Steam Hype Weekly - Issue #6

We're closing in on our grand unveiling, but if you're here behind the curtains early, thank you for your interest, and we hope we've still had plenty for you to read! This week was packed with big releases, indie or otherwise, and we only had the opportunity to cover a couple handfuls of them to the degree they deserved, which means another jumbo-sized end-of-week roundup.

Once again, we're organizing things by segment and then alphabetically, to help you navigate this mountain of games a little easier. Buckle up, and here we go:

Update: Fort-builder RTS Cataclismo expands its campaign with DLC

Despite being sent a preview copy by Hooded Horse long ago, I've scarcely scratched the surface of Cataclismo, which is a shame as it seems like a great, almost LEGO-inspired strategy game, demanding smart building of your fortifications to hold off waves of horrible monsters at night. The Old Kingdom DLC bulks out the campaign significantly more, adding a strategic management layer, with you calling in assets & reinforcements by day to prepare for the coming nighttime sieges.

Update: Free retro horror adventure Cursed gets a remake

I've been a fan of the largely-unknown Cursed trilogy for a while. Three horror point-and-click adventures that increasingly grow into an action/RPG hybrid series. The first game, however, was released over 15 years ago, and was the solo developer's first attempt at making a game, so he's spent the past couple years remaking it from the ground up, adding new content along the way. It's still intentionally low-fi, looking like a lost DOS-era shareware game, but looks, feels and plays far better now. All three games are totally free, too!

Update: Darkest Dungeon ends a decade of horrors with new DLC

With Darkest Dungeon 2 released, and the series' iconic narrator now sadly passed away, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the original Lovecraftian dungeon crawl has been left to fallow. Far from it - the Fire's Edge DLC adds two more playable heroes to the roster, both new arrivals from the sequel, and bringing new twists and gameplay mechanics back to the Darkest Hamlet with them.

Update: Nioh 3 heads deeper into the abyss with its first DLC

Much as I loved the Nioh series thusfar (and all of Team Ninja's other Souls-adjacent hack n' slashers), I've been holding off on playing Nioh 3. Not because it's flawed, but because I KNOW that it will become a better, stronger game. Both the original and Nioh 2 saw massive overhauls, rebalancing and improvements to NG+ loops along with the release of their respective expansions, and this one looks to be no different. Still, the Hell Rising expansion DOES look fun, especially the new short-spear & shield fighting styles for both Samurai & Ninja forms.

Update: Tails of Iron 2 heads to sea with a major free expansion

An already very-good game gets significantly beefier. Or fishier, perhaps. The Blood & Brine expansion for rodent-scaled 2D souls-like Tails of Iron 2 adds a whole new watery region to explore, with a fishing minigame, a bundle of new quests and a hefty ten new bosses to throw down with. Plus crossover armor-sets to include based on Blasphemous, Cult Of The Lamb, Dave The Diver, Death's Door, moonlighter and Beyond Galaxyland.

Out Now: 10 Beautiful Postcards - Surreal adventures in art

A small, whimsical experience from TheCatamites, mad lad behind Space Funeral and Anthology of The Killer. This one's been around for a while on Itch, but this new edition has been polished up a little. Wander through 200 surreal photo-collage environments, soaking up the weird vibes. Pure games-as-art indulgence.

Out Now: Beastlink - Asymmetrical PvP kaiju battles

A multiplayer game I'd been hopeful for (I just love big kaiju battles) with a fun concept, of players racing to transform into a big monsters while the others attack on foot or with vehicles. Sadly, early user reviews for this one look rough, pointing out massive bugs (and not the cool kind that climb buildings), connection errors, and the monsters popping out of view far too early, making air attacks far harder than they should be. Here's hoping it does well enough to get the patches it needs.

Out Now: Blood In The Panopticon - Dark narrative ASCII shooter

Only had a chance to play this, but it's fascinating. A story-heavy roguelite twin-stick shooter with an ultra-low-fi ASCII aesthetic while you're in combat. The android girl that you're sending out on a one-bot crusade to destroy the human race frequently comes back with an fresh assortment of physical and mental traumas. I've only scratched the surface but there's promises of a heavily branching narrative and six endings to work towards.

