ndie developer and publisher Legacy Forge is excited to announce the release of a playable PC demo for their upcoming tactical RPG with roguelike mechanics Valor of Man. Available to download now PC via Steam, the Valor of Man demo is your first chance to immerse yourself in the tactical action you can expect when the game launches via Steam Early Access later in 2025.
We’re excited to announce Cast n Chill, a cozy idle fishing game for PC where you explore tranquil lakes, rivers, and oceans. Catch rare fish, upgrade your gear, and reel in legendary catches – all with your loyal pup by your side.
Like Rusty’s Retirement, it can run passively on your desktop or be actively played. Cast n Chill Steam
Even vampires must endure the emotional turbulence of relationships, something players will witness first-hand in Vampire Therapist: Couples Therapy. The brand-new DLC for Little Bat Games’ critically acclaimed debut title is available on Steam today! This expansion builds on the award-winning blend of comedy, history, and real-life therapy techniques that made Vampire Therapist a critical darling.
Players will slip back into the spurred boots of Sam Walls, a reformed cowboy turned accomplished therapist. Sam has his work cut out for him as he seeks to help two vampires, battling with both domestic and personal struggles, as well as social discontentment following their demises during bloody revolutions in France and Iran.
But that’s not all! This juicy new helping of content takes place during the annual Bachfest in Leipzig — home of Johann Sebastian Bach— where a ghost of Leipzig haunts the streets. It’s Sam’s job to track down the troubled soul between therapy sessions.
Vampire Therapist: Couples Therapy will explore themes of revolt, duty to humanity, and the complications that can arise from age gaps – hey, what’s a couple hundred years when you’re in love?
Check out the trailer for Vampire Therapist: Couples Therapy below:
Vampire Therapist’s all-new DLCwill continue the hallmarks of Little Bat Games creations: deep, history-informed writing exploring systemic issues, screwball comedy, academic partnerships, best-in-class voice acting, and stunning artwork. Try your hand at analysing affairs of the heart and purchase today on Steam for £2.49/€2,99/$2.99.
“In a time of political turmoil, we hope Vampire Therapist: Couples Therapy will help players process difficult questions about the citizen’s role in civil society and find a little respite in love and compassion. And if all else fails, we have vampire fart jokes.” said Cyrus Nemati, Creative Director of Little Bat Games.
Shujinkou is an upcoming Dungeon Crawling RPG from Ricegames. It will be available on Steam and PlayStation on February 13th, and the big selling point of this game is that it tells an intricate story about a man named Shu as well as Jin and Kou. You will travel a world full of political intrigue, and real people just going about their lives trying to survive.
The game starts out with you playing as Shu, a retired samurai living with his little sister, Momo, whom he adores. Momo just wants to grow up and make tea. It isn’t long however before this peaceful village is shattered when an Omi attacks killing a villager and Shu is forced out of retirement to protect the village.
If you use the Japanese kana to spell enemy names you get a significant boost in damage
I won’t go into the story too much because there is a lot to cover, but I will say it is a solid story, far better than I ever expected from a game that says it is built to be able to teach you a foreign language, but we will get to that. The combat is built around a turn-based system like many dungeon-crawling RPGs. Every enemy name is given to you as “??” marks which denote how many kanas or syllables their name is. For example cat is “Neko” and in hiragana, this uses the kana Ne and Ko, which I do not know how to type on an English keyboard admittedly but I did find this pretty accurate image. If you are fighting a cat and spell this out however you will receive a significant damage boost permanently.
Now I am no expert on the language, going into this game I didn’t know any of this. The game does however teach you all of this, and at the push of a button you can literally just shut it all off. In fact, the game will ask you at the start if you are even interested. Outside of a few trophies, you aren’t even punished for not learning. The game is perfectly playable without knowing or learning any Japanese.
Another totally optional but awesome thing, the game will remind you to practice writing
This brings me to one last thing, is this game fun to play? As great as the game looks and sounds, it means nothing if it isn’t fun. I am happy to say everything isn’t tossed at you at once. As you explore the dungeons you will come across new kana to learn and the characters will give you explanations of them. Sign boards will teach you sentence structure that you can study or ignore. The menus are in both Japanese and English so there is no guesswork or stress involved.
The game starts out with a message from Julian Rice explaining that he and his team made this game as he helped a family member through a medical issue and sadly she did not live long enough to see it finished. As one of the first people to have seen this message, I am happy to say that Mr. Rice and his team have succeeded in their goal. I won’t say you can fully learn Japanese from this game, no single source will teach you any language. This game will however absolutely give you a solid foundation. The game also succeeds in being a fun and in-depth RPG.
Originally I intended to review this on its merits as a game and as a learning tool separately. Instead, the game is simply a 9/10. What I thought was simply a gimmick turned out to be fantastically built into the game as an optional part of the experience that anyone can enjoy. Best wishes, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
February 6th 2024. Indie developer and publisher rokaplay and publisher Silver Lining Interactive are excited to announce that Sugardew Island – Your Cozy Farm Shop, the cozy farm shop sim, will launch digitally on March 7th for PC via Steam, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. There will also be a charming retail boxed edition launching for PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch on March 14th! Xbox X/S will follow shortly after.
