History has a habit of repeating itself. Back in 1999, Square-Enix released Chocobo Racing on PSone. Review scores mostly clocked in at 6/10 – an admirable effort, but better options were available. This week’s Chocobo GP has mostly gained 6/10s too, being fun and friendly but ultimately forgettable. It’s also up against Mario Kart 8’s Booster Course Pass pack, due out next Friday.
Speaking of time and history, Time Loader is a ‘90s set physics-based puzzle platformer intended to fill players with gooey nostalgia. You play as a small robot exploring the home of its creator, attempting to prevent a tragic accident. The PC version gained positive reviews, including a glowing 9/10 from God is a Geek.
Will You Snail? offers neon-hued precision platforming, arriving after four years in development. Here, the AI will try to thwart your progress, altering difficulty on the fly.
“I’ve played my fair share of titles in the genre, but I’ve never really seen anything like this. The diabolical Squid is as annoying as it is crafty, and seeing how it conjures up spikes, laser beams, and other instruments of death according to your own movements feels incredibly fresh,†said Nintendo World Report.
The Arcade Crews’ Young Souls then makes the jump from Stadia to Switch. It’s a side-scrolling beat’em up RPG with vibrant cartoon-like visuals. The Stadia version amassed an impressive 83% Metacritic. It’s hard to imagine anything going awry with its transition to Switch, making it one to watch.
Flying under the radar somewhat, there’s Aztech Forgotten Gods – a mixture of Mesoamerican and sci-fi, set in a world where the Aztecs thrived and still exist. It’s a 3D adventure platformer that, according to Shack News, has a slight PS2/GameCube era feel to it. Reviews scores are mostly 6/10 so far, with a lack of polish to blame.
Then there’s REPUBLIQUE: Anniversary Edition, which celebrates the 10th anniversary of this cult stealth adventure. It was originally an episodic iPad game – launching in 2013 – so we do wonder if it’s starting to show its age. Reviews were generally positive when it hit PS4 in 2016, though, so there is some hope. The £12 price tag seems reasonable too.
Grand Mountain Adventure: Wonderlands also began life as a mobile game, and it too gained positive reviews. The £31.49 asking price on Switch seems rather extortionate though, especially when it appears nothing special visually.
Other new releases include the eerie survival game Ashwalkers – from the co-founder of Dontnod – movie tie-in Hotel Transylvania: Scary-Tale Adventures, intriguing 3D puzzler The Last Cube, and Splash Cars – an issometric racer centred around painting a dull world. How’s about splat?
New Switch eShop releases
Aztech Forgotten Gods – £24.99
Aztech Forgotten Gods is the cyber-stone action-adventure following Achtli, a young woman who battles the colossal Forgotten Gods. To uncover the truth behind her far-future Mesoamerican metropolis, she’ll have to turn the Gods’ power against them, as she soars through the city with power and grace.
Chocobo GP – £39.99
Start your engines and get set for a new racing experience, featuring a roster of dozens of your favorite Chocobo characters, complete with their own unique abilities and variants. Equip Magicites and take out the competition as you drift through various familiar courses in online and offline multiplayer modes. Compete in tournaments and become the reigning champion of GP!
Dungeon Color – £3.59
Dungeon Color is a top-down puzzle game, where you switch between flames in order to achieve the rainbow flame in each room. Interact with colors and Switch between flames to match each door. Every door only opens when you are with its respective color.
Slide Stories: Neko’s Journey – £2.49
It is a relaxing and charming slide puzzle with graphic novel elements in which a cat, Neko, travels with its owner, Nina, to lovely places.
Time Loader – £13.49
Time Loader is a story-driven, physics-based puzzle platformer with a twist. At the helm of a small robot, you’ll travel back to the 90s to prevent a tragic accident. Explore the house of your creator, solve brain-teasing puzzles, acquire unique and powerful upgrades, and see common household items from an entirely new perspective!
But remember: meddling with time has serious consequences. You may succeed in changing the past, but can you deal with the result of your actions?
Move or Die: Unleashed – £13.49
20-second rounds, constantly changing mechanics and A LOT of yelling. These are the keywords that perfectly describe Move or Die: Unleashed, the 4-player friendship ruining party game where rules change every single round.
Slap your friends’ controllers out of their hands while playing on the same couch, challenge players from all around the world in online matches or pretend to practice offline with AI bots. Select what you want to play from an ever-expanding roster of mini-games, each with their own outrageous mechanics and level design crafted to promote hours of good old friendship-ruining fun.
Play online to gain XP and level up, unlocking awesome characters and game modes in the process. While you’re at it, use those gains to contribute to our in-game debt bar. When the bar is filled and the debt is paid, exclusive cosmetic items are unlocked for everybody that pitched in!
