Slow Game Club Returns in 2027

As I am sure some of you know, and many of you do not, 2026 saw something called the Slow Game Club. It was something of a cool idea that I vaguely heard about late last year, but it was actually sold out by the time I did. What it is, in their words, is ” No endless libraries, no recommendation engines, and no algorithm deciding what you should play. Just twelve games, one a month, hand-picked by people who love games and want you to discover something extraordinary.“

That is the simple idea behind Slow Game Club, and to tell you the quality of games coming up, some of last year’s games are in the press release, and I will share those, but the first game for 2027 has been announced already, and that is Esoteric Ebb, with the rest being announced well by the time you read this, honestly.

Here are some of the important highlights from the press release below.

Key information about Slow Game Club

  • £49/€59/$59 annual launch pricing
  • An amazing indie game delivered every month via Steam key
  • A members-only Discord community to discuss and review each game, including a curated book-club style discussion group.
  • An exclusive live podcast and Q&A with every single developer
  • Available worldwide.
  • Physical Merch Box including:
    • An SGC-themed “Retro” Scarf
    • An SGC-branded vintage dad cap
    • A premium SGC-branded notebook
    • An SGC Mousepad with custom artwork
    • Exclusive SGC-branded Sticker Pack commissioned by indie game artist Frederikke Frydenlund (Art Director of Nippets)
    • 6x Art cards with art commissioned by Into Games IG50 winners for every order

The club returns following a sold-out 2026 membership featuring Thank Goodness You’re Here!, Sorry We’re Closed, Promise Mascot Agency, despelote, Wanderstop and The Drifter. Our 2026 collection has a combined average Metacritic Score of 81.5.

Between them, the collection went on to include a BAFTA British Game winner, a BAFTA Game Beyond Entertainment winner, an Australian Game Developer Awards Game of the Year winner and an Indie Game Awards Best Debut winner.

We picked almost all of these before they were even nominated. We don’t claim to predict awards. We just know a good game when we see one.

And the members agree. In a survey of 327 members, 87% said Slow Game Club offered great value for money. The most common reason for joining? Discovering games they would never have found on their own. One member put it simply:

“I’m terrible at making decisions, and a subscription where I get given a game means it’s far easier to just… play a game instead of getting stuck on what to buy.” Another added: “Slow Game Club feels very well curated, and so far none of the games have been a complete miss for me.”

Twelve more independent games, all 2026 releases, chosen for their extraordinary worlds, characters and experiences. Already announced is Esoteric Ebb, the offbeat, narrative-rich fantasy CRPG from developer Christoffer Bodegård and publisher Raw Fury. The other eleven remain under wraps for now. Partly because the games are still in their launch period, and partly because the surprise is half the fun.

“I got sick of seeing a wall of games that a line of code told me I should play; I wanted real recommendations by real people. Most of the game store gurus are gone now, so consider Slow Game Club your resident indie expert. We do the crate-digging, the exploring, the deep dives. We respect your time, and then let you experience a game as it was intended. Slowly.” Brandon Cole, Creator of Slow Game Club and Co-Founder of Into Games

PLAY GAMES. HELP KIDS MAKE THEM. Slow Game Club was created by Into Games, a UK-registered charity helping young people from low-income backgrounds access careers in games. 100% of proceeds support its charitable work, including free game clubs, careers festivals and internships.

2027 memberships launch Thursday 5 November at 10:30 GMT. £49 / €59 / $59.

If this looks like something you would be into, you can sign up here. https://www.slowgame.club/ ( Full Disclosure: Savior Gaming does NOT receive monetary compensation from this site; the link is provided in case you are interested in gaming and possibly helping a charity.)

Lawnmower Simulator 2 Playstation 5 Review

Skyhook Games sent me a copy of Lawn Mower Simulator 2, which I greatly appreciate. It is even more appreciated since I played the original Lawn Mowing Simulator and thought it was one of the most boring games I had ever played, but this one looked like a significant improvement. The question now is, was it?

Well, graphically, the game is far superior, as you would expect, but more importantly, the controls have been greatly refined. Everything just feels better. Mowers feel easier to control, and now even the more realistic aspects of overheating the motor feel like things you can control and act like you think they would.

This does, however, lead me to my biggest issue with the game. When it looks good, it looks amazing. You know what grass has been cut and what hasn’t; using the leaf blower, you can see the leaves move around wonderfully. But when the game looks bad, it looks terrible. The screen tearing and slowdowns can be very real and very distracting. I have also seen reports of save bugs that can wipe your save, but I never experienced this. I did get my copy a bit after release, however, so that may have been fixed prior to me playing.

