Year of Gaming 2025

I’ve bought a lot of games over the years. When a game that I’m vaguely interested in pops up at an 80% discount in a Steam sale (or is free on the Epic Store), I’d be crazy not to buy it, right? And I’m sure I’ll get around to playing them eventually, right? Right!?

Well, this year, I finally decided that it was time to get around to it. I pretty much banned myself from buying any new games and set myself a challenge: each month, I would start a new game from my to-do list. I would play that game as much as I could, until I either finished it or ran out of time, then write up my thoughts by the end of the month before moving on to the next one.

The games I played were:

• January - Star Trek: Resurgence

• February - Viewfinder

• March - Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna)

• April - Streets of Rage 4

• May - Marvel’s Midnight Suns

• June - Hi-fi Rush

• July - Demo Roundup*

• August - Hardspace Shipbreaker

• September - Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

• October - Tales of Kenzera: Zau

• November - Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock

• December - Deliver Us Mars

• • I couldn’t get into the game I was supposed to be playing that month, but I got to play some fun demos instead.

I also did a second demo roundup during Steam’s Next Fest in October.

Follow Up

There were a few that I wasn’t able to complete during the month, so I ended up writing first-impressions posts. But I did go on to complete two of those games:

Midnight Suns

I carried on playing Midnight Suns through June and July, and even bought all of the DLC when the bundle was on sale. I managed to complete the main game, and I enjoyed it. The story and characters are interesting, and even Deadpool is not as annoying as he could have been! The gameplay might have gotten a little stale towards the end, but the extra enemies and mission types from the DLC helped keep things varied.

After being initially unsure about this game, I can highly recommend it to tactics fans and Marvel fans.

Hi-Fi Rush

Again, I carried on dipping in and out of this game over the following months. I completed it and even had a play around with some of the endgame content. As I said in the review, it’s an enjoyable, well-crafted game with an amazing soundtrack.

I’m glad to see that the rights to the game have reverted to the original developer, under new publisher Krafton. I’m still angry at Microsoft and Bethesda for the way they treated Tango Gameworks, but I have no qualms recommending this game wholeheartedly, now that the game is back in their hands!

Reflections

Arguably, I didn’t complete the challenge. You could say that I didn’t give* The Ascent* a fair chance, and that reviewing three demos instead was a cop out. But I did play a whole load of new games, which was ultimately the point, and I published a blog post every month, so I’m counting it as a win!

I also learned something from this. I didn’t just play games from my backlog, but I pushed myself to play games and genres that I wouldn’t normally play. And the main lesson is… somewhat anticlimactically… that there’s a reason that I don’t normally play these sorts of games! But that’s OK. I’ve learned a bit more about myself, and maybe I’ll think about it a bit more carefully before I bulk buy a load of heavily discounted games in future sales. Everyone is different, after all! Not every game engaged or absorbed me, but I would say that around half of them did, which isn’t bad going!

Final Thoughts

So, all-in-all, I’m glad I did the challenge, and I feel like my life is richer for it. I’ve discovered some new favourites and cleared some of my backlog.

I’ve still got more than a dozen games installed and on my to-do list. But I’ve got a lot coming up this year, so I probably won’t force myself to do anything. But I hope I can continue to try out some things I’ve been missing out on and maybe clear a few more of that to-do list!

(Or, more realistically, I will probably start Baldur’s Gate 3, and that’ll swallow up all my free time instead!)

So that’s it from the challenge for now. It was fun, and I might do it again when things aren’t so busy! Check out my other Game Reviews and Gaming-related rants. Thanks for reading. Take care of yourselves!

Reminder: For the Year of Gaming Challenge, I have to play one of the many games I’ve bought in Steam sales and never got around to playing. I must give it a fair chance and write up my thoughts by the end of each month. (That may not sound like much of a challenge, but as a father with a lot going on right now, it will be hard to fit in!)

The previous entry in the series, Deliver Us The Moon, has been on my wishlist for a while. It seems like the sort of thing that should be right up my street: an atmospheric, sci-fi, single-player story. So, I snapped up the sequel when it was available for free on the Epic Store and decided to give it a try.

Disclaimer: I haven’t played the previous game, so I cannot comment on how the two experiences compare or whether the stories are connected.

