Doomblade Arranger Down in Bermuda

Three Epic freebies that aren't so epic.

Doomblade

This platformer has you playing as an imp who follows some whispers that lead her to the titular sword (an opening that worked for Conan right?). This sword is bloodthirsty though and soon enough you'll be backtracking your way through enemies like mad. Backtracking. I hate it. Also there's a strange design decision here where your character is actually kinda slow and not super agile, but if there's an enemy you can click on with your mouse cursor you fly directly at it with the sword. Half the time this kills them. The other half it just stuns them because they are needed for platform traversal. I didn't like it.

Arranger

This is a super strange puzzle game because when you move, everything in your row or column moves with you - looping around to opposite ends if possible. This means the fastest way down a hall is usually to walk into the wall behind you so that you appear on the other end! That sounds neat, but most of the game is trying to move stuff to exact places, and not everything can be conveyor belted around. You want to kill that worm thing in the way? Work out how to move the sword to its face. You want to open the locked door? Work out how to move the key from point A to point B. It's definitely different, and while I didn't mind the village stuff as there's story there - once you get out into the wilderness it feels like there are puzzles in the way just for the sake of puzzles being in the way.

Down in Bermuda

In this kiddie friendly puzzle game you move from island to island after unlocking the "gates" in each, but the game play is more akin to Boxes: Lost Fragments where the islands themselves serve as a box that you (as god/the player) can manipulate which is really handy because these islands have buttons, levers, and locks that need keys? Not the sort of puzzle game I thought it would be. Not recommended.

Rustler and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Two games inspired by other games.

Rustler

This game tries its hardest to be GTA but set in medieval times (though this includes medieval graffiti,  beat boxing bards you can hire to ride along with you so that you can have some tunes, and guardsman knights whose horses are equipped with red and blue sirens). You can get the gist from its live action intro. :P

You play as the titular Rustler who is out to make some gold by doing illegal things, the least of which is stealing horses actually! I like that horses also have various "makes" (like the cars) and that you can re-color your ride through the paint station. Alas its somewhat repetitive, and the fixed top down view doesn't really do it for me, so it doesn't get a recommendation from me. 

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

This side scrolling platform game is basically Castlevania, except your protagonist is now a sexy shard caster named Miriam who has trouble jumping to places unless she wears kung fu shoes and does the correct sequence of moves to "air walk". Her proficiency in the many weapons available does somewhat depend on player skill and knowing the combos that you learn from library shelves, while her stats improve not only from the gear you wear (and craft) but also from the first time you eat any cooked dish so expect to be ingredient hunting a fair bit! 

There's a bit of a grind and more than a little back and forth through respawning enemies but what irritated me most is that you lose any unsaved progress between save points and there are no real hints of where said save points are meaning you might be doing pretty good until you get locked into a non-telegraphed boss room and if you die - hope you have fun replaying that whole segment again. I didn't. 

Gris

Unlocking the rainbow. 

In this beautiful puzzle platformer game you play a woman going through some severe sadness, and while I'm not too keen on the art for the main character herself - the rest of the game is super beautiful and gets more so as you progress through it. This is because her world starts out very empty and as you progress you unlock more and more colors to fill the palette fully. 

Awesome art.

It helps that there's some good music too and that the actual game itself isn't in the "too hard" category with simple controls and a gradual unlocking of movement abilities. It's actually easier than (non-challenge mode) Celeste especially as you can't actually die. Thumbs up!

Undying, Turmoil and Neko Ghost Jump

A trio of Epic freebies.

Undying

This zombie crafting survival game features a twist in that you play a mother already bitten in the intro, who must teach her young (and annoyingly useless) son how to survive in this apocalypse. Show him how to dismantle difficult machinery and defeat zombies, sure... but also show him how to get water from a fountain into a plastic bottle, how to water plants, and how to scavenge? He also whines A LOT.

While the game play is kind of ok but the stylistic character art is poor and it becomes readily evident that your main enemy in this game aren't the zombies - it's your own backpack and the lack of space there in. If you aren't keen on inventory management then this is not a game for you. Or me.

