Category: Season 6

If I had to describe Wheel World in one sentence, it would be, “Forza Horizon, but with a bicycle.” 

Originally titled “Ghost Bike”, this is an open world adventure, with a sci-fi narrative layered on top. You play as Kat, a young cyclist, with a huge responsibility: save your universe using your bike. 

I’m not too sure about how the story will land, but let’s not judge it based on a 15-minute demo. The set-up is that you find a bike which has a skull attached to it, and that skull guides you on a journey to fulfill your destiny. 

The primary goal seems to be gathering some legendary parts for your bike, so that you become eligible for a huge ritual of some sort, which will somehow save the universe. Anyway, let’s forget the story for a bit, and focus on the cycling.

A story driven adventure game set in modern day India. That’s how Detective Dotson describes itself, and those following the gamedev scene in India will know that this is a risky concept that not a lot of Indian studios would be willing to take up. 

Masala Games, the studio behind Detective Dotson, is not afraid to put its Indian roots on full display. In fact, the star of the game is not Dotson, but the Indian city that he is living in. I wasn’t able to catch the name of the city, and was able to see signboards in three different Indian languages, but seeing how Dotson’s ambition is to become a Bollywood star, it’s safe to assume that the city is inspired by Mumbai. 

As the name of the game suggests, you play as a detective, who has to go around the city and solve various cases.

When I first saw the trailer for Kabuto Park, I wasn’t really sold on the idea. Catching bugs and then entering them in sumo wrestling style tournaments. But I’m very glad that I actually started playing the demo, because I was hooked within a couple of minutes. 

Kabuto Park is an upcoming game from Doot, who specialises in making tiny games. The idea is that you enjoy an engaging gameplay loop and finish the game really fast, so that you don’t have to sit through any filler or pointless grinding, just so that the game can justify a higher price point.

Kabuto Park is going to priced around $5, and after playing the demo I can confidently say it is worth much more than that. At it’s core, it is a game about catching creatures and then using them to battle against other creatures.

Let’s Build A Dungeon is an ambitious simulation game that promises a lot of interesting features, provided you are willing to invest a bit of time to get past the learning curve.

This game is made up of two parts – the first is that it offers you a simulation of building and playing your own MMO, complete with quests and whatnot. The second part is building and running your own gamedev studio, which is in fact running that MMO you were building earlier.

This multilayered approach to gameplay can get a bit confusing in the beginning, but the 30-minute demo showed promise that the formula can maybe work quite well.

Before we proceed, please note that this video is a preview based on the current demo build available for the game. The developers have mentioned that a few gameplay and design changes are expected for the full game, so whatever gameplay you see in this video might not represent the final game accurately.

However, that shouldn’t stop you from playing the demo right now, because Sojourn Past is a very solid, challenging action-adventure game with beautiful art and music, and it is definitely worth a try. And if you like what you see, please do consider wishlisting the game, as it helps the game gain more visibility on the Steam store.

Okay, so let’s get on with the preview.

I first encountered Sojourn Past at IGDC 2023, where it won the best upcoming game award. Then at IGDC 2024, the developers came back with a demo showcase, after having secured funding from Krafton India, which is further proof of the game’s potential. At the event, I was told that the game is expected to be difficult, and I promptly ran away. 

It’s now been a few months, and the public demo is now available for everyone to play from the safety of their homes. And I can safely edit out the parts where I died and pretend that I’m a good player. Or at least, that’s what I thought, but it turned out that I couldn’t finish the demo not because I died a lot, but because I simply didn’t know where to go next. 

Sojourn Past is designed similar to the classic game Journey, where you are thrown into the game without much context about who you are or what your objective is, and you are just expected to keep moving forward. There are a few cutscenes that give you a hint of the story, which appears to be some sort of a rescue mission, but for the most part, the story is left intentionally vague. Even the steam store page doesn’t directly tell you what’s going on, apart from promising a heartfelt story.

After the Olympic Update came out in October 2024, Supergiant Games has delivered another incredible update to an already incredible game. And yet, I will say this once again: I do feel bad that we are getting a sequel instead of an original IP from this talented team. But…I have complained about that enough times now, so let me move on to the update.