The management aspect I find nice. It isn’t overwhelming, and it is as simple as it should be for this sort of game. You own a business for lawn care. It should be as simple as assigning equipment to an employee, assigning an employee a job, and away they go. Better employees do better jobs and make you more money. Bad ones cost you money in equipment repairs and bad work.

The most important change from the original to Lawn Mower Simulator 2 is the fact that this one actually feels fun and like a simulator, not like work. It is a $30 game that fans of the simulator genre will actually enjoy playing, I think. It isn’t the best in the genre, but it is the best on this topic. It is a 7/10 title that respects your time and effort. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Woman Simulator Steam Review

Woman Simulator was sent my way by Sebasa Games, and it is always nice to be sent a game by someone I don’t normally work with. That being said, Woman Simulator was not the game I was expecting. I was kind of expecting a sexist mess of a game, and instead was treated to a game that did a decent job of showing what domestic abuse is kind of like.

You play as Nina, a housewife to a husband who is into some shady stuff. Part of the game is using the little spare time you have to figure out what those things are. That is, between doing the laundry, ironing clothes, doing the dishes, and mopping the floors. You also need to keep yourself in a good mood, or your husband will be displeased. Now the game shows this off in different ways, like your husband jump-scaring you or showing up to stare at you while you work.

The major issue is that much of the game isn’t done very well. The controls are very clunky; the graphics, translation, and music are obviously done with AI (this is disclosed on the Steam page), and while there may be a good way to do this, Woman Simulator is not a good example of it. For $8, I don’t exactly expect a top-tier game, but I do expect some effort to be made beyond shock value and curiosity. This is a 4/10 game that maybe after some patches or on a deep discount, it might be worth a few bucks, but otherwise treat it like the relationship it portrays and leave it. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

YAR: Forgotten Throne PlayStation 5 Review

YAR: Forgotten Throne was sent my way by the fine folks over at Axyos Games, which I always appreciate. Before I go on, here is a second opinion to go along with mine from Gaming With Noobs. His experience was different from mine, but his feelings were quite similar.

First, the good: for a budget title, the game looks solid. Second, the game clearly had a lot of love put into it, which Axyos does with their titles. I can’t deny the heart they put into their games. Unfortunately, a lot goes wrong with this game very fast. The story is a very basic good vs. evil, as you side with one of 2 factions. These factions basically mean nothing so pick whatever you want.

That is if you can get that far, some of the bugs in this game are horrible. One forced me to restart, but thankfully I got it right after the tutorial. For some reason, my controls for walking back and forth simply reversed when I loaded my save. Yes, by this I mean when I hit up to walk forward, I walked backwards and vice versa. No amount of fiddling with the options set it right. So I set things back to default, and nothing. Restarted the game, and everything was fine.

The hitboxes also aren’t great, but admittedly the animations themselves aren’t bad. Combine this with a very weird (but admittedly deep) crafting system and the game quickly becomes kind of a burden to play. IF you can get past all of that, I will admit there is some fun to be had. The characters you meet can be fun and interesting at times, if not a bit poorly acted. Some of the views are also really nice, and they seem to have improved the English translation since the Steam release tho it still has issues. The game, however, is still a 5/10, and that is being generous. Don’t pay $30 for this. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Mouthwashing

So first, huge thank you to Wrong Organ for providing the code for this journey. Also, a standing ovation because I loved my brief but insanely impactful time with Mouthwashing and can’t wait to see what they do next.

We flip positions as crew members of the doomed delivery ship ,Tulpar, stranded in space after a devastating collision. Resources are dwindling. Much of the already small vessel is sealed off but tufts of thick emergency gel. Tensions of a already weary and disgruntled crew are pushed vastly beyond their breaking points. The captain, Curly, seemingly purposefully caused the crash in a fit of insanity it seemed. Curly, now horrifically immolated, is confined to medical, leaving James in charge, adding to the swelling tension. All this misery, all this pain, and for what? What could possibly be worth the slow decay of five lives?