Turmoil

This 2D oil barony "almost" idle game is one with simple controls and simple decisions: after winning your desired plot of land from your competitors you send forth your hired dowsers to give you a hint of where to dig, then build the oil pumps to (hopefully) get the oil out and hire wagons to transport said oil to sell to the shops (where the price constantly fluctuates) or store in your own warehouse while waiting for prices to be more favorable.

Most of the action is automated, which lets you focus on how many things you have, where to place new things and if/where to selling to. Excess funds can be used to upgrade pretty much everything and that's the game loop. Surprisingly fun but gets repetitive fast.

Neko Ghost Jump

In this super silly platform game you play a cat on the cat planet trying to rescue his cat bride from scurvy space dogs. The main gimmick is that you must switch from 2D and 3D platforming because there might be tunnels you can only access in 3D view and then impossible diagonal jumps that become easy in 2D view.

I assume there's also some ghost mechanic as hinted by the title and intro cinematic but I never got that far as the game crashed on tutorial level 3. Not recommended.

The Spirit and the Mouse

Just trying to help.

In this cute single player game you are a little mouse who is trying to subtly help the people in a small village with their various problems, and an accident early on gives you magical powers to really do so. Its a 3d puzzle platformer at heart, but with a focus on exploration and collection backed by a pretty cool sound track. It's pretty light hearted to the point that I  don't think you can actually die. I'm just not a fan of their "spirit" depictions, but otherwise its a cute, relaxing game.

Death's Gambit Afterlife

Get ready to dodge. A lot.

This side scrolling RPG which seems heavily inspired by Dark Souls is pretty decent. Good controls, an ok story, some nice music, customizable stat leveling and a decent variety of enemies make it a really nice package.

My only complaint, as usual, is the amount of back tracking you need to do as you get new moves that can let you access more areas that you've already passed earlier. Played this more than I thought I would to see if that back tracking thing was something I could overlook but no... the map is pretty big.

While it's not for me you should definitely check it out if you like any combination of action platforming and Dark Souls.

Floppy Knights FIST The Falconeer Rawmen

A triple F from Epic (F for Failure)!

Floppy Knights

This turn based card strategy game with cutesy art is a mishmash of things that hurt my head. It starts out where you need to fight goblin bandits meddling with antennas by using your strap on computer (oh my) to create holographic flora based forces and send them forth into battle? And make no mistake battling is the only thing you can do as you are set on a railroad of them from the get go. Not recommended.

FIST - Forged in Shadow Torch

In anthropomorphic China, you are one of the oppressed masses - an angry bunny with a robot arm who must traverse this side scrolling and platforming game to beat up the bad guys to earn enough currency to unlock more skills to better traverse and platform previously passed routes. This leads to one of my most hated game designs... back tracking. I know that's just a me thing, it really killed what otherwise was a decent if somewhat dated game. Cool graphics though!

The Falconeer

On an ocean world, mankind is stuck in towns clinging to rocks save for being able to travel on the back of giant eagles and dragons with lightning guns (and also via ocean ships and flying ships, just don't ask where the wood comes from)! So yes - this is basically a flying simulator with some story attached and while the controls take some getting used to there are some cool ideas like flying into a storm to recharge weapons and diving into the water to cool down but the game play loop isn't great as most objectives are go here, fight stuff there and then repeat. Might still be something for flight sim enthusiasts but for everyone else, skip it.

Final Bonus: Rawmen: Food Fighter Arena - it doesn't start with "F", but it has a terribly long load time followed by failing to even start the tutorial so I'm not wasting any time with this trash.

Surviving the Cat of Salem Islets too?

Catching up on some epic freebies.

Surviving the Aftermath

A post apocalyptic game that focuses on two different maps - the first is your home map where you construct your base which includes things like tents and outhouses for your dirty survivors and remember to actively tell them where to harvest things because by god, they morons. Your lumber camp might be sitting idle once they've deforested the nearby area and if you don't tell them to go find more trees "here" it simply will go unused. Once you build a gate you can send your specialists (hero characters who you occasionally can recruit - you start with two) to the world map to do quests, fight bandits, and salvage... science? Yes. That's a thing. With enough science you can pay for crowbars or something. Note that your home map can and will still be attacked by bandits, plagues and stink clouds regardless of what's happening beyond. Very management heavy and lost my interest after one session.