Out Now: Bloodletter - Unsettling medieval medical deckbuilder

Another I've not had time to dig into despite being sent an early key. A dark medieval deckbuilder with a mythological and medical theme, solving your problems through trepanation, alchemy, and, of course, bloodletting. Really stylish, surreal gothic UI art going on, with juicy animations and audio, but can't speak for the gameplay.

Out Now: Brigador Killers - Guerilla mech assassin sandbox

The long-awaited sequel to the ultra-destructive mech war crimes shooter Brigador, entering early access. This time, you're playing as a crew of assassins hunting the pilots from the first game that destroyed your homeworld, in a more infantry-scale, sandbox style adventure. Only fly in the ointment is that one of the two lead developers (they're brothers) has said some utterly rancid stuff online (Content warning: Multiple flavors of bigotry). He claims to have turned over a new leaf, but it's hard to tell either way. Do your own research and go with your heart.

Out Now: Cicadamata - Marathon-inspired speedrunning FPS

Heavily inspired by the visuals of Bungie's Marathon reboot, the writing of the original trilogy, and early first-person platformers like Jumping Flash, this one looks a treat and plays great. I ran through the demo several times when it was available, and am sure that the full game is going to be even more enjoyable, twitchy, tricky FPS fun with a fantastic soundtrack.

Out Now: Crownhold - Incremental medieval strategy

A bit more complex than your average incremental game. Less clicking cookies, more juggling resources as you build up huge armies to invade your neighbors and protect your lands. Amusingly, some of the negative reviews complain that they only got 8 hours of game for $6. Which I guess is short by Endless Forever Game standards but seems reasonable to me?

Out Now: Dark Castle - A 1986 monochrome classic returns

You can't get more old-school than this. 1986 monochrome platformer, big among the early Mac crowd, before they invented colours. Runs better than on original hardware, but is otherwise every bit as uncompromising as the original release. Not really for me (outside of comedy challenge race events), but great to see it getting a fresh lease of life.

Out Now: Dash 'n' Drops - Smash-style roguelike platforming

One I'll be digging into this weekend for sure. A roguelite spinoff from the excellent Smash Bros-inspired (and exceptionally French) platformer Decline's Drops. All of the core mechanics are still there, but you're building out your move-set and perks over the course of each run, putting the focus squarely on the combat mechanics this time.

Out Now: Dreamcards - Oneiric, interpretive deckbuilding

A creative-looking roguelike deckbuilder about lucid dreaming, split into two halves. By day, you choose who to hang out with or what to do with your waking hours, your choices there determining your cards and strategies when you finally sleep. The mechanics look quite unlike any other card game I can think of.

Out Now: Drunken Rogue - Dungeon Crawl meets Pub Crawl

Promising comedy deckbuilding dungeon crawler from a Japanese indie studio. There's two playable characters, an overconfident vampire and an alcoholic rogue. The more heavily they drink, the more powerful and chaotic they become, at the cost of losing their grip on what's going on, unable to identify oncoming threats directly until you walk face-first into something deadly.

Out Now: Encroacher: Snakes - THE SNAKES ARE IN MY MIND

I never expected I'd see a tribute to Sierra's weirdest '80s adventure, Manhunter: New York. Even less so, a surreal snake-based pastiche of it. Cosmic snakes have taken over Mars. They have ordered you (a green ape) to track down a rebel. Your powers: The ability to project snakes from your mind to interact with the world. Your first goal: Get dressed. It gets so much weirder from here.

Out Now: Entropy - Dark, surreal RPG from Dread Delusion's dev

This one was a big hit during the last Next Fest, and folks seem to be loving the early access debut for this one too. A dark fantasy RPG with some great pixellated hand-drawn art and crunchy PS1-styled polygons. A semi-open adventure through a dying, demon-infested world, where only a bunch of oddballs, bards and mercenaries are daft enough to try to face the currently-happening apocalypse.

Out Now: Exark - Airship building roguelike autobattler

Part autobattler, part miniature town-builder, part worker-placement game. Your giant airship is travelling from station to station, menaced by monsters and pirates between locations. Build it (placing buildings, guns and staff on your grid-based deck) to endure each encounter, either by wiping enemies out, or hunkering down and tanking damage until you can safely arrive. Seems to have a nice range of play-styles.