Deliver Us Mars

This game is an action-adventure game by KeokeN Interactive, released in February 2023. And it’s yet another example of the fact that “action-adventure” tells you absolutely nothing!

It’s what is sometimes referred to as a Ghost Train Ride: a linear story where you have to solve puzzles or do some climbing between each story scene. And, of course, you end up directing laser beams, because that’s a requirement for every puzzle game since Portal! Don’t think that’s me talking it down, though. I’d rather play a good, well-crafted linear story than a bland, open-ended one.

Story and Writing

You play as Kathy Johansen. As a kid, your father stole a spaceship and buggered off to Mars. Decades later, you’re part of a mission being sent to find out what happened. It’s hard to discuss much more about it without spoilers.

I will say that it felt oddly paced to me. There’s a fairly lengthy prologue; I beat the game in nine hours, and it was three hours before we arrived on Mars. But they also skip over bits of the story, including one moment where Kathy escapes and steals a rover, where it felt like content had been cut out.

[caption id=”attachment_7966” align=”aligncenter” width=”1280”] A screenshot from Deliver Us Mars. The main character is using a pair of ice picks to climb across the wreckage of a spaceship while her spherical robot companion watches.[/caption]

Also, as soon as we got to Mars, it became apparent that… Okay, I won’t spoil the actual details, but it was pretty obvious how it was going to play out.

[spoiler title=”Show spoiler”]As soon as you view the first holograms, it’s clear that the Martian colonists had inevitably split into the same two factions of Fascists and Nutters that you find in every game, and your father is caught in the middle.[/spoiler]

That doesn’t make it bad, however. It’s a very well-written and voice-acted game! And it was an emotionally satisfying ending, even if I was left with some unanswered questions.

[spoiler title=”Show spoiler”]I do find it odd that they didn’t tell us whether the colonists left behind on Mars survived after we stole their Ark![/spoiler]

Gameplay

It’s a sometimes first-person, sometimes third-person game. There is a range of activities, which elevates it above a walking simulator, but they’re mostly contextual, i.e. you’ve got a cutting laser, but you can only use it when there is something nearby that you can cut. Occasionally, you’ll do a zero-g space walk. These sequences look amazing, but they suffer from the same issue as Hardspace Shipbreaker, in that you feel like a decapitated head, floating around in space without a body. There’s a pretty great launch sequence, where you have to press various buttons and levers to configure and fire up various systems to get the ship into space, and the transition from Earth to space is gorgeous. But you mostly explore abandoned bases, looking for a button to press to advance the story.

There also didn’t seem to be much reason to explore off the beaten track. I did look around, exploring areas that felt like they should have secrets in, but I learned pretty quickly that the game didn’t seem to want to reward me for it. There are some chat logs I didn’t find and objects I didn’t scan, but also a lot of empty dead ends.

Craft

This is where the game both shines and occasionally lets itself down. The levels and environments are gorgeous, as is the lighting. They’re really good at environmental storytelling, and as I said, the voice acting and writing are top-notch.

Most of the time, it is clear where you are supposed to go next, but there were other times when I had to check the objectives and see where the next marker was. But the occasional frustration or disorientation is preferable to so many games that lead you by the nose. There were also some sequences where they were clearly running out of time, money or coffee, where they resort to hanging yellow flags to indicate the path forward, a variation on the yellow paint that lazy level designers use in other games!

There are a few areas that are not so well polished. The beginning and ending of the story both feature fully-realised human characters. However, there are times when they do not look their best. Their movement can be a bit stiff, and the facial animation a bit lifeless. I’ve got a note here that says “they look like the humans from the first Toy Story”, which is possibly a bit harsh. For the rest of the game, the story is told mainly by expositional holograms, which are crudely modelled and animated. It’s clearly a budget constraint, and I don’t mind it for the most part (but what is weird is when the holograms show up in dream sequences!).

It has some rough edges, but not as many as you might expect from a small team and limited budget. Occasionally, your pet robot won’t follow you into an airlock and then pops into existence on the other side. There were a few times I got stuck on geometry or hit an invisible wall blocking a seemingly valid path. I also had an objective that I’d completed stuck on screen for a whole chapter. There were also some buttons in one of the launch sequences that I could highlight before I should have been able to press them. Finally, I noticed some textures popping in late. I’d much have preferred that they just loaded them all first; it’s not like the loading screens were long!