Cat Quest II

Is exactly like the first game, except now you can two player it (or play two characters) as a cat and dog adventurer. It's just as cute and just as grindy as the first so for the same reasons I've given up on it.

Islets

An action platforming game with some pretty decent art that tasks you with reconnecting a bunch of floating islands. Alas it features the same problem most of these types of games have for me which is if you leave a screen and come back, all the enemies respawn. When you add that backtracking is almost mandatory, that just gets an immediate thumbs down from me.

Town of Salem II

The worst of this lot for me. Basically a digital version of the Mafia or One Night Werewolf party games where a group of players are trying to reach their randomly given, secret winning conditions by eliminating other players through voting (or murder!). They could be townsfolk trying to execute the secret witch coven and vice versa or perhaps you're of the jester faction and you win if you can get yourself executed? Some odd design decisions here killed this one for me - the first is "go to youtube to see a tutorial". Really? But the second one really sucks and that is the "waiting to have fun". Not enough players? Guess you'll have to wait. Got killed early? Guess you have to wait. Or quit, join another game and wait for enough players. I hate idling. Still, I guess there's a market for these sort of games as this one even has the audacity to have a cash shop!

Deliver Us Mars and Invincible Presents: Atom Eve (PC Game)

Girls getting it done.

Deliver Us Mars

This puzzle and platforming game has you playing as a young woman who dreams of going to space and jumps at the opportunity to do so when it arises. Of course, its not all space unicorns and star dust out there as many things go wrong and after playing this you'll be wondering why more astronauts don't carry a pair of climbing axes by default. Good voice acting and decent graphics, controls and story make this an enjoyable experience - though one caveat with that is that I hated all the flash backs that kept interrupting (even though that's where you learn a lot of the basic puzzle solving stuff). The puzzle solving itself is of a medium difficulty at max (for me that is, so that probably means easy for everyone else), with very few harder exceptions but not enough for me to stop / not finish the game. Recommended!

Invincible Presents: Atom Eve

Definitely for fans of the "Invincible" TV show / comics, this game lets you play as one the titular high-school super hero Atom Eve as she faces her many problems despite possibly being one of the most OP superheroes to exist. The comic art is sharp and your choices can branch the narrative, though combat wise I think as long as you remember to level up it doesn't matter how you expand your skill tree - you'll always have something to tackle the ever more dangerous enemies you fight in turn based mode. The fighting system is decent and will make you think on how to win, but it's actually the weakest part of the game for me. However it's important to note that this covers a lot of the events in the show and comic so be warned. As good a story telling medium this game is, you're still better off watching the first season of the series if you've not yet seen it.

Saints Row (2022) and Astro Duel II

Still clearing out those Epic giveaways...

Saints Row (2022)

This reboot of the franchise drops the characters and continuity from the original (where the protagonist has possibly fought aliens, been to hell and had the Earth destroyed) and gives you a brand new "boss" who happens to have skilled room mates that are already part of other various gangs, but are still unable to make the rent. They're pretty cool, as is the gigantic map you can play in. Alas most of the crazy side jobs tend to be locked by a grind, so its likely you'll complete the main mission first and once you do that, well... there's no real incentive in going back to do the unlocked stuff. Also, the towing type minigames suck which is a shame because that's one of the few new things they tried to add here. Everything else is just a "hey remember this from the other game... where it was better?". Only recommended to people who haven't played any Saints Row previously.

Astro Duel II

This is a strange pixel game where you fight other players (or NPC monsters for solo players) on maps that are both top down asteroid-type shooters with you piloting a spaceship, but if you fly into an area with gravity (or get destroyed) you hop out as your anthomorphic avatar to continue the fight. After a few moments your spaceship form returns too, but somehow being outside the spaceship gives you more options in the way of attacks. A very odd game and not one I recommend.

Aerial_Knight's Never Yield, Love, Doors: Paradox and Infinifactory

Catching up on Epic freebies!