Out Now: Feed The Scorchpot

Another management roguelike hiding Balatro-like mechanics under its dice-pool and town-building layers. Your hamlet is being menaced by a dragon, and you've got to keep up with its increasingly unreasonable calorie demands. Those numbers keep getting higher so it's up to you to find those lucky synergies that let you create broken amounts of food. Nice cozy board-gamey aesthetics.

Out Now: Gallipoli - 50-player competitive WW1 FPS

The latest in BlackMill Games' long-running series of realistic WW1 shooters, each one covering a different theatre of war. Previously Verdun, Isonzo and Tannenberg, and now the Gallipoli on the Ottoman front. At the time of writing, there's a respectable number of players around - 2000-3000, enough to fill a lot of 50-player servers, and user reviews are looking solid. As with the rest of the series, all the DLC is cosmetics.

Out Now: Grim Trials - Hack n' slash action roguelike

Looking like a fusion of elements from Hades and Cult of The Lamb and set in a brightly-colored cartoon underworld, this is another arcade roguelike, single-player only. Each run has you exploring a chain of hexagonal arenas, hunting for the exit/boss, then cashing in your resources on permanent upgrades back at home.

Out Now: Ground Zero Hero - irradiated comedy Survivors-like

It's Vampire Survivors - you know how this works - but set in a vaguely Rick & Morty-esque squishy, gooey, fleshy post-apocalypse full of weird mutant creatures. And of course, your own character grows increasingly weird over the course of a run, Binding Of Isaac style. It's bright, colorful and breezy but it's going up against IMMENSE competition.

Out Now: GUTTED: Infested Crypts - Creepy AND wet horror FPS

Ooey, gooey FPS from the developer of BLOODKILL: Goreblast Overkill - a game that I'd never heard of before but goddamn, that's a title. Early user reviews on this one are interesting, simultaneously identifying it as an asset flip pieced together out of stock assets for the most part, but also praising it for its simple, punchy combat and great guns.

Out Now: Hearth & Hamlet - Low-intensity kingdom builder

The second medieval town-builder inspired by idle games this week. User-reviews are a bit divided on this one, but mostly positive. Those after a gentle, mostly-linear incremental experience with a little bit of room for personal strategy seem happiest. The more strategy-oriented people are frustrated by limited options for expressive play.

Out Now: How To Fish - Co-op comedy fishing chaos

This weeks' big multiplayer goof-around hit. Stranded on a desert island, survival is order of the day, but mother nature seems to have a very personal grudge against your crew, sending increasingly absurd and rowdy sea-creatures to harrass you, forcing you to upgrade from fishing rods to heavy artillery. Not had a chance to play this one but it looks delightfully daft.

Out Now: how to kill a fly [H2KAF] - Complete this captcha

Strange, grimy, darkly humorous cyberpunk puzzle adventure. You are a corporate-owned construct. You are tasked with infiltrating human society and interacting with the world. You can only speak using words you've heard other people saying. Not had a chance to play this one but the vibes are simultaneously awful and enticing.

Out Now: Hyper Primate - Donkey Kong's Ultrakill

High-speed, wall-running arcade FPS where you're playing as a heavily armed ape, fighting through the jungles (both OG style and urban), grappling from target to target and keeping up kill combos. Looks like good dumb fun, and I can't help but approve of the jungle AK with a literal banana magazine. Big focus on high-score chasing, with each level having its own leaderboards.

Out Now: HyperCore: Rhythm Bullet Hell - The title says it all

I like me some rhythm games, and I like bullet hell shmups. This one looks like a slick blend of the two, albeit more of a bullet-dodger than a shooter, with the oncoming patterns all synched to the beat. Sadly this one has flown completely under the radar. User reviews are all positive so far, there's very few for this one yet. There IS a demo, which you should probably check out if it seems like your jam.

Out Now: Ironsand - Roguelike FPS with big bosses & cute critters

Good visuals on this one, and I always approve of massive boss fights, but middling user reviews so far for this co-op roguelike FPS. The consensus seems to be that it's an okay game that could be polished into a good one, given the chance, but hasn't exactly set the world on fire. The little fennec fox-like buddies you can recruit don't seem to be swaying the crowd.