Normally, I’m not a fan of this kind of gameplay. It’s predominately point and click with some very light stealth and puzzle solving thrown in. The game thankfully doesn’t waste a minute and is expertly paced. The story griped me from start to finish and the characters have a pretty surprising amount of depth for a game that lasts roughly 3 hours. It’s extremely rare for a story to truly hit me and actually stay with me long after. Mouthwashing is the kind of story I wish I wrote. The superstars of it are the visual and sound designs. Visually, the game is absolutely disturbing with some incredibly unsettling visuals augmented by the claustrophobic, derelict setting reminiscent of Alien. The sound design grossed me out at times in the best ways and the music have me a Kubrick vibe that contrasted and complimented the visceral, cerebral horror at play.

In the end, I cannot recommend Mouthwashing enough. Its a terrific story that brings us face to face with some true fears. It’s refreshing to see cosmic horror that doesn’t lean on monsters, disease, or ghosts. Mouthwashing is the cruelest nail in the coffin of a cog in the corporate machine and the demons we can’t escape, even in the deepest reaches of outer space. I’d gladly give my experience on Ps5 a 10/10. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Crystal Lake (sn1)

We all have secrets. Pam Voorhees knows all too well the weight of secrets. Struggling single mom with a sweet, albeit deformed son, Jason, she takes a summer job as the cook for Camp Crystal Lake. All Jason ever wanted was to fit in, be a normal kid and have a normal summer. Then tragedy strikes. Unsupervised, Jason seemingly drowns, leaving Pam devastated and alone. Convinced her son isn’t gone and confronted by her past, can Pam ever move on from her endless grief or will will she succumb to it?…yet again, what if she was right and Jason isn’t truly gone?

For many, Jason and Friday the 13th are as iconic to horror as can be. We all know Jason Voorhees, the mute, gigantic, hockey mask clad killing machine who primarily haunts Crystal Lake when he’s not visiting Manhattan, fighting Freddy Krueger, or venturing through outer space as a nanite infused cyborg. I’m glad we got to a glimpse of the young, vibrant, loving kid before his fateful drowning as well as the downward spiral that turned Pam Voorhees into a brutal serial killer. Hands down, Linda Cardellini absolutely steals the show as Pam. She’s haunting as a grieving, heartbroken mother while managing to recapture the manic rage of Betsy Palmer. Also, the show makes Jason a very tragic character but still keeps him terrifying.

This show is a huge love letter to the entire series. I was impressed at the attention to detail when it came to the music, and scenery. Even the title sequence harkens back to the glory days of the original series. The characters were well done with even Crazy Ralph returning as a major part of the series. As for continuity, I think it does pretty well. We get a lot of answers with a frankly bonkers, batshit insane backstory for Pam and Jason that alters the story quite a bit but I argue that’s a good thing. It’s definitely a memorable and unique origin that helps explain a lot of the discrepancies between movies. And for me, Friday the 13th was always at it’s best when it was over the top so I liked it- I hated how the Friday The 13th (2009) remake tried grounding Jason in reality.

The only real issue I have with the series is the pacing. It’s 8 episodes but I feel it could’ve been 6 or 7. The 1st episode is really strong, then it drags a bit until the end of the 5th where we come to the opening of the original film, remaining strong all the way until the end after that. There is a change made to that particular scene that irked me but what followed was pretty awesome. Even if the pacing was off, the gore is nothing short of top notch when it comes.

In the end, Crystal Lake did a rare thing for me- it made appreciate the source material even more. As I said, it’s huge love letter to the legend of Jason and is full of the stuff I loved about the series as a whole. If not for anything, Linda Cardellini gives one hell of a performance that made watching Crystal Lake worth it. I’d say the show was well worth the watch. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Sledders PlayStation 5 Review

Sledders on PlayStation 5 is a snowmobile game, nothing more and nothing less, and Bonus Stage was nice enough to send me a copy to check out. If they seem familiar to you, they helped with games like Gladio Mori and Disk Golf Masters. I always like working with these guys, and I appreciate this one as well.

Now, when I say Sledders is a Snowmobile game and nothing more and nothing less, you might be thinking, “No shit, Savior, it has a picture of a snowmobile on it. Tell us about the races.” Well, I can’t; there aren’t any. There is no campaign, no story, no races. It is just you,a massive open world, realistic physics, and you and (hopefully) your friends joyriding and making your own fun.

Now, something you may not know about your friend Savior: if it is on the ground, I can probably drive it. Tractor trailer? School bus? ATVs of many kinds; I have driven more things than most people only dream of. I have actually never ridden a snowmobile. No clue if these physics are as accurate as they say. The internet, however, does know, and they were happy to confirm what I already suspected. It is 100%; these games never are, but it is pretty damn close.