Aerial_Knight's Never Yield

This auto runner has the same problems as Super Meat Boy Forever where your inputs are limited to high jump, little jump, slide and sprint and a single wrong move kills you. While the art and music are definitely better the game play itself gets old quick. Not recommended. I had toyed around with creating a similar game in the past (with worse art and music, those are decent here) and this just verifies it would have been a bad idea.

Love

When your character is made up of around 10 white pixels you know that this game really doesn't have good graphics. It's a platformer where you're trying to get to each level's exit and there's a clock if you really want to time yourself. Interesting design decisions in that you can put your respawn point wherever you want, as often as you want, and it looked like you could pick any level without going through some un-locking process. While I commend those ideas its just not enough for me to Love this one. Uninstalled.

Doors: Paradox

This is a very chill puzzle game about unlocking doors, and its not a first person experience. Instead the doors are like a well rendered miniature display, each level decorated by different locks. You can rotate the whole thing and zoom in on bits to pick up puzzle pieces or interact with stuff and it is surprisingly addictive. That's because the first few levels are also very easy (and regular readers know I'm bad at puzzle games). I might go back to this one, and can recommend it for puzzle enthusiasts - though you might blow through the first few really quickly!

Infinifactory

This first person game starts with you being abducted by aliens and then tasked to... create production lines of boxes? Yes. You'll be putting down mazes of conveyor belts and welders to put shapes together and will feel pretty satisfied after making it through a level. I was surprised with how easy the controls are too, as to let you focus on the puzzle element and this one doesn't hold back: level one is a pretty good indication of what craziness awaits. Wayyyy to much thinking for me (I only made it to the vertical weld session) but others might enjoy it.

Ghostwire: Tokyo, Lost Castle and Super Meat Boy Forever

Games that focus on DEATH!

Ghostwire: Tokyo

When supernatural entities take over Tokyo, its up to you to save everyone's souls! Despite an average story this one definitely got me hooked, as wandering around the deserted streets is super immersive and exploration and stealth game play is rewarded.

Despite dealing with ghosts and yokai there aren't many scary sections at all which might be a negative but I really enjoyed it. The expansion mode of the Spider's Thread is more roguelike where they do expect you to die a lot though, and becomes repetitive. Way better than the prelude though.

Lost Castle

Speaking of roguelike - this is the entire premise for Lost Castle. You get a randomly generated adventurer to see how far you get into the demon's castle, die, and unlock some mild boons for your next randomly generated adventurer. Got old quick with the below average graphics and the inability to spell "Altar" but at least there was no platforming.

Super Meat Boy Forever

This sequel to the punishing original is just as gory but turned me off right away as a lot of control has been taken away from the player to be an "auto runner" type where your controls are only along the lines of jump, jump twice to attack or duck. You need to hit a "change direction pillow" to go the other way. Clearly designed for a mobile device this button mashing iteration is just not for me.

Out of Line Forest Quartet Soulstice

A trio of games that were free from Epic.

Out of Line

This cutesy platform puzzler involves being able to throw a javelin that can come back to you, which is handy as you can stand on in to make large gaps jumpable or high ledges climbable, to use as a lever, and to jam gears as needed. It's a nice gimmick but not really an interesting one. Not recommended.

Forest Quartet

In this exploration puzzler you are a ghost in the forest who needs to activate random machines to give her band mates inspiration to continue to play. It is just so strange, especially since the generators are just so out of place and alien. Also since you're a ghost nothing can really kill you... other than the boredom of playing this game I guess. Not recommended.

Soulstice

This hack and slash game is much in the same vein as Devil May Cry, except instead of playing a cool dude with a big sword and devil powers you are a crazy knightess with a big sword and ghost powers - which come from your deceased sister who is attached to you and handles most of the defense and parrying. Ok, you're a chimera. Anyway, that means there are two main forms of currency to collect which can unlock skills for each sister as you battle your way through a pretty grim city.

The fighting is a bit repetitive unfortunately, as enemies simply pop out of portals when you reach a combat space - which is made worse when particular enemies can only be damaged if they are within a colored aura that the ghost sister can create, and there's more than one color which seems to just be arbitrarily annoying. Just like the fixed camera angles during exploration and jumping puzzles. The camera is free to move in combat so... why force it to be fixed when out of it? Still an enjoyable enough game I suppose, but there are definitely better ones out there.