Out Now: KOTAMON: The full title is far too long for this format

A game about collecting CCG cards, but not to play with them, but to re-sell. Honestly looking like a fun little time-sponge, with most of the game involving rummaging through an enormous trash-pile, finding torn or dirty cards to clean up, stick back together or otherwise restore, then spending your profits on upgrades to clean up faster. Almost all the cards feature PG-13 horny catgirl art riffing off other games, of course.

Out Now: Lazy Witch's Factory - Make demons do your busywork

A fast-paced factory building/automation game making its early access debut. You're playing as a witch trying to pay off a debt about to come due, so have just half an hour to sign contracts with demons (who are all cute anime girls, of course) to do all the heavy lifting and hit your quota, but you've still got to design the factory and chain all those conveyors together.

Out Now: Mexican Ninja - Roguelite brawler hybrid in a fusion world

This one hasn't sold much so far, but the user reviews are glowing for this roguelite brawler with a very silly setting. Set in the East Meets South fusion city of Nuevo Tokyo, with streets overrun by Narkuza Cartels. This one had the potential to be very sketchy, but appears to be just earnestly silly enough to get away with everything. While it doesn't look to hit the brawler high notes like the fantastic Absolum, it looks like good fun, and I hope it finds some traction sales-wise.

Out Now: Nimbit Frontier - Environmentalist roguelike creature collector

An unusual spin on the creature collector genre making its first step into early access. Yes, you're heading down into dungeons to fight creatures in action combat and capture the ones you want to bring home, but you're not making your captures fight each other. Instead, you're restoring them to health and building them enclosures that they can thrive in, building up a creature research zoo piece by piece. Few reviews, but almost all glowingly positive.

Out Now: Project PITT - Incremental physics-driven pit feeder

The past year has seen a whole subgenre of 'feed the ominous pit' games, and this is the latest one to find success. Your job: Mill rubber duckies (and other things), sweep them into the abyss for profit, building systems and upgrading your tools to launch ducks faster and more efficiently into the abyss. Reviews are mostly positive but many find the construction interface too clunky to really be efficient.

Out Now: Provoron - Creepy & critterful point & click adventure

A dark, creepy-cute point and click adventure set in a world of weird critter-folk - crows, rats, cats and more. Your character (a white crow named Ankou) can see demons. Everywhere, in fact. Are they real or just hallucinations? That seems to be ambiguous, at least at first. But they're going to try to save the world anyway, although how you respond to what you see if up to the player to decide.

Out Now: Puppergeist - All dogs go to Rhythm Heaven

A cute (and slightly sad), narrative-led one-button rhythm game, inspired mostly by the classic Nintendo Rhythm Heaven series. Claire the Witch is searching the dog underworld (they're ALL good dogs) for a missing pup, making friends and petting every ghostly critter she can get her hands on. Very cute and kid friendly, and honestly I'm surprised that they released it now instead of Halloween.

Out Now: Repterra - Dino-defense RTS leaves early access

One I've been looking forward to for a bit. A defensive RTS similar to They Are Billions, but with a much brighter, sillier setting. You're building fortifications to fend off giant waves of dinosaurs. This one's been in early access for a while, and the final version features a mission editor and full Steam Workshop scenario-sharing if the stock maps aren't enough. There's also three different factions to play as, including one that's all about taming and breeding your own dinosaurs instead of relying on walls.

Out Now: Roomballs - Arcade multiplayer football with roombas

A neat-looking little free game, if a bit simple. Like a simpler take on Rocket League, with two teams of four robot vacuum cleaners fighting to punt a ball into the goal. Online play supports 8 players, local split-screen multiplayer for up to four, and there's bots if you just want to learn the ropes and play it solo. Sadly, this one uses generative AI for the music and some 2D art, but looks like a nice party game otherwise.

Out Now: Sensory Overload - Eyeball-searing arcade evasion

It does what it says on the tin! A simple arcade game about falling through a deep but hand-crafted series of tunnels, weaving through obstacles, the closer you come to getting hit (without actually smacking into anything), the better you score. And of course, it's designed to be visually overwhelming, growing increasingly colorful and chaotic with each level. Great user reviews so far on this one.

