Steam Hype Weekly - Issue #9

An unusual week, this one! Much lighter on the AAA blockbusters (plenty of announcements, though), but some real indie heavy-hitters. Are you getting lost in Valheim's Deep North, or exploring No Man's Sky's transmogrified space? Personally, I've been spending the past couple of evenings blazing through SPRAWL zero, which has been a great bit of daft throwback FPS fun. Plus, we're still watching the smoke rise over the Wardogs launch, which saw over 340,000 players absolutely crushing their login servers. Not bad for a smaller studio.

As is standard procedure (now we've worked that out), it's any demos and updates taking the lead, then an alphabetical roundup of this week's interesting releases. 3, 2, 1, let's jam:

Update: Limbus Company - Chapter 10: PUNCTUM

I'm not the kind to recommend gacha games, but Limbus Company is a rare exception. This is a thoroughly indie production, with the business model as a means to an end. And that end is delivering a colossal long-form visual novel/RPG hybrid with dense literary allusions and an absolutely bleak tone. Instead of marketing the next bouncing-bosomed waifu (not that it really has any of those), Limbus Company's trailers are focused on the characters, story, and mechanics to come. And this next update looks to be a doozy, adding overhead Fear & Hunger-esque dungeon crawling to an already-complex combat engine.

Out Now: Alchemy Factory - Build me your strongest factory, Potion Seller

Another factory automation game, this time fused with a store management game and with a cute fantasy medieval setting. It's also operating on an interesting mix of scales. While you're building in a city-scale world, you're here to sell potions, delivered by pint-sized (literally) conveyor belts and flung gracefully onto store shelves by your automated catapults. This one has been in early access for a while, but is now fully complete, with a decently stocked Steam Workshop to boot.

Out Now: Asgard's Fall: Viking Survivors - Survivors, but Vikings

It's Vampire Survivors but with Vikings, and some adorable teensy-tiny sprites. This one's a little faster and more aggressive than many of its peers, with a dash button to let you dart through dangerous monster walls and keep ahead of oncoming damage. It's a pity that the full game doesn't have the same heavy metal energy as the trailer, mostly being pseudo-authentic-sounding Nordic tunes.

Out Now: Barbarian Saga: The Beastmaster - Manimal Metroidvania

I haven't had a chance to play this, and there are so few user reviews that it's hard to get a sense of how people are responding, but this metroidvania has a fun barbarian fantasy cartoon aesthetic. Here's hoping that it can find its footing in this incredibly crowded market. There's a big, exploration-heavy platformer dropping seemingly every day.

Out Now: BrokenLore: Don't Lie - Psychological horror in Japan

The latest in the relatively popular and long-running series of psychological horror games. Each one has a different setting, and often completely different styles. Don't Lie is about a Japanese girl named Junko, who has retreated from society and - seemingly - reality itself. At least, I don't think enthusiastic cel-shaded anime girls are part of modern existence, and now I'm wondering if I should dare to look out of the window. Surprisingly few user reviews on this one, but mostly positive.

Out Now: DeadZoned - Low-fi post-apocalyptic retro roguelike

One on my to-play list for the weekend. Deadzoned is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi roguelike dungeon crawl in the classic, grid-based, uncompromising sense. It's also the latest game from Caiysware, an offbeat solo indie developer who has been releasing banger after banger for years. No fixed genre, but with a throughline of weird humor and goofy wordplay. Judging by the 50+ user reviews on this one so far, every one positive, it looks like they've done it again.

Out Now: DIG Raiders: Anomaly Extraction - Screwball mining

Looking like an explosion at a stock assets factory, this co-op mining, exploration, and incremental base-building game looks like surprisingly wacky fun with friends. Dig holes, get money, use money to build up your surface operation while digging into deeper, weirder locations with increasingly hostile denizens. Despite being well promoted, this one doesn't seem to have made much of an impact, though, with only a few dozen players online. Still, initial reviews are positive.

Out Now: Effulgence RPG - JRPG combat, ASCII text style

I've had this one on my radar for a while purely for its fantastic aesthetic. A smoothly animated, turn-based JRPG set in a world made entirely out of ASCII. That doesn't mean it's 2D, though - objects spin, bounce, and move with real 3D presence in a way that just looks delightfully funky. This one has been in early access for a while, and the V1.0 launch doesn't seem to have moved the needle much sales-wise, but it's one I want to try sometime.

Out Now: HoloTrials: Case Covered - Free VTuber Courtroom Mystery

Yet another indie title based on those wacky HoloLive streamers. This time, it's a full-on Phoenix Wright parody, albeit set in high school, so probably with stakes a bit lower than murder. There's plenty of those around, but by all accounts, this is a pretty good, decently long adventure. Plus, it's completely free, and - most interestingly - eschews traditional anime aesthetics for a sharp, distinct cartoon look all of its own.

Out Now: In Falsus - Story-heavy multi-input rhythm fusion

Another that I really want to carve out some time for. In Falsus is a fascinating-looking rhythm game with a dense sci-fi story hopping between multiple protagonists and light RPG elements, with character builds affecting your stats during the rhythm action. The rhythm stuff is where it gets real interesting, as it is simultaneously a six-button game played on a keyboard, but with a higher layer of analogue notes that you need to hit with the mouse on the other hand, which feels like it's going to hurt my brain. Badly.