Decluttering Day 6 : 4-6 pairs of women's footwear. Yeah, these are my wife's efforts but we're a team so I'm going to let it count - especially since she seems to be more into this than I am after I mentioned it to her! ;)

RE:Verse / Midnight Ghost Hunt / Against all Odds

When players as content fails, because you don't have players.

RE:Verse

A multiplayer death match game using characters and creatures from the Resident Evil series might sound good, but in practice the slow, cumbersome movement that helps provide fear because your character isn't super agile makes it rather silly when put against other players. Then again I wouldn't know as there were no games I could match make with, as no one is playing it. Not recommended.

Midnight Ghost Hunt

In this team vs team action game, four ghosts attempt to hide by possessing regular items while four ghost busters hunters try to track them down and destroy them... in 5 minutes (because they are dumb and always arrive 5 minutes before midnight). When the clock strikes 12 the ghosts gain a lot of power to fight back and usually will slaughter the hunters. Basically a hide and seek game with weapons - but again no one was playing this. At least there's a bot mode if you want to try it out though.

Against all Odds

This party platforming race game has players traversing a deadly obstacle course (which is handy when you want to murder the competition) to see who can make it first to the finish line! Included is a map editor to make your own courses and there's silly commentary as you play... though most likely this will still be by yourself as again, there are no players. Not recommended.

Waiting for Duviri: The Frightening Fifth

After all that fighting it's horror time!

Slain - Back from Hell

This pixel platformer beat em up is basically the same plot of Altered Beast, but with a more metal backing track and less impressive graphics and game play. That's kinda sad as Altered Beast was released in 1988.

Rising Hell

Another pixel platformer with a very vertical slant as you need to escape from hell by going UP while taking souls on the way. Interestingly you get a power up shop to spend said souls almost every 30 seconds which is awesome and goes a long way in breaking the tedium of doing the same thing over and over. Now you get to do the same thing over and over... with breaks!

Darkwood

A top down horror survival where you must scavenge for gear and can only see active threats the direction your character is looking. This means checking your pack and crafting lets you see NOTHING. The lack of color is certainly a stylistic choice, but one that makes the game very bland to look at. That said if you like skulking around dangerous places and having to board up your doors and windows at night (because that's when they come for you) and don't mind a non-intuitive interface and clunky combat this might be for you.

Hell is Others

In this top down horror shooter (which has the same visibility constraint as Darkwood), you need to feed your bonsai with blood while doing a bunch of fetch quests in the horrifying city streets prowled by monsters and "others" (other people: because PvP is easier content to create). Luckily bullets grow on plants because you'll need them... if the matchmaking ever finishes loading. LOL. Should be renamed, Hell is Matchmaking.

Doom64

Ever miss the days in a FPS where you didn't need to reload guns that were smart enough to shoot up and down without you looking up or down, where pistol ammo was the same as chaingun ammo, and where pushing on every wall was the way to open secret passages? If so this nostalgia trip is for you. It's just Doom, with new maps.

Ring of Pain

This is a strange game that displays your encounters as a ring of cards and you can either deal with or try skip a card on the left, or a card on the right which rotates the entire ring. Finding the exit card brings you to the next ring and so forth, provided you are still alive by then as the monsters get very dangerous quickly - and you'll probably only be wielding a bent spoon and have rainbow socks for armor when you meet them. Props for a different idea and art style but not one that could hold my interest for long.

Amnesia: Rebirth

It's time to forget again! After Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs, this new protagonist suffers the same memory loss as the previous ones but her story has much better graphics, much better dynamic lighting and ... much more boring!? What? Yep, a stupid protagonist and way too much walking to make space for narrated exposition doesn't help - to the point that I lost interest in it entirely. If you are looking for short and sharp horror, this isn't it - instead go for the original game with the Justine DLC which remains my favorite, proving again that simple and elegant will always beat something fattened with filler.