None of this was game-breaking, just a little immersion-breaking. And breaking immersion is a big deal in a game like this! But, despite some jank, I was absorbed enough to see the story through to the mostly satisfying ending.

Stats

• I got the game for free on the Epic Store. Its full price is £24.99, and I’d recommend it at that price, though it is currently on sale for £6.24 (75% off).

• I played it for just over 9 hours and have completed the story.

• There were a few collectables and logs that I didn’t find, but I currently don’t feel motivated to replay it to find them.

Final Thoughts

Deliver Us Mars was a good little game, which I enjoyed despite not having played its predecessor. I keep arguing that there should be more single-player, story-driven experiences in gaming, and so I’m glad to see that some companies are still making them instead of bloated, over-stuffed, always-online, open-world garbage.

It manages to feel both like sections of the story are missing and a little padded out at times. And it is clear that it was produced on a limited budget. But it was a mostly enjoyable experience, with a good, well-written story and interesting characters. The upcoming sequel, Deliver Us Home, is now on my Wishlist, and overall, it’s an easy recommendation for anyone wanting an absorbing, atmospheric sci-fi story.

* A**nd that brings me to the end of my Year of Gaming challenges. 12 games (sort of!) in 12 months, done! I’ve had mixed feelings about many of the games I’ve played, but on the whole, I’m glad I did it. I’ll write a full reflection post that will be out sometime over the next few weeks, possibly in the new year. *

And now I think I might be cursed!

Reminder: For the Year of Gaming Challenge, I have to play one of the many games I’ve bought in Steam sales and never got around to playing. I must give it a fair chance and write up my thoughts by the end of each month. (That may not sound like much of a challenge, but as a father with a lot going on right now, it will be hard to fit in!)

Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock

Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock is a turn-based strategy game developed by Black Lab Games and published by Slitherine Software back in 2017.

The game comes in two parts. There’s an overview layer where story missions and random events occur throughout the four star systems. You can’t respond to everything, and you have to make sure that all the colonies stay in the alliance to continue to receive resources. If too many colonies pull out, it’s game over. You then get into turn-based space battles, where you must manoeuvre your ships around in 3D space to get one over on those pesky Cylons. And it’s fairly competent at both of these parts, at least in the early hours.

It’s also a game that you can no longer buy! The day after I started playing it, the developers announced that as of November 15th 2025 (so by the time this review comes out!) you will no longer be able to purchase the game on any platform.

Just my luck that I would try to get into a game right before it’s discontinued. The last update was in 2020, the last news item in 2022, and then this one, just as I launched it for the first time! So, you can still play it if you own it, but if you’re reading this and are thinking about giving it a try… well, you’re kinda screwed!

It seems that the developers are keen to wash their hands of the thing they created! 😉

Kinda makes this whole exercise feel a bit pointless, but hey, here we are! I committed to the challenge and I shall continue as planned.

Story and Writing

The story is set on the twelve human colonies, after the disappearance of the titular Battlestar Galactica. Your job as fleet commander is to fight the Cylons and keep the human colonies safe. It’s a bit odd to make a BSG game that doesn’t actually feature the Galactica (at least, as far as I’ve played!), but that doesn’t necessarily matter. The characters are all new too, but some have taken inspiration from what I can remember of the TV series.

When you start a campaign, there’s an opening cutscene that was clearly produced on a budget, and then the rest of the story is told mostly through in-game dialogue. It’s mostly pretty well-written, and you always feel like you’re on the back foot against the Cylons. There are alleged squabbling factions and an escalation of Cylon attacks, which you’re told about rather than shown, but the telling is pretty good, for the most part.

Gamplay

The space battles are most reminiscent of Homeworld, except that it’s turn-based. You order your units around, setting their target position and height, telling them who to fire on, and when to launch missiles or deploy fighters. Then end your turn, and both sides’ moves play out in real-time. There are a few nuances to manage: corvettes can only fire forwards, while frigates can only fire side on. Some ships have missiles and there are countermeasures to consider. Also, there are fighters, which are massively overpowered! (But I guess that makes sense in the context of BSG!) The ships can only manoeuvre so far and so fast each turn, and you have to be careful not to end up in a situation where ships collide with each other, or allow the toasters to flank you. It can be fiddly, especially as you have to take height/depth into account, but it mostly works pretty well (especially once you learn to point your ships at where the enemy ship is likely to be during the next turn and not where they are now!).

