Weekly Update 2026-03-29
Holy cow! Slimes on the way to school?!
Game Releases and Updates
Nothing Beyond This Point release – I played the demo of this… for brevity’s sake, let’s just say action game at the start of last year, and have been keeping an eye on its progress since. Now it’s finished, and I was in a mood so I picked it up immediately and got a bit further than what I remember from the demo.
The game, in case you’d rather not read my initial thoughts, is basically a twin-stick shooter where you play as an Inferno [though it looks just like a Blaze from Minecraft, doesn’t it?] and most of your attacks aside from basic melee deplete the Rods encircling you. Those Rods also count as your hit points, and to regenerate them, you need to stand still and channel for a few seconds. That means you effectively have infinite regenerating health and ammo, so long as you can find a window to catch your breath, but you need to constantly balance aggression and defense.
The exploration is also interesting – the world you’re trapped in is a Void, devoid of landmarks and terrain, aside from, of course, the landmarks and tracks you can follow to find progress. The way this actually works in the game is that most screen edges just make you loop to the other side of the current screen – some secrets involve you doing this repeatedly in a pattern a la the Lost Woods of Zelda, some transitions are locked off, and you can unlock a map in certain areas. There’s plenty of upgrades and permanent choices to make already, and the second boss is kicking my ass, so I don’t know how long the game will take or if I’ll do another run of it, but I’m enjoying it so far.
Lost Flame 1.0 – a very proper rogue-like, with an attempt to make equipment and skill usage crucial and interesting. Every weapon has particular moves associated with it, and using moves in combat, such as lunges and parries, consumes some limited stamina. Stamina regenerates to full between combat encounters, but is strict enough that you stand a real chance at running out and being left weak and panting with a desperate bandit still standing.
I’ve not gotten too far – just to the first bonfire, which teleported me to a Souls-ish hub world with various service NPCs [who are voice acted, shockingly] and teasing locked doors.
I then explored the hub too thoroughly and caught the attention of a cavalier who obliterated me. Maybe the tactical depth won’t hold up through the course of a full rogue-like but it seems pretty well-thought-out so far.
Devil Spire Falls Bosses update – another update that makes me want to start another fresh character, and let’s just say thank God the dev added Avians because I’m so sick of walking around for 20 minutes at the start of every seed trying to find a single settlement. The new field bosses are genuinely imposing and epic… at least when they don’t somehow kill themselves trying to catch up with the birdman they’re chasing. Just… just gotta remember to keep an eye on my stamina...
The State of Games Played
I continued to hop into Haunted Lands on and off even once I’d finished my write-up – I still have some secrets to track down, some challenges to check off, and some fun to have, though it unfortunately lacks the dedicated post-game encouragement that Zexion had, so I probably won’t be attempting any speedruns or restricted runs in it. Still an absolutely fantastic game, and one I’ll definitely replay periodically in the future.
Speaking of replays, the post last week from Fortune Summoner’s developer did its job, and got me to pony up and redownload that blast from the past. I’m several hours in now, finally got to the point where the difficulty curve becomes somewhat shocking, and I feel vindicated that all my fond memories weren’t just nostalgia. This game is just as fantastic as I remember.
Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten about Esoteric Ebb, though. I’ve just been chipping away at it slowly, savoring the encounters and conversations that seem to spin off into genuinely interesting tangents and possibilities. I’m also wearing a friendly mimic around. What could go wrong? I suppose I’ll find out eventually, as The Cleric’s motto seems to be ‘fuck around, at every opportunity.’
As I murmured about last week, I did move on with my Galactic Disasters conquest in Approaching Infinity, with an attempt to blast through Nanopocalypse Now! I mean, I beat the Blight first try, I stopped the Nanopocalypse on my Sector 1000 run, this should be a piece of -
Aw, fuck. I’m licking my wounds now in a cozy Hard mode run with the Point of No Return disaster enabled [only one visit to each sector allowed] and aiming for a Monk victory, which is going much better. I even started using a Gruff Hunt-Leader, who can tame a huge number of hostile aliens and gives me a little personal army on a lot of planets.
And I’ve also made some time to continue my revisit of Death Stranding 2. I can’t believe I never went back to Mexico on my original run to get the handgun and staff upgrades. I’ve been less patient and stealthy with enemy camps this time and having more options for full aggression is a big relief.
Incidentally, I also played some...
DEMOS
Legends of the Round Table – this overcomplicated, overdramatic, and highly stylized adaptation of Arthurian legend is pretty much exactly what I’d hoped Pentiment was more like. You play as the Once and Future King himself, [and any noble knights who happen to be in his immediate retinue] reliving the legends, the battles, and the interminable fetch quests that define the mythological legacy underpinning the conception of a united Britain. But despite essentially being a point-and-click adventure RPG where you ride around talking to maids and lords and wizards, it’s also much, much more.
Unfortunately, ‘much more’ also includes deckbuilder. You have a hand of cards, each with a value, a season, and an aspect of chivalry, which you can use during any roll to give yourself a boost… which might ALSO result in other effects, and can get legitimately complex. For example, even in basic fights, each defense roll you perform not only has a pass/fail value, which you can try to exceed with a strong card, but the total number you get to with your card can allow you to at least redirect the attack to a specific spot on your body. [or away] Or, when you charge someone with a couched lance, having an odd total for your attack roll means that even if you land the hit, your lance will shatter, forcing you to draw steel to finish things up.