Waiting for Duviri: The Third Trial

This third group is all adventure games, a genre I quite like! Let's see how these fared...

Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap

This 2D platform adventure game boasts some excellent art, nice music and absolutely terrible mechanics. Force player to repeat zone multiple times because they didn't exit the correct way? Check. Not have many save points? Check. Enforce back tracking? Check. This gets a big fat NOPE from me.

Evoland

This action adventure RPG starts out as an old RPG maker game but quickly evolves to slightly better standards as you play through it, which is the main draw and not the generic but appropriate fantasy plot. It's also surprisingly short as it's one of the few that I actually finished! I guess if it kept my interest right until the end, it did something right. :)

Alba - A Wildlife Adventure

This happy, bright and relaxing game is just about exploring and taking photos of wildlife while doing nice things for the environment like picking up litter, fixing bird houses and the like. A little too zen for my liking but a cute little game nonetheless.

Supraland

In this hack and slash FPS, you are a red toy man in a child's sandpit - tasked by the red king to find out why the town has no more water. This quickly spirals into a big quest of trudging across the dunes littered with rocks, lego bricks and other items in this surprisingly big game. While it's full of neat ideas, its problems stem from its jumping puzzles (thankfully there are jump pads that activate to help out if you stack it on more complex ones) and the notion that you MUST find the hidden barrels because they unlock the skills (like double/triple jump) for you to progress in the game. Not a great design idea, but still quite a fun game.

Spirit of the North

In this wordless but pretty game with nice music, you are a fox in some cold place who... frolics around with a ghost fox and gives staves to dead people so that their spirits can move on. You also get some fox powers later and that's around the part the annoying jumping puzzles come in. Most annoyingly of all though is this features my design pet peeve: huge spaces of traversal for no purpose other than traversal. The opening 30 seconds is probably you holding down the "forward" button. Just, no.

Toejam and Earl: Back in the Groove

This cooperative game has aliens searching for parts of their destroyed spaceship and the elevator to the next floor while avoiding enemies, shaking trees for money, and wondering what the hell the devs were smoking when they designing this. Not recommended.

Waiting for Duviri: The First Failures

Taking a Warframe break before Duviri has given my time to catch up on some other free games I've been collecting in the background. Alas, this set just didn't do it for me from the outset.

Drone Racing League Simulator

This game should really say you need a controller. Using a keyboard takes any move TO THE MAX which makes it hard to follow a three dimensional race course. To its credit there was some one setting up a public game while I was crashing into everything during the tutorial so at least it isn't a "dead" game.

Chenso Club

In this side scrolling platform brawler, you need to stop an alien invasion with violent and gory means. Usually that works well for me, but the disparity between the gore and cuteness is really strange, there's no method to skip comic cutscenes, you lose a life for trying to leave a room with enemies (not just through falling, exiting left or right as well) and what really irked me is that the game basically froze in the tutorial because I wasn't fast enough to kill something. Sorry devs, if you make a possible path a player can take - ensure it goes somewhere, even just a game over screen. This alone was enough for me to confirm this game is shit.

Bloons TD

Or in layman's terms: Balloon Tower Defense. Yep, you are being invaded by balloons and must place monkeys who throw darts, shoot bows and other defenses to stop them and said monkeys can gain XP and get upgraded etc. It looks well polished but I'm not sure who the target market was here as the concept is stupid, even for children. The cringey voice acting doesn't help either. But hey, maybe there are too many "serious" tower defense games out there and this one is the only ridiculous one right?

Wild Cat Gun Machine

Empty is what this game feels like as your chibi sprite runs from room to room avoiding bullets and killing the baddies that teleport in amidst the spartan decoration in each identical chamber. Save points act as shops and there's very little in the way of story and theme. If you want a similar game that does everything better, play Hades.

Runbow

A party platform racer where the constantly changing background color determines what floors and walls you can step on or move through. Other than the "party" segment there are other platformers that better make use of the same mechanic. Also didn't like that again, it's designed for controllers and there's no easy intuitive way to find out that "jump" (default F on keyboard) is what you need to press to start a game.

Epic Aged Like Milk

Games from the Epic games store that are just too old.