Between missions, there’s a simple galaxy map, with four star systems and a dozen-or-so planets. You have to build fleets and move them around to respond to Cylon threats and complete story missions. This overview layer reminds me of the recent XCOM games, though it has to be said, it’s not as deep.

I do have a few gripes. It’s weird that you can’t rotate ships at the start of the battle, as sometimes you have to spend a few turns doing a three-point space turn before your fleet can engage the enemy, which is just embarrassing! You also can’t select multiple ships during this phase, like you can during normal combat. There’s also an annoying pause after you issue orders turns while it says “Working…” for a few seconds before you can end your turn. I’m not sure why, but sometimes it takes AGES! This is particularly annoying when you want to take multiple turns in rapid succession, and it slows the already not-always-thrilling gameplay down to a crawl!

I found it quite engaging for the first few hours. But then it felt like every battle was more or less the same. Sometimes you have to protect a civilian ship or destroy a space station. Occasionally, there’s a nebula, which prevents your missiles from targeting enemy ships. There was a mission with some satellites that boosted your stats, but the Cylons ignored them, and so did I! You can increase the power of your fleets by assigning and promoting officers, but you can only ever take 7 ships into any battle. It’s also not clear when your officers are ready to be promoted, so I had to go through each one, clicking the promote button to see if they were ready.

It’s a shame, as with a few tweaks and optimisations, the game could be a lot more fun and engaging, but it seems we’ll never get those fixes now!

Craft

It’s not the most premium-feeling game in the world. It doesn’t feel like a huge leap forward from Homeworld, and that’s a 25-year-old game. There are times when the action pauses in the heat of battle with fighters engaging, lasers and missiles flying in all directions, where the game does look great.

There are attempts to be cinematic, with things like your fleet jumping into the area, but they don’t always work. A fairly major issue is that the scale feels off. All the ships, including the battlestars and space stations, feel tiny. Not helped by being placed in mostly featureless skyboxes (spaceboxes?), where the stars are too dense and bright, so the ships don’t really stand out from the background. The ships do look good, and are accurate to their designs from the TV series. They all look like realistically similar and modular ships that humans would probably build. But there’s also not a lot of difference between the different ship classes; you can’t easily tell some of them apart at a glance.

As I said, the writing and voice acting are pretty decent; it’s just a shame that that’s the only tool the game seems to have for delivering the story. It just feels like an overly ambitious game, hampered by a relatively low budget. But then, I would have expected a game based on a TV show that had been off the air for eight years (at the time of release) to have the budget it deserved!

Oh, and the game crashed at the end of a mission, about 8 hours in. On one hand, it’s a nearly-10-year-old game; on the other hand, they had three years between launch and the last update in 2020 to fix all the bugs!

Stats

• I got the game for free on Steam in July 2025. It is no longer available on any platform.

• I played it for just over 13 hours and have completed Chapter 9 of the story.

• I probably won’t go back, because by that point, the battles were starting to feel repetitive and I’d lost my immersion in the story.

Final Thoughts

I enjoyed my first few hours with BSG: Deadlock, but it became a bit samey and lost its appeal after a while. I’m not sure I can see myself playing much more of it once this month is over, and I didn’t exactly find myself rushing to buy all of the DLC for it before they delisted it all.

Ultimately, the effect of spending a few days playing this game has been twofold: 1) It’s made me want to watch the BSG TV series again - if I can work out what streaming platform the damn thing is on! - and 2) it’s made me want to play Homeworld again!

Normally, I try to be a bit coy with these introductions, but I’m going to spoil the whole review by saying this month’s game might be the best one I’ve played for the Year of Gaming Challenge so far!

Reminder: For the Year of Gaming Challenge, I have to play one of the many games I’ve bought in Steam sales and never got around to playing. I must give it a fair chance and write up my thoughts by the end of each month. (That may not sound like much of a challenge, but as a father with a lot going on right now, it will be hard to fit in!)

I can’t remember when I first saw Tales of Kenzera, but it immediately caught my eye. It had a striking art style and a sort of fluid motion that looked like it would be fun to play. Plus, as I said in my review of Never Alone back in March, I love learning about other cultures, and gaming has proven to be a surprisingly good way to do that.