This brings me to the last thing I have to say. How much you enjoy this game completely depends on whether you have friends to play with and if you enjoy just riding around on a snowmobile. I did not enjoy my time with this game, even while playing online. It was nice to play in the snow without being cold for once, though. If you do enjoy these sorts of things, however, it is a great experience: 8/10. If you don’t, this will be boring as hell and best avoided. May the gaming gods bring you glory.

Back to Dawn PlayStation 5 Review

Back to Dawn was sent my way by Clouded Leopard Entertainment, for which I am grateful. Now you may remember seeing this on Savior Gaming before, and that is because I have reviewed it on Steam in the past. The game itself is still a prison escape RPG. You have two different characters to choose from. I went with the recommended first-timer route of Thomas the fox. A news reporter who, when given the chance to take a bribe to bury a story to help out a major business and political leader, makes the morally right choice. This, of course, lands him in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Bob, your other option is an undercover agent sent into the prison. You can probably put about 20-30 hours into each story.

The game is, in theory, pretty simple: be a good inmate, work your prison job, and get to know the other inmates. It is worth noting that they have polished up the localization and subtitles since the last time I played. The characters definitely seem to have more life to them, and this is saying something because a lot of them were fun to get to know before.

My main issue with the game unfortunately still hasn’t changed; the start is super slow and can get repetitive, and that will turn a lot of people off. If you can get past that, however, you will be treated to the best story a prison escape game has ever offered. This is combined with some of the most fun characters to get to know, with multiple endings possible. I highly recommend it when you first start, and you get the option with Thomas to take the money, do it. It is worth it, in my opinion. The game is a 9/10 experience, and is possibly even more relaxing on your couch with a controller than it is on your PC. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Dungeons and Degenerates PlayStation 5 Review

Many of you may be familiar with Dungeon and Degenerates. I have reviewed it before on Steam. This time, Yogscast Games has let me check out the console release, and I was really curious to see how this version compares. It has been about 2 years since the PC version. The answer to that is quite a bit, as since my original review, the game has hit 2.0.

The basics of the game have stayed the same; you and an opponent play traditional Blackjack closest to 21 wins with the person that loses taking the difference as damage. Reduce their health to 0 and win. Some cards will have special abilities, far too many to mention, and with the inclusion of the 2.0 Doubling Down update, there are even more cards and floors to play on.

There are also a number of decks to choose from, each with its own abilities; for example, hearts will heal you when you score 21. I won’t ruin the surprise of what the rest of them do.

The real question is, how does it work on a controller? With the addition of so much stuff, really, my original 7/10 score could only go up unless the controls don’t work well. I am happy to say the game feels right at home on a PS5 controller. At $15 the game is well worth the price; this is now a 9/10 title for fans of games like this. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Monster Cuisine Steam Play Test Thoughts

Monster Cuisine is set to release sometime in 2027, and Team Machavelli was nice enough to let me in on a current playtest. Please realize that everything I am about to say and describe is subject to change and is far from being finished. With that being said, the playtest does leave me with a lot to be excited about.

The game starts with you dropping a ton of money (apparently) to buy a franchise so you can sell monsters as food, or so you thought. Turns out it is just regular food named after monsters. Beef sold as minitour legs, if you will. This does not sit well with our hero, though he hilariously plays it off as if he were joking.

The game manages to take itself both seriously and not seriously at the same time in this regard. You will quickly find yourself going out on hunting trips, and this is where I found the game was at its best. The combat is fluid and feels pretty nice. I never felt like I was fighting against the mouse or keyboard, and this is big for me because I prefer a controller.

The next stage is cooking up the critters you kill. This is done in stages, and it is pretty in-depth. It isn’t as simple as tossing a goblin on the grill and feeding people. You will be following a recipe book, cutting and crushing things, etc. This isn’t hard, but I do think it needs a little work to be more intuitive at times. If there is a weak link in the gameplay, this is it. However, if this is the weak link, we are still getting a damn good game.

Finally, your next step is to open your tavern. This may actually be my favorite part because you get to actually run the tavern. You will be pouring drinks and making food to fulfil orders, for example, and the controls to do so work well and aren’t needlessly complicated. It is also a nice touch being able to watch your sprite just slide stuff down the bar like he is in a movie or something.

Obviously, I won’t be giving Monster Cuisine a score since this was only a play test. This one still has plenty of time to cook with a 2027 release date on the horizon, but an action RPG that lets you hunt monsters to craft new weapons and armor, create food, and run a business that functions this well in playtest is worth waiting for. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.