Nostalgia is a great thing, but not so great is discovering just how bad some older games are. Sonic Mania is a great example as I'm told people love this blue hedgehog. This old platformer with huge, timed and multipathed levels that relies more on map memory than skill does not scream good game or even passable game to me though. It's just bad.

Multiply this by 100 and you get the Antstream Arcade which hosts hundreds of old games which to their credit, they run tournaments for their community. What do you win you may ask? Crystals that let you play the old games. Yep, there is currency to play their arcade! Odd design but in truth how many times do you want to play old games like Mortal Combat, Metal Slug, Pac-Man, Galaga, Joe and Mac or Gods (just as a few examples) vs your current MMO / Elden Ring / etc?

Next up is Wargame: Red Dragon, a tactical RTS hybrid that does both of those poorly thanks to a terrible user interface. On the war map screen you can push little figurines of tanks, planes and boats around into regions to feel like a real war general - only to find that the tank you pushed into enemy territory is actually just 1 APC and that 1 jeep of the enemy is around 50 fighting vehicles. Yes, those details are available somewhere but that's just shit. The RTS segment is the part where you can then control your troops on the field which plays like a bad and more bland version of Red Alert without the building component.

As bad as those are, nothing beats Magic Legends which is simply not available anymore - meaning regardless of whatever merits it once had the launcher is quite literally just garbage now.

Suboptimal Six

Six games from Epic that didn't do it for me.

Prison Architect - features art like the Escapists but this time instead of working out escapes, you must manage facility construction and management. Trying to mix these two worlds together is just an absolute fail.

theHunter: Call of the Wild - in this first person shooter you go into well rendered reservations and kill defenseless animals which boasts awesome graphics, good voice overs and pretty decent systems. If you enjoy spending hours following tracks and getting absolutely lost in huge wilderness zones then this might be for you. Definitely not for me though. In my simulations I kinda like prey that fights back.

Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair - an improvement from the last game since most of the levels are now of the fixed 2D platforming variety removing the terrible camera issue. It even has a better story, where you must rescue a "beetalion" of bees who act as a shield to help you when you attempt the titular impossible lair (or if you are that good, you are free to attempt it with zero shields). Might interest the younger generation but otherwise its just a standard platformer.

Relicta - an interesting story which quickly degrades into first person box puzzling. What absolute shit. Not recommended to anyone.

Gods will Fall - another interesting premise where you get a handful of random vikings to try defeat ten or so gods, with the quirk that your heroes only enter dungeons one at a time and if they fail they are stuck in there until one of their compatriots wins the level. That's not too bad. Unfortunately said dungeons are really long, and shitty camera angles and instadeath falls just make it feel like an absolute chore. If it was 11 immediate boss fights that would have improved this game immensely, but for some reason developers love grind.

Mages of Mystralia - another game that suffers from grind AND respawning enemies. Otherwise it's a pretty light Diablo style game where you fight goblins as an apprentice mage. Oddly enough, none of your abilities have any range which is a bit odd as you basically have to bash your enemies on the head with your wand. Maybe later on you can actually shoot stuff but the devs want you to grind for that privilege. Stupid game design and not recommended.

Free Puzzle Presents

If you like exercising your noggin then here are a few free puzzle games on Steam you might want to try out. First up is the (ditsy) Victoria Clair and the Mystery Express, where puzzles are front and center as long as you can put up with the hand drawn art. The brain teasers are definitely varied in this one, but don't worry - your cat will give you clues if you can keep feeding it!

If you prefer your puzzles with a dash of horror instead, then Escape the Clinic might be for you. With jump scares and an overall sense of foreboding this might tick the box for some of you crazy people.

Horror isn't your thing? Maybe a first platform puzzler is what you need! EQI fills this role nicely, as its gimmick is you can rotate the map on its axis - changing where gravity pulls you (and a few other obstacles). Easy control and quick maps make it quite entertaining.

Or maybe you just want some WTF block-push solving. In this case, Helltaker is the game for you - so named because you play a guy picking up all the cute demon girls in each lair of hell!?! Very funny and the later levels are very challenging. Definitely worth looking at though!

I'll drink to that!