So, all of those promising signs bumped the game to the top of my To Do list, and this month, I finally got to see if it lived up to that promise.

Tales of Kenzera: Zau

I would describe Tales of Kenzera: Zau as a 2.5D action platformer with Metroidvania influences, following the adventures of a young shaman who must explore the world and battle corrupted spirits. The game was released in 2024, developed by Surgent Studios and published by EA Originals.

Story & Writing

The framing device follows a young man living in what can only be described as a Wakanda-like futuristic country. He is in mourning and discovers that his father wrote a story before he died. It is that story - Zau’s story - that you play through for the majority of the game. Zau is a young shaman whose father has also recently passed away. He has taken up his father’s masks, powers and responsibilities, and goes on to make a deal with Kalunga, the god of death, to get his father back.

[caption id=”attachment_7903” align=”aligncenter” width=”1280”] A screenshot of Zau running across a desert landscape with a volcano in the background.[/caption]

I won’t spoil too much, but it’s a beautiful story that deals with death and grief and loss. It became pretty obvious early on where the story was going, but the writing and voice acting were more than enough to keep it engaging to the end. It’s a surprisingly powerful story, and one that will stick with me for some time.

Gameplay

It’s described as a Metroidvania, but I’d say it was mainly a platformer with some Metroidvania elements. You can run, jump, double jump, dash and bounce off walls to get around the levels. There are platforming challenges, some light puzzle elements and a few paths that are inaccessible until you unlock new powers and abilities. But you can fast travel, and any challenges you have unlocked are marked on your map, which cuts out a lot of the tedious backtracking that usually infests these sorts of games.

There’s also combat. Zau has two masks that he can switch between, which give him different abilities that are used in both platforming and combat. Basically, one does more melee damage while the other gives you ranged attacks, and some enemies have colour-coded shields that are resistant to each mask’s magic. It’s not particularly deep. I kept expecting to unlock another mask and skill tree during the story, but that never happened. You’ll also find yourself fighting a lot of the same enemies. However, that doesn’t mean it isn’t fun and engaging, and it does a pretty good job of mixing up the action with different combinations of enemies and abilities throughout the story.

The gameplay is fast, fluid and fun. When I say it’s not overly deep, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing! At least you don’t get overburdened with a massive skill tree of abilities that you forget about and only ever use by accident. I much prefer games like this to ones that are overstuffed with features and content just to pad them out. Tales of Kenzera is relatively simple, but it doesn’t outstay its welcome, which is another refreshing change!

Craft

The art style is gorgeous. It’s “2.5D”, so the levels are 3D, but you move along a 2D plane. There are often interesting things like jungles and volcanoes in the background, or breathtaking scenes of trees silhouetted against aurora-filled skies. Despite this, it’s always clear where you are and where you’re supposed to be going. Personally, I much prefer this to the use of 2D (and, often, ugly) “retro” graphics, which are often used in similar games!

As I said, the writing and voice acting are amazing. The animation is generally good. When you’re in cutscenes, you get Hades-style 2D images of the characters talking to each other. I’d have liked to have seen more expression and animation in the 3D characters of these moments, but they’re pretty stilted. However, as I said, the voice acting more than makes up for it!

The result is an aesthetic that feels unique, the general gameplay and combat are beautifully rendered and animated, and the world never feels overly complex, cluttered or confusing.

Stats

• I got the game on Steam in late 2024 for £7.19, a roughly 60% discount on the current full price of £17.99.

• I played it for just under 12 hours and have completed it, earning all achievements.

Final Thoughts

Some would view a game that you can beat in a handful of play sessions as a bad thing. For me, it was perfect. An actually fun game with a satisfying story that I can 100% within the confines of my lifestyle is fantastic! It’s gorgeous and well-written and isn’t an endless grind. I also can’t overstate how refreshing it is to play a “fantasy” game (i.e. a game with magic and mythical creatures) that isn’t set in yet another facsimile of Middle-earth!

Yes, I’ve seen all there is to see, but it’s a game that will stick with me, and it’s definitely one of the highlights of the YoG Challenge so far!

Find out what I thought of the other games I’ve played for the Year of Gaming challenge, or check out my other gaming-related rants and reviews.