Oh, it gets way more complicated. Nearly everything you do has some extra depth – performing behavior unseemly for a knight, such as striking an unarmed opponent, attacking a man whose horse you’ve cut out from under him while mounted yourself, or pounding on a guy who’s surrounded, all incur dishonor… but only for those of higher station. To maintain your respect, your nobility, your aura, you have to allow dazed combatants to come to their senses and rearm, dismount to fight a dehorsed warrior in the square, and most importantly, allow a striken foe to beg for mercy at your hand. And none of this of course applies to your inglorious footsoldiers, who you can order to commit all sorts of gaucheness in battle, as long as your hands are clean, and they do not succumb to Cowardice. It all reminded me distinctly of a portion from Ghost of Giraldus’s post on ambitious Arthurian adaptations:
The battle rages like this for pages at a time. Knights are always smote down horse and man, the fallen calling ‘gramercy!’ (grant mercy) to the victors, as kings “on foote” are rehorsed by their followers. It goes on and on and on and ON. The effect is dizzying, almost maddening. As the reader gets lost in the noise and chaos of battle, it is easy to forget who is alive, who is dead, who is on whose side. To include no less than eleven kings and describe each of their various fortunes in the battle of Bedegraine as well as the twenty-one named followers of Arthur and what they were up to and how many times they get knocked down and get up again (a la Chumbawumba) is a ridiculous, over-the-top, and even indulgent decision.
There’s a lot going on, and even the small taste of it in the demo is a lot more compelling and overwhelming than I expected. The idea of having to manage the wounds, both in body and honor, of dozens of retainers and cavaliers, while also learning arcane spells and juggling artifacts, sounds just as wildly ambitious and overwrought as any epic poetry or rock opera, but from what I can tell, it might actually stick the landing. We won’t have long to find out either way - it’s out Tuesday.
It’s got one big problem in my opinion: the voice acting, while fine, is just one lady narrating everything and voicing every one, and I hate that audiobook thing of someone doing 30 different ‘voices.’ Reminds me of The Siege and the Sandfox, and not in a good way.
I Am Jesus Christ – sorry, just to clarify, that’s the name of the game, not a bizarre declaration. This game is itself kind of a bizarre declaration – I don’t think anyone’s really had the cojones to do a game like this since MDickie’s The You Testament.
Anyhow, yes, you play as Jesus of Nazareth, still living with his parents in his 30s, apparently, when an angel appears before him and tells him to get out of bed and find a job. I mean go to the river and find John. And then, immediately, you’re cut loose. You can run, jump, parkour around, talk to random NPCs, open your map and discover Ubislop pins all over showing where you can collect verses, lore entries, argue with Pharisees, and so on.
Following the main quest reveals even more miracles – our Savior has Batman Detective Vision that he can toggle on at the cost of Faith, there’s achievements you can unlock to earn a higher Followers stat, I’m starting to feel a little dizzy, you apparently unlock a variety of spells, oh, sorry, I mean divine miracles, there’s even a minigame to resist Satan’s temptation in the desert. Hang on, isn’t this the minigame from the PS2 Harry Potter games?
To my surprise, the game is actually pretty entertaining, even beyond the novelty of jumping around some cottages as Christ the Lord and engaging with the Asshole Physics to obstruct patrolling Roman legionaries.
I have my doubts about it living up to The Greatest Story Ever Told [tough bar to clear] or even being an effective teaching implement [the voiceovers actually matching with the subtitles and text on screen would fucking help] but hey, it’s better than Synaxarion: Great Martyr Theodore the Tyro.
Divinum – when I covered this during Next Fest a few weeks ago I mentioned that I’d unlocked an accelerated preview of the game’s higher level mechanics, and might dip in later to check it out. I finally did that, and was even more impressed than I was initially by this sidescrolling character action game. The rest of the demo is essentially just a [very long] series of checkpoints, each one having a spawner that presents three combat gauntlets of increasing difficulty before opening the way forward. Each checkpoint also has a shop where you can purchase your choice of an increasing variety of badges to equip, giving you genuinely fun perks, like automatic lightning strikes and life leech, as well as more adrenaline skills to mix up your combos or strike big hits.
The later gauntlets even include whole boss fights, which really present decent resistance, and let you practice with all the skills and perks at your disposal. My favorite was the skill that lets you blink to the nearest facing enemy’s back and do an immediate hit, which you can then chain into a combo to stagger and start juggling them, launching them into the air for a final, big spinning slam to earth. Solid combat, fun skills and perks, now all it needs is for the full game to have relatively satisfying exploration and I’ll be willing to take a look.
Writing
Haunted Lands is the most excited I’ve gotten since Zexion, and another example of why I bother to go so hard so deep at Next Fest. I hope I at least manage to dredge up one game that good in June.
My next big non-writeup article is coming along, and should be out in a few days. If you’ve been paying attention, you might have a guess as to its subject...
Other
There’s a lot coming out this week, a lot I’m currently playing, and a few things I really need to pick back up and get around to finishing. But the weather is also getting better so I’ve been out doing yard work instead of gaming as much as I should. Maybe I could wear a VR headset while driving the riding mower...
"It’s got one big problem in my opinion: the voice acting, while fine, is just one lady narrating everything and voicing every one, and I hate that audiobook thing of someone doing 30 different ‘voices.’"
I've been playing *Sunderfolk* with my wife and this is probably my biggest gripe about the game.
I genuinely couldn't get through even the first 10 minutes of the Legends of the Round Table—once it came to combat my eyes glazed over and that was that. It looks like a good time for the sickos who are into that sort of thing. Did you buy the full game now that it's out? I'd love to hear if it lived up to your expectations.