Out Now: Stars Reach - Possibly overambitious space MMO

Another one I was hopeful for, but launching in a very rough state, even by early access standards. An ambitious sandbox space exploration MMO, inspired by Star Wars Galaxies and other pre-'theme park' designs. But even the positive few reviews so far bring up a laundry-list of issues that they're hoping are fixed. Probably not one to jump on early, then.

Out Now: Starsand Island - Cute & cozy anime-style farming

Another early access graduate, joining the Stardew Valley/Harvest Moon-inspired flood of games, with a cute and scenic modern-day setting. Playable solo or co-op, there's no doubt that this one's a looker, but despite being mostly liked during early access, the jump to v1.0 doesn't seem to have brought much fresh to the table. Players hoping for the game to evolve into something more involved seem more than a bit disappointed, with the majority of launch reviews being negative.

Out Now: T.W.I.R.L. - Childhood trauma nightmare horror

Another game released under the Haunted Publishing Syndicate banner. A replayable, multi-ending first-person horror short about a nine-year-old child sneaking out out of their room in the dead of night, exploring their house and wrestling with a secret that they need to keep. Low-fi, creepy and clearly personal. User reviews are mostly positive, with the negative ones mostly not vibing with the game's emotional core.

Out Now: The Lantern of the Laughless Saint - Morrowind'y RPG

Heck of a trailer for this one. A heavily Morrowind-inspired sandbox RPG set in a weird and clownly world, making its early access debut. The studio reckon they're going to be cranking out updates every week or two until the final release sometime next year. Big as it is, this is intended to be just the introductory chapter - it seems to be selling well and mostly pleasing people so far, too.

Out Now: The World Well: Blood of Caro - Post-Vampocalypse VN

A visual novel that seems to be landing well with readers so far. Set in a magical post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting, a pair of women - a cyborg survivalist and an itinerant mage - seek to survive and unravel the lost secrets of a world wracked by war against vampires. It promises lots of choices and multiple endings, and the art is no slouch either, with a mix of 3D pre-rendered backdrops and hand-drawn anime style stuff.

Out Now: Theropods - Prehistoric point & click adventure

A great-looking point-and-click adventure with big, chunky pixels and no dialogue to (literally) speak of. It's the buddy-adventure of a young cavewoman and an alien robot on a planet full of deadly dinosaurs and less-than-friendly tribes. Some early adopters have found the 'no dialogue' concept better on paper than in implementation, because it sometimes helps for your character to say WHY they can't do something or use an item in the way you were hoping.

Out Now: Tukoni: Forest Keepers

A very cute, chill point-and-click puzzler about a friendly, fuzzy forest spirit on a trip through the woods, meeting all the adorable critter-folk, solving their problems and generally being cuts as a button. Pretty light and casual puzzles from what I've seen but it's hard not to love its hand-drawn watercolor world.

Out Now: Vholume - Brutalist first-person parkour

One I'm definitely playing this weekend. A first-person parkour platformer set in a desolate brutalist megastructure. There's a demo out, and having played it and fallen in love with its complex movement mechanics and flow-state action, I can confirm this one has the sauce. Not surprising, given that one of its three main developers worked on the excellent (and free) PvP shooter Straftat.

Out Now: Vitalis - Solo dice-based mysterious roguelike adventure

A mysterious artifact that was sent to me earlier this week. I've only had a chance to do one real run through it, but I'm fascinated to see how its story of several strange people lost in the woods comes together and interacts with the 'simulation' meta-layer above. It also reminds me a bit of Vermis, a game that doesn't exist, except in several guide-books. My only real gripe so far is that there's a lot of typos and, misspellings and clunky phrasings in a game that's meant to be heavy on prose.

Out Now: Voidface - Bullet hell arena boss rush

I'm a sucker for a good twin-stick shooter, and a well-designed boss fight is almost always more interesting than fighting waves of disposable grunt enemies, so this one has me eager to try it. There's a demo, too, but I've not had the chance to go hands-on with this one. But it certainly looks and sounds the part!

And with that, we slide into the weekend smelling of molten asphalt and unbound energy. Anything on this week's docket (all things I'd play if I had infinite time) tickle your fancy? Or think we missed something fantastic? We're here to spread the good word of gaming, so get up on the pulpit and let's hear your sermon in the box below.