Read on to find out what I played and what my first impressions were.

Next Fest is a celebration of gaming, where hundreds of game demos are released and developers are encouraged to do livestreams and make videos to promote their games. For me, it’s mainly been an opportunity to preview some of the games on my wishlist and try out a few games that I wouldn’t normally play. I managed to play (or at least try to play!) seven games during this year’s Next Fest, and these are my first impressions.

Note: I’m not sure if all these demos are particularly new or exclusive to Next Fest, but these are the ones that I played!

Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era

I’ve never played a Heroes of Might and Magic game, so I thought I’d give this one a try. For those, like me, with no experience of HoMM, it’s a turn-based strategy game set in a fantasy world, where you have to manage cities and armies led by hero characters as they charge around the overworld and get into turn-based battles.

I played through the two tutorial missions, completing both in a single two-hour session. It’s a beautiful-looking game, with great animations and some compelling ideas and mechanics. I know I’m coming at this from the wrong direction, but it’s a lot like Songs of Silence (which I played in my July Demo Roundup). However, as I said in my Songs of Silence review, this kind of game sits in an awkward middle ground between games like Civilisation and Starcraft. I love both of those games, but for some reason, not SoS or HoMM. Neither the overworld nor the turn-based battles feel particularly deep or engaging. I can see that they are very well-made games that have a lot of potential, but they just don’t really appeal to me.

MARVEL Cosmic Invasion

I was really excited for this. a side-scrolling beat-em-up set in the Marvel universe from the makers of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge - a game from the last few years that I’ve really enjoyed. It’s aiming for that same 90s-era beat-em-up nostalgia, which I am a big fan of. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, I played the first two levels, New York City and a SHIELD Hellicarrier, first with Spiderman and Venom, and then with Wolverine and Storm. Maybe I haven’t found the right character(s) yet, but the game just didn’t gel for me. It somehow feels like a step backwards from Shredder’s Revenge, in a way I can’t adequately explain. Maybe my expectations were too high, or maybe I would get used to it - it took a while to get into Shredder’s Revenge after all. The full game is still on my wishlist, but for whatever reason, the demo didn’t make a great first impression.

Star Trek: Voyager - Across the Unknown

This was a particularly interesting one. You recreate Voyager’s journey home from the Delta Quadrant, except you get to make your own decisions (with a healthy amount of dice rolls thrown in to potentially f*** you up!). It’s a cross between FTL and XCOM: Enemy Unknown, where you have to repair your ship, do research, recruit crewmembers and manage power, while travelling from between star systems and planets, collecting resources and completing missions. As a fan of FTL and XCOM, this game would seem to be tailor-made for me.

It’s not without bugs. Characters appear in scenes they shouldn’t be in. The writing could also do with some work. The game lacks any voice acting, which feels weird. I think it would feel less weird if the dialogue was a better fit for the characters. However, as it is, it feels a bit jarring. It’s still in early development, so hopefully this will all get fixed before release.

The demo ends with a choice: destroy the Caretaker’s Array or try to use it to get yourself home. I went with the canon choice, but I’m curious as to what happens if you try the alternative. I look forward to questioning some of Janeway’s biggest decisions: Do you make a deal with the Borg? Do you murder Tuvix? Do you promote Harry Kim at any point? And what are the consequences? I’m excited to find out!

The Oversight Bureau

This game is described as a “voice-driven narrative adventure game”. You wake up in a strange, dystopian facility, where you have to follow instructions from a mysterious voice and solve puzzles… So far, so Portal. However, where it gets interesting is that you interact using your voice. Characters will ask you questions, and you can answer them however you wish. (How much impact this actually has, it’s hard to tell!) Where it definitely works is in puzzle solving. You have robot helpers, and you have to order them to pick up boxes and put them on buttons (because of course there are box/button puzzles!), or stand near consoles to power them up.

It has that weird, almost photo-realistic art style that reminds me of games like Exit 8. Which is fine for a walking simulator, but it can feel a tad uncanny when you put game characters in it. Still, it’s an intriguing premise, and I’m curious to see more.