Roadside Egg Stand on Steam is an upcoming title from Zozo Studio. They haven’t released much about the game aside from the release date being sometime this year and a short trailer. The basic idea however is that it is a cozy Idle game where you simply raise chickens and run a Roadside Egg Stand. So check out the trailer, and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Cryptical Path on Steam was sent to me by the people at Old Skull Games for which I am very grateful. There are a lot of rogue games out there but this is the first rogue builder I have come across.
Now the game flow is what you would expect, start a run, fight some enemies, collect power-ups and different currency, fight a boss, and hopefully win. When you die start all over again with new abilities, power-ups, and hopefully make some better decisions.
Build a room, any room.
The key difference here is this time around you are the master of the dungeon, someone has simply usurped some control of it. You as the master are back to reclaim it. This allows you to build your route to the boss room. Need a shop? Just build one, need to heal? Feel free to build that as well. It isn’t free for all though. You only have so many crystals to build rooms with and this is where you will need to decide do you fight enemies to gain more crystals and money or not. You can go into the negative, you will just be cursed for doing so.
Also don’t even think about taking the easy way out, because once you hit negative 10 it is a one-way ticket to the boss’s room.
Good luck with this chick your first run
This is one of those games I don’t want to undersell too much, but I also don’t want to undersell it. Suffice it to say, if this ever comes to a console it is a must-buy for me. The game is a 9/10, and you would be doing yourself a disservice by not picking this up for $15 it cost, and with very positive reviews on Steam, I am not alone in this. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Jotunnslayer: Hordes of Hel on Steam is a game sent to me by the good folks over at Grindstone and honestly if you are a fan of games like Vampire Survivor and need a new fix, the $10 is well worth the price. The game is played the same way, simply walk around kill monsters, and level up. They do allow you to change the options to give you more in-depth control of when attacks happen, but this is hardly necessary to enjoy or even have a deep run into the game.
Graphically the game is great, and the controls are equally as well done. The story is very basic, you fight to impress the gods and hopefully become the next chosen Jotunnslayer. If we are being the story in these games are always a means to an end to get the slaying going, and that is where the fun is.
Each level will allow you to choose a power-up randomly for either your chosen character or a god. Each god and character has their own skill tree to unlock as well so you can really dig into how you want to play the game. The game is quick to get into, easy to play but hard to master. For its price, this is easily one of the first games I have played this year I am happy to say is a must-buy, 9/10. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Red Solstice from Ironward is a title they sent to me that I have some mixed feelings about. On the one hand, it functions great, on the other it simply isn’t fun to play. It looks great, but the UI for certain things is honestly kind of terrible and wasn’t translated over very well from a mouse and keyboard as the game was originally made for PC.
As for as the gameplay itself, it is a pretty standard twin-stick shooter that you can play alone or with others. Simply choose a mission, which isn’t always very intuitive at first, enter the map, and mow down a ton of enemies to achieve your objective. Many times optional objectives will also pop up, save civilians, or help other soldiers maintain a position. This usually rewards you with new materials to help upgrade your troops or your base.
That is kind of why the game isn’t all that fun though. It gets very stale very fast, and to make matters worse so much of it is counterintuitive. Recruiting new squad mates solo isn’t easy, but if they get injured enough they can die for good.
The amount of stuff in the ultimate edition is pretty great too as it comes with everything that was ever released for the game as far as I can tell. The price of the game also isn’t bad at all at $30. Personally, I would wait for a sale as the game is only a 6/10 for me but if you are into this sort of game the value and replayability are definitely there. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap, which you can play on Gamepass, is a game that was tossed my way by Robot Entertainment to review which I always appreciate. Now I will be honest right out the gate, I never loved or hated this series it just always kind of existed. I had fun with them when I played them but they were never the type of game I felt I NEEDED to play. If you are looking to play this game and see some vast improvement into a AAA title, you will be disappointed.
If what you are looking for, however, is a fun game with better graphics, new weapons, and characters, well-designed levels, and just kill a ton of orcs, you will be happy. The game is pretty standard. Pick a hero, each one with its own passives, power-ups, and weapons, set traps along various paths the orcs will walk along, and protect a certain spot.
As you collect different types of currency after each run you can buy better passives for a character, or use them to buy new traps or boost your main stats that apply to everyone, the game will get a bit easier to manage. You will be able to employ a more varied strategy, and traps might become cheaper or stronger. You can even play solo or with others online.
How you play is up to you,I have tried everything from surrounding the point I am supposed to protect and just defending that ( pro tip, don’t do this) to blocking off entire paths to force them into one area and ignoring the rest ( also don’t do this) and the best method seems to be to funnel them to a few select choke points and setting traps there.
Weather on the maps will change the strategy you need to employ and will even change what enemies show up. Water elementals for example have a tendency to split into pieces. You may even run into a sort of substance that suddenly makes it impossible to put traps on walls.
The game has room for improvement, but I had a lot of fun with it. 7/10, if you like shooters and you have Gamepass you need to at least try it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.
Savior Gaming 