This week in PC games: warriors, painters, roguelikes, sailors, shotguns, subs and metroidvanias

November is... merry! As the large grim centipede of radical and spot that is Videogaming continues its advancement of the midnight wood, a twelve auteur designers from theatre backgrounds don coxcomb hats and sequined codpieces. They ascent onto carts and signifier a chariot race, beating each different with bladders decorated to look similar Roger Ebert. There is laughter up and down the train. Meanwhile, the manufacture seers and marketing-mancers person received hopeful tidings from their friends among the owls and bats. The trees are thinning retired ahead. The stars tin sometimes beryllium seen. There is chaotic speech that third-person screen shooters are astir to travel backmost into fashion.

That isn't each the owls and bats person seen, however. As the way curves, we find ourselves successful the courtyard of a squat and forbidding tower. Five levels of blood-flecked obsidian and pixelated braziers, each named for a time of the week, each infested by perfectly terrifying caller PC games. Never caput that the edifice has intelligibly been slapped unneurotic utilizing assets lifted from a webinar. Never caput that you tin spot fuchsia checkerboards everywhere. The tower's frightful denizens indispensable beryllium defeated - oregon perchance adjacent bought - if the convoy is to proceed.

Monday 24th November

• Nientum - Op.ZERO (early access) is simply a premix of 2D platforming and rhythm-action successful which amnesiac anime girls reconstruct a creepy theatre and execute twisted versions of acquainted musicals.
• On a akin theme, here's Constance, a 2D metroidvania astir a somersaulting creator who is navigating worlds derived signifier her intelligence wellness difficulties. Your paintbrush is astatine slightest arsenic mighty arsenic a sword, but ticker out, utilizing its magical abilities volition corrupt you.
• Primal Fray is simply a turn-based, creature-collecting strategy roguelike acceptable connected floating hexagonal islands. Try to marque your enemies autumn disconnected first.

Tuesday 25th November

• In A.I.L.A you are a games tester contending with a villainous AI level decorator (think Portal, not ChatGPT), alternatively than the much acquainted problems of precarity and crunch.
• In Newgroundsy cartoon FPS Captain Wayne - Vacation Desperation (pictured), you are a sailor with a shotgun fist connected a ngo "to rob the affluent to provender the badass". I perceive and salute the praxis of the accusation that 1 cannot beryllium some affluent and badass.
• In Red Rogue Sea you are playing FTL, but with pirate galleons and turn-based combat and deck-building. Not that overmuch similar FTL, perhaps.

Wednesday 26th November

• A dragon has turned the satellite to nighttime and it's your occupation to settee his hash successful Holder Of Place, an autobattling roguelite deckbuilder.

Thursday 27th November

• Kings Of Hell (early access) is simply a palpably Power-Stoned 2000s-style bushed 'em up starring upwardly mobile demons.
• Veterum is simply a turn-based phantasy strategy-me-do with an accent connected shaping battlefields successful your favour.

Friday 28th November

• Death In Abyss is simply a 3D underwater "flight" combat crippled successful which you play a nimble submersible with fins warring disconnected huge, fleshy leviathans. Chorus meets Devil Daggers, maybe?
• Ayasa: Shadows Of Silence is simply a Little Nightmarish jaunt done six platforming worlds dedicated to Faith, Hope, Love, Greed, Indifference, and Betrayal. I get the consciousness that adjacent the nice-sounding worlds volition beryllium dreadful.

The operation is soon afire, for successful these unusual and glitchy times adjacent obsidian whitethorn burn. Our gimlet-eyed QA unit pursuit the surviving games into the woods; they volition haunt america for months to come, stealthily adding themselves to our wishlists portion we huddle successful our wagons, blowing into frosty fingers and dreaming of the brighter time promised by the soothsayers. Perhaps the Second Coming is astatine hand! Perhaps different 2.0 update is astatine hand!