High Above

This is a nice, peaceful little game where you build a rooftop paradise. You lay out your building, then decorate it with various items on it, like rugs, flowerpots, lights and ivy-covered walls. (At least, in the ‘European’ mode, which is available in the demo - other options will be added in the full release.) Meanwhile, there’s a chilled soundtrack, a gentle breeze and the occasional bird flying past, while the world moves from night to day with wonderful effect.

This is a chill experience with strong Tiny Glade vibes, which scratches the creative itch of other building games but without the stresses of budgets or resource management. I don’t tend to play these kinds of games very often, but they’re lovely little experiences to dip in and out of when you need to relax and unwind.

Bytebond

My wife and I have been looking for more games like It Takes Two or Split Fiction that we can play together. However, all our recent attempts to find fun games with local co-op have only served to prove how great those games were, and how hard it apparently is to make good ones!

Bytebond was a relative highlight in our quest, however (though it MASSIVELY oversells itself as “Split Fiction meets Portal!”). You play as two little BB8-esque robots, running (or rather “rolling”) around inside a computer, trying to fight a virus by solving cooperative puzzles. First impressions were that it might not be the game for us, and that we might be better playing it with our son. But then we ran into a relatively simple puzzle early on that stumped us for longer than we’d like to admit! We soon got into the swing of it, though, and went on to complete the demo.

It’s an interesting idea, but it doesn’t hit the same as the Hazelight classics. We might try the game out with our son, but I can’t honestly say we’re itching to play more.

Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2

Well, I was going to play this, but after waiting for it to update, I pressed Play and was told that the demo was no longer available. It annoys me when they do this. I understand it is sometimes necessary to do short-term tests, alpha or beta tests, etc., but this was frustrating - not helped by the fact that the demo’s expiry was not well communicated at any point!

I’m not a fan of Warhammer from what little of the universe I’ve experienced so far. This was a chance for them to win me over, and they blew it!

Final Thoughts

It is frustrating to see games like Space Marine 2 are only available for such a short time. A lot of us have lives, after all, and there’s a limit to how many games we can try in a week! In general, however, I think Next Fest is a really fun idea and I hope it continues.

Triple-A studios seem to rely on people preordering their bloated, over-funded games, so that they cough up their hard-earned money before they realise how bad the game is. It’s great to see smaller studios taking the time to make demos. I much prefer being able to try a game out before I buy it, especially given the rising cost of games (and everything else!). Plus, I’ve been stung too many times by games that were overhyped and turned out to be bad or mediocre, so I’m now overly cautious about what I spend my money on these days.

Next Fest has been a wonderful experience, and my wishlist is now longer than ever! Despite mixed results in my Year of Gaming challenge, I’m still curious to try out new games, and I think that playing more demos is a less risky and generally much better way to do that!

Reminder: For the Year of Gaming Challenge, I have to play one of the many games I’ve bought in Steam sales and never got around to playing. I must give it a fair chance and write up my thoughts by the end of each month. (That may not sound like much of a challenge, but as a father with a lot going on right now, it will be hard to fit in!)

I saw Shadow Tactics in my Steam library when I was looking for my September game. It’s a nearly 10-year-old game that I apparently bought for myself in 2021. This is an example of exactly the thing I started this challenge for: a game that appeals to me, that I’ve wanted to play for ages and bought in a Steam sale before promptly forgetting about it.

So, I finally got to play it. Was it worth the wait?

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun

Shadow Tactics is a real-time tactics and stealth game, where you view the game from a top-down perspective and must control a number of characters as they sneak and kill their way around enemy bases. It was developed by Mimimi Games and originally released in December 2016.

Story & Writing

Set in feudal Japan, the story begins with you helping the Shogun bring an end to years of war and unite the country. The rest of the story is set some time later, when a rogue warlord known as Kage-sama is plotting against the shogun, and it’s up to you to find out their identity and put an end to their plans. You do this with a small group of specialists, who must infiltrate various enemy bases to achieve their goals. Over the first few missions, you are introduced to your standard archetypes: the stealthy ninja, the burly samurai, the femme fatale, the old man and the obligatory quirky young girl.

Now, I could probably have made an educated guess at who the characters in your party would be. And, even though I haven’t completed the game, I think I have a fairly good idea of who Kage-sama is.