Out Now: Magical Blush - Top-down magical metroidvania

This one hasn't sold much so far, and it seems like people are missing out because this one looks like a VERY slick mixture of Zelda, Metroidvania (honestly the same genre?), and fast magical hack n' slash, with combat reminding me of the excellent Wizard of Legend. Some slick semi-procedural 2D sprite animations, too.

Out Now: Roguecraft DX - Bite-sized roguelike, originally on Amiga

Finally a PC release for this little gem. Our man Damien took a deeper dive on this one over at Time Extension, but the abridged version is that this is a cute, remarkably whimsical (especially considering the Cthulhoid aesthetics) minimalist dungeon crawler originally made for a bunch of retro computers, including the Amiga. It's simple but tactical, with at most a small handful of enemies per screen as you attempt to conserve resources, level up, and position yourself to attack as safely as you can. Great music and sprites, too.

Out Now: Shroom and Gloom - Roguelike deckbuilding with umami

From the developers of the delightfully weird musical teen adventure Teenage Blob comes... something completely different, but still very blobby. This one's a stylish roguelike deckbuilder, where you have separate camping and combat decks, letting you cultivate new mushrooms by night and fight in the dungeon by... is there even day and night underground? Great, goopy style and a real sense of mystery and adventure as you trudge through the tunnels in first-person.

Out Now: Sunken Engine - Haunted ship repair sim

The latest in the growing subgenre of Weird Job Sims, this one has just left early access, after a relatively well-regarded initial foray. Like an inverted Hardspace: Shipbreaker, people bring you their beaten, malfunctioning, potentially deeply cursed ships, and it's your job to hammer out the dents, replace the busted parts, and maybe exorcise it a little before you send them out to sea again. While user reviews are mostly positive, the launch has brought a fresh, more negative wave, mostly highlighting some gnarly bugs. Hopefully nothing that can't be fixed up, or exorcised, for that matter.

Out Now: The Crust - Lunar colony builder with automation bits

Another early access graduation. This time, it's an industrial moon colony sim, where you've got to both juggle the needs of your people and construct conveyor-heavy automated factories to extract the resources needed to keep your little moon-people alive. Looks decent for what it is, but the downside is that, unfortunately, the game has some AI art, and it really does stand out. Fingers crossed that criticism can drive them to remove it.

Out Now: The Loopler - Slot car racing, Balatro style

Balatro has become more than just a subgenre or a style of game design. It has an aesthetic. A sound. A way that its sprites move. This game is shamelessly riffing off all of them, and is looking pretty slick for it. Instead of poker, this roguelike number-stuffer is about slot car racing, that most millennial of bygone hobbies. Get your car going faster and faster, maximize your scoring, and make pleasing sounds happen.

Out Now: The Well is Not Empty - Surreal psychological horror

Sometimes a game is clearly just someone's worst nightmare hammered into polygons and code. That's the only explanation I can come up with for this one, where you're sent down into a seemingly dried-up well, armed with nothing but a rusty spoon, to find out why. The tunnels are full of strange, gangly people, hungry rats, and weirder things that seem to have carved out their own weird, rotting world below.

Out Now: Touhou Koumakyou: New Classic - Classic shmup remake

There are few indie franchises more influential and ubiquitous than Touhou. You've seen these frilly-hatted girls around somewhere online, and even if you don't know their names or any of the games they're from, everyone else seems to. While the earliest games were for retro Japanese microcomputers, this is the first-ever Windows game in the series, given a modern lick of paint and a long-overdue official English translation. It's still an excellent shmup, and a fine first step into the massively popular world of Genskoyo.

Out Now: Tower Lab - Physics-based twist on tower defence

Who doesn't like a good tower defense game? Smart, but not TOO smart. Still, too much familiarity can breed contempt, which is why I hope that this early access release can find its footing. Enemies in Tower Lab don't have health. The only thing that kills them is pushing them off the map, which means you're optimizing for kinetic effect rather than raw damage. It's an interesting formula.

Out Now: Veterum - Hex-based fantasy strategy RPG

A classic hex-based strategy RPG, like a grittier, European take on Fire Emblem. This one's a successor to 2017's decently liked Warbanners, and just launched out of early access this week after several years of public playtesting and refinement. Reviews are mostly positive, with some players not too happy with the unit variety. This one's purely single-player, too, so no butting heads with friends.

Out Now: Wanderburg

Now this here is a genuinely creative take on the survivors-like genre, launching into early access. You're driving around a physics-based cartoon medieval tank, on wheels, treads, or even giant spider-legs. As it's a vehicle, your turning circle is limited, and your weapons are fixed, so you're constantly trying to position your cannons and giant cartoon hammers to hit enemies while avoiding damage and scooping up resources. This one has been a big hit sales-wise, although critical response is mixed, mostly citing balance issues with meta-progression issues and weak upgrades. Nothing that can't improve in early access, and I hope they do.

Out Now: Warlord: Awaji

Japanese-themed sequel to the Roman-themed Warlord: Britannia. A first-person medieval frontline war sim, with you alternating between building fortifications, gathering resources, and assembling squads, then leading them on the front in Mount & Blade-esque action combat. While the first game had fairly abstract, Duplo-esque little people without legs, this one has more detailed (if still slightly low-fi) fully animated human characters. Initial reviews are mostly positive but with some complaints about performance, repetition, and less challenge than its predecessor.

And with that, we're all set. Next week, we're launching in full. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your pets if they'll listen. We've got so many games to show you, and so much fun to have. We'll be doing our best to make this the best, weirdest, most informative PC games site around, and we hope you'll be here for the long haul.

See you on the other side!