The Warsong Update is all about boss fights. Unlike the previous update, there’s no new weapon to play with this time, but there are a few interesting boss fights, and it’s a fresh challenge to use all six weapons against them. I stuck to the newest weapon – the Black Coat – as it offers the best of both worlds – it has melee and ranged attack options, and that’s one of the two reasons I was able to beat the final boss – Typhon – in two attempts. The second reason of course, is that I’m using God mode and get 80% damage resistance, but let’s not dwell on that.

After beating Prometheus, we move on and continue our journey to the top of Mount Olympus. There aren’t too many rooms to clear here, but there’s a couple of boss fights before reaching the final encounter. The first one seems to be a random one, because I got two different bosses during my two runs. The first one was a minotaur kind of beast who kept charging around the room, destroying the walls. The other time I got a pair of smaller enemies called the Twins of Typhon, who honestly didn’t feel that bad. 

After this came a surprising boss fight that turned out to be really fun. We fight the tail of Typhon, and it is no joke. Without the damage resistance, I would have no doubt failed this fight multiple times. Thankfully, the patterns aren’t too hard to learn and I was able to clear this on my first try.

Then came the final boss – Typhon, the Father of monsters. He is so huge that he can’t really move around and just hovers on the top of the screen. This kind of reminded me of the second main boss fight in the first game – the bone hydra – who is much smaller than Typhon, but also uses a similar, hovering on the top of the screen approach. 

Typhon’s attack patterns are a bit more difficult to counter, which is why I failed my first attempt, but I soon figured out that my best chance was to use my damage resistance to my advantage, and just go up close to him and spam my attacks. In my second run I got a decent attack build, which gave me 60% extra damage and freeze for my primary attack, as well as a nice spike attack for my dash ability. This, along with other attack bonuses helped me beat the boss on my second run, and it was quite fun.

I recently played the demo for Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii, and really liked it. It seemed like a fun mixture of a brawler game and a pirate adventure.

However, today is February 21, the release date of the full game, and instead of playing it, I’m making a YouTube video trying to justify why I didn’t buy the game.

Here’s the summary: the $60 price tag seems too much for what feels like a very well polished DLC for Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth. And given the publisher SEGA’s history, it is a safe guess that this game will end up on a subscription service in a few months. In the meantime, for the same price tag, I can buy “Monster Hunter Wilds” which is coming out in a week, and which will last way longer than the 30-40 hours that Pirate Yakuza offers.

How do you decide whether you like a game? For me, it comes down to whether or not I want to spend some more time in the world presented to me by the game. Some other element might have been the reason for me to try that game, such as an interesting gameplay loop, or a unique art style, but the only thing that will keep me playing the game for a long time is whether or not I feel connected to the game’s world. 

At that point, everything else – the gameplay, story, characters, music and so on become secondary. And I’m willing to ignore whatever shortcomings those other departments might have, just because I’m having a good time in the game’s world.

And that sums up how I feel about Avowed. By now, the internet is full of reviews and opinions from critics and fans alike, about how it is an excellent game, but falls short of being truly great. And yes, it appears highly unlikely that Avowed will get the same overwhelmingly positive reception that Baldur’s Gate 3 did, but I still feel it is a good game that is worth a try if you are a game pass subscriber. 

The Storyteller’s Festival is a third-party event curated by Two and a Half Studios, which is an indie outlet from Australia. They make their own visual novels, and also host this event each year, which aims to highlight games that place an emphasis on storytelling.

There are games across a wide variety of genres. Some of these games do focus entirely on storytelling, while others use a mix of story and gameplay elements to keep the game moving. 

Either way, it’s nice to have an event focused entirely on the narrative aspect of games, because with the live-service culture that is dominant in the industry right now, it can be tough for smaller studios that are making narrative games to find a large audience.

The event features more than 400 titles, and that includes games that have already been out for a while, as well as upcoming games.  In this video, I have handpicked five upcoming games that I found to be quite interesting, and which all have demos available that you can try right now. Please note that the event runs until February 25, 2025, so depending on when you’re watching this video, the demos for these games may or may not be available. That decision is usually taken by the developers.

Now, in alphabetical order, here are five upcoming games to check out in the storyteller’s festival:

1. Abashed – https://store.steampowered.com/app/3116230/Abashed/
2. Anomalistic Revolution – https://store.steampowered.com/app/2168120/Anomalistic_Revolution/
3. Cairn – https://store.steampowered.com/app/1588550/Cairn/
4. Fishbowl – https://store.steampowered.com/app/1638070/Fishbowl/
5. Misgiven – https://store.steampowered.com/app/2475620/Misgiven/