scrolling, having a cool mostly-monochrome aesthetic, and letting you pick your poison. You can tackle the bosses in any order, but the difficulty of all the surviving targets goes up with each one you beat. So, good replay value.

Updated: Crawling Angels - End of The Line - Nightmare physics puzzling in a cursed carnival.

A final update, adding some extra features, game modes, and secrets to unravel in this perfectly horrible little experience. Solve 'riddles' by performing violent acts upon a living but immortal stuffed chicken toy and slowly unravel a story that gave me some upsetting dreams. From the developer of the excellent Brutal Orchestra, and the upcoming Clown Meat.

Out Now: High Times - Solve people's problems with 'edible' donuts.

Coyly avoiding any implications of drug use, High Times is a game about running an extremely normal donut shop that just happens to sell mood-altering donuts, each type of topping having a different effect. So perhaps a cuter take on the excellent cyberpunk bartender sim VA-11 Hall-A, plus promises of letting you date your customers.

Out Now: Avatar Legends: The Fighting Game - short description

By all accounts, a solid fighting game based on the popular Cartoon Network magical martial arts adventure series. Better yet, it looks fantastically authentic to the cartoon's style, both in motion and in screenshots. Unfortunately, I'm probably going to be skipping on this one as the studio decided to quietly hire disgraced Skullgirls studio head Mike Zaimont.

Out Now: Void Future: Hacking Protocol - Cyberpunk hacking with first-person stealth

This one seems like a no-brainer for our list of games that make you feel like a master hacker. This one hits all the notes, with both hacking-themed minigames, command-line security-cracking, and the chance to sneak around buildings Immersive Sim style, scanning for network weaknesses, disabling cameras, and evading guards.

Out Now: Colossus - Eternal Blight - Pixel-art hack n' slash action RPG adventure

Another promising early access debut. Slightly Zelda-inspired, but with traditional RPG progression and heavily skill-based combat. Currently only a few hours long, with seemingly some replay value intended due to plenty of class-building options and the option to give the world's soul-devouring corruption a chance and embrace the darkness, if you so please.

Out Now: Carnival Hunt - Asymmetrical multiplayer horror

Another challenge rises for Dead By Daylight's crown, this one with a spooky carnival theme. Five players are cute little clockwork bunny puppets, trying to open up the path to escape while winding each other's springs up to keep them moving. The sixth player is one of several possible monsters, searching the halls for the rabbits. Not as grim and violent as DBD and with middling reviews so far, but this one has potential.

Out Now: Dragon Ruins II: Aftermath - High-speed autobattling dungeon crawl

Let's be honest, starting a new RPG is an intimidating process. It's a big time commitment, and there's a lot to learn. The Dragon Ruins series bills itself as 'dungeon crawlers for tired people'. A Wizardry-inspired, grid-based dungeon crawl where party building is easy, and fights happen automatically in the background as you wander. This one's a standalone expansion for Dragon Ruins 2, with 21 more dungeons to plunder.

Updated: Path of Exile: Curse of The Allflame - The F2P ARPG hit heads underwater

Few genres endure quite as well as action RPGs. Grim Dawn isn't the only one getting an expansion this week. Despite Path Of Exile 2 recently seeing its biggest update yet, its predecessor is still seeing just as much love. This time, a new league (a quarterly side-campaign and reason to roll a new character) with a haunted underwater theme. Plunder sunken treasure while fighting ghost-pirates and abyssal critters.

And that's it for another week! Always good to remind ourselves that, no matter how the industry is struggling, there are more great games than any of us will find time to play. Played any of the above and think they're essentials? Think we missed out on something crucial? Sound off in the comments below.

But before you go, a reminder: Be excellent to one another. The world is stressful enough without making life tougher for the people around you. Until next time, and have a great weekend!