As its name suggests, Move or Die: Unleashed forces players to take action. In fact, not moving literally makes your character explode. And, with just 20 seconds per round, Move or Die: Unleashed is a quick game to pick up, but a hard one to put down.
Ancient Islands – £11.29
This game covers a lot of unique strategies and combination in order to defend the village. Build not only the defense towers but also other facilities inside your settlement.
Place woodcutter’s huts near the forest to gather wood, then build a marketplace to exchange it for stone.
Develop your magic schools to get more mana and unlock more powerful spells.
Upgrade your gate to damage enemies attacking it and so on…
Grand Mountain Adventure – £31.49
Grand Mountain Adventure: Wonderlands lets you explore freely and at your pace entire ski resorts and the surrounding mountains. Unlock ski lifts and reach new areas by competing in challenges, or enjoy the scenery while you ï¬nd your own path down the mountains. Fancy having fun with your friends? Go on and play in local multiplayer up to 4 players. The choice is yours!
Ashwalkers – £15.49
Face the dark corners of your humanity and find out what lurks in the shadows.
The non-linear story challenges players to make meaningful choices in complex moral dilemmas.
REPUBLIQUE: Anniversary Edition – £12.59
You receive a call from Hope, a woman trapped inside a secret totalitarian state, Metamorphosis. By hacking into the nation’s elaborate surveillance network, help Hope escape from a web of danger and deception. Use security systems, distract guards, solve intricate puzzles, find hidden secrets, and intercept conversations from a wide cast of characters voiced by renowned actors including Rena Strober, Jennifer Hale, David Hayter and Dwight Schultz.
Experience a thrilling narrative stealth adventure game that explores the perils of government surveillance in the Internet Age, and keep Hope alive.
REPUBLIQUE: Anniversary Edition adds brand new in-game developer commentary tracks from the developers at Camouflaj.
Young Souls – £22.49
As orphans, Jenn and Tristan’s life path brought them to a mysterious scientist, who took them in and cared for them as his own children. But one day, he disappeared under very odd circumstances.
While searching desperately for him, the duo found a hidden cellar and the Moon Gate portal, transporting them to a dangerous parallel world where goblins thrive.
Your adventure begins as you fight to bridge these two very different worlds.
The Last Cube – £17.99
Venture into the desolate cube world where you’ll discover 3D puzzles in diverse, colorful environments. As the Last Cube, you must prove your worth and save your dying home.
Potato Flowers in Full Bloom – £13.99
Play as part of an expedition crew looking for knowledge and magic items.
Seeking special crop seeds that were left in a labyrinth by alchemists, your crew has travelled to a rustic island.
These seeds are special in that they are said to grow in contaminated soil, which is a problem that has long plagued humanity.
Setting up a base camp in a ruined town and led by the expedition chief, the player will enter the labyrinth time and time again in an attempt to reach the lowest level where the seeds are said to be stored.
Pocket Slimes – £8.99
Play as one of the available Slimes and explore interesting and beautiful paths in various biomes that you need to make bright again. Be careful and adapt to the new mechanics in each world!
Each step matter, so think through your next move in order to get DIAMOND score! Get to know the way and optimize your pathing for the least possible moves!
Take your favourite Slime and complete challenging routes to unlock fun and unique skins, as well as other biomes!
Don’t forget to bring your friend with you and compete within special modes for TWO players!
World of One – £8.99
Imagine…
You live in your own small world that has everything you need – cozy home, backyard with a rocking chair, beautiful garden, and your own amusement park with music and unlimited amounts of fireworks to launch. You even have a Ferris wheel to touch the stars! Nothing stands between you and this secluded paradise, only an unsettling feeling in the back of your mind that something is going wrong. At some point, it all dramatically changes and now you have to find out what this world really conceals…
Frightence – £5.39
Frighthence is a short, intense first-person horror experience.
You are the janitor who works at the infamous Apartment #17, which is the seed of many eeire tales and bloodcurdling urban legends…
The apartment recently got an eviction notice and tonight, you must check every resident’s flat to make sure that everybody has left.
Soon you will realize that things are not the way they seem in this dreadful apartment…
Retro Pixel Racers – £8.99
Retro Pixel Racers is a fun top-down arcade racing game with a retro style graphics where you control of little cars racing over exciting tracks.
Start your engines and prepare for the craziest and most addictive racing game ever.
Fast-paced racing game with a fresh interpretation of the 16-bit style.
This is an arcade racing game based on games that I loved playing in the arcades growing up.
You could say it’s inspired by those games, maybe a tribute to them or simply a rip off, any of these could be true!
Cosmos Bit – £4.99
Play as the heroic space warrior Stella Mironova and explore a world filled with excitement and danger. In Cosmos Bit, you’ll relive the 8-bit era charm again in a game that draws inspiration from classic platform action exploration titles of the 1980s and 1990s.
The journey will take you through a litany of landscapes, battles with a myriad of monsters, mind-warping challenges, and even menacing boss encounters! Can you collect minerals in each level to build up your powers to go further?
The challenge is significant but not frustrating, and the game is enjoyable for both veterans and beginners of this genre!
Two Hundred Ways – £10.79
Two Hundred Ways, the sequel of the successful brain teaser One Hundred Ways, gives puzzle fans twice as many mental challenges to overcome. The mission of each of its 200 levels sounds easy: guide one or more balls to the exit. But levels with up to three different layers and numerous ball traps don’t make this task a walk in the park. Luckily, players can use dozens of tools to help them reach their goal – but using more tools means that their level score will go down…
Syndrome – £19.99
YOU’RE NOT ALONE
You wake up from cryosleep on “Valkenburg” – the most advanced science space station in the “Novacoreâ€. The ship appears to be abandoned, but suddenly you hear a voice on the communicator that makes you aware of the situation. Something from the abyss of space is kidnapping and killing the people on the ship. And it doesn’t stop hunting.
RUN. HIDE. FIGHT. SURVIVE.
The enemies are strong and they outnumber so you have no choice but to go out of sight. Unfortunately, sooner or later you will have to face them, then remember that there is not much ammunition on the science ship… Stay in the shadows and survive!
YOUR MIND IS ALSO YOUR ENEMY
Meanwhile, strange things start happening to your mind. Will you trust the voice or are they against you too? Where did the ” thing” on the ship come from? Will you be able to survive? Explore the dark corridors of a spacecraft and discover the mystery behind the disappearance of your crewmates.
Hotel Transylvania: Scary-Tale Adventures – £34.99
Take control of Drac and Mavis and play through unique worlds with their own spooky spin, including Little Red Riding Hood, The Emperor’s New Clothes and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
Faced with fearsome foes and fiendish puzzles, you must brave your way through and utilize your special abilities to dash, glide and jump through these spook-tacular storybook worlds. You’ll even get to meet iconic Hotel Transylvania characters like Johnny, Murray, Wayne and more, who’ll guide you to complete exciting quests and solve devious challenges, along with a coffin-full of collectibles for you to discover. With so much at stake, Drac and Mavis are Count-ing on you to save the day!
Spook-tacular Stories – Become Little Red Riding Mavis and watch out for the Big Bad Wolf Wayne. Collect valuable trinkets for the King of Thieves and solve puzzles to find Emperor Blobby’s New Clothes!
Discover new locations – Explore unique worlds, unearth hidden collectibles and discover all the secrets of each story to unlock treats tastier than a scream-cheese bagel!
Master your powers – Power up Drac and Mavis with super strength, immobilization powers, super jump, and more.
Om Nom: Coloring, Toons & Puzzle – £3.49
Join Om Nom in fun learning:
WATCH 1 season with 11 episodes of Toons where Om Nom arrives at the house and explores it in a series of adventures
FILL 23 pictures of Nommies using various tools and colors
DRAW on 18 whiteboards to express your own creative ideas
ASSEMBLE 11 jigsaw puzzles with your favorite monster with a sweet tooth, 6-150 pieces each
CONNECT 10 sets of dots to uncover hidden shape
Will You Snail? – £12.99
Will You Snail is a fast-paced action platformer with an AI twist that offers a unique single-player experience: a challenging adventure in a neon-glowing setting that blends combat, puzzle-solving, and lots of humour together.
Splash Cars – £6.29
Bring color to a boring grey world as you drive your heart out and leave a brilliant trail of paint in your wake! Splash Cars is an isometric 3D driving game where you’ll race for freedom of expression, outrunning the authorities and inspiring other public servants to join your cause.
Start each race in a drab isometric neighborhood, rev your engines and get rolling! Paint oozes from your vehicle, restoring color to the streets, grass, trees, surrounding buildings and more as you speed around the map. Team up for cooperative multiplayer fun or progress solo. Choose your style from a range of original cars and use custom paint jobs to stand out from the pack. Use power-ups to sabotage your pursuers or super-size your car! Splash Cars is casual freestyle fun for players of all ages.
The Wild Case – £8.99
Prepare for a journey to a remote village deep in the forest, where strange creatures with glowing eyes terrorize the inhabitants. As the hero, you will investigate eerie phenomena and be drawn deeper into the village. The story begins before you even arrive at your destination…
The Wild Case is a 2D first-person point-and-click adventure.
In this story-focused adventure, players meet a cast of colorful characters, experience mysterious encounters, and solve puzzles to progress through the game.
Next week: Gal*Gun Double Peace, WRC 10 FIA World Rally Championship, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe: Booster Course Pass, Chex Quest HD, Adios, Sea Battle Minimal, Phantom Breaker: Omnia, MacGuffin’s Curse, Dawn of the Monsters, Handball Pelota, Wife Quest, Jumping Bricks Ball, Royal Frontier, and Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus?