[spoiler title=”Show spoiler”]Without wanting to spoil too much, there’s a character you meet very early on who has ‘Grand Vizier’ written all over him![/spoiler]

Now, this doesn’t mean that the story and characters aren’t interesting and very well written. I did roll my eyes a little when that character and the quirky girl were introduced, but I still grew to like them and became invested in their story. It doesn’t have to be original to be absorbing, as long as it’s done well. And what I’ve seen so far has been very well-written and performed.

Gameplay

You spend most of your time avoiding enemy view cones, killing guards and hiding their remains in bushes before their friends discover the body. You have your five characters, who each have unique weapons and abilities: the burly shinobi Mugen has an attack that can take out three guards at once and can carry two bodies at once, Aiko can steal clothes to disguise herself, while Yuki can set traps. Each mission mixes up which combination of these characters you have to play.

There seems to be a lot of trial and error. Because it’s real-time and not turn-based, it can be hard to predict overlapping guard movements, and it’s easy to make the smallest mistake, get spotted and set off a cock-up-cascade. At which point, you’re better off reloading your last save and trying again. And the developers seem to know this. Quick save and quick load are probably the game’s core mechanics. In fact, if you don’t quick-save the game for more than a minute, a timer pops up to remind you. It’s basically save-scumming: the game! And the times I got frustrated and turned it off were usually the times when I hadn’t saved for a long time and didn’t want to have to repeat everything I’d done to get back to the same point.

That wasn’t the only frustration, either. There are occasional glitches. Characters will get in each other’s way, sometimes pushing the other out of cover to get past them. I also got frustrated when I wanted one character to hide under a grapple point, but they kept grappling up onto the roof instead. The camera controls can be a bit fiddly, too. You press Q and E to rotate by 90 degrees, but you need finer control than that. You can do it by holding Alt and using the mouse, but I still occasionally struggled to clearly see what I was doing and to click on what I wanted to click on.

There was also an odd moment where I found a cart that seemed to take me into the town past some guards. I hopped in (and got an achievement for doing so), then discovered you couldn’t get out unless the cart was stationary. But there seemed to be no way of getting out of the cart at the other end without getting into a fight and alerting several guards around you. It may be possible to survive these fights and use the bandages that some characters seemed to be equipped with to heal, but I never did. When you’re spotted, all nearby guards are summoned on high alert and additional guards spawn out of various buildings, so it’s generally quicker and easier to reload.

Despite the frustrations, however, it can be deeply satisfying to work out a way to distract one guard, long enough to take out his companion and then finish him off too, allowing you to progress. However, more often than not, this felt more down to luck than to any skill on my part.

Craft

The game has a gorgeous, painterly art style. The writing and voice acting are generally pretty good as well. It’s a beautifully well-made game, particularly considering its age. I was surprised when I looked it up to find it was made nearly a decade ago! It’s a beautifully crafted game that has aged pretty well.

Stats

• I got the game on Steam in 2021 for £3.49, a 90% discount on the current full price of £34.99

• I played it for a little over 7 hours and have beaten the first 5 levels, earning 5 out of 45 badges.

• I may play more, but I’m not sure I have the patience to play it in large chunks. I also don’t feel particularly motivated to replay the previous levels to unlock the additional badges.

Final Thoughts

Shadow Tactics felt like a safer bet than some of the other games I’ve recently played in this series. Stealth/tactics is a lot more my style. And I found the story, writing and general craft of the game to be excellent. However, I found the actual gameplay to be a little frustrating. It seems to rely on save-scumming over skill and planning, and I just don’t think I have the patience to keep making plans, failing, reloading and trying again. If you are someone who enjoys that sort of challenge and has the patience to keep trying, then I would definitely recommend giving it a try. I just don’t think it’s for me!

Was I right to be cautious?

Reminder: For the Year of Gaming Challenge, I have to play one of the many games I’ve bought in Steam sales and never got around to playing. I have to give it a fair chance and write up my thoughts by the end of each month. (That may not sound like much of a challenge, but as a father with a lot going on right now, it will be hard to fit it in!)

I was intrigued by Hardspace Shipbreaker when it launched. The idea of a realistic sci-fi game set in outer space naturally appealed to me. But when I watched the trailer and saw the reviews, I was torn. It looked like a well-made game with an interesting premise, but I wasn’t sure if I would actually enjoy the gameplay. It’s not the type of game I usually play, and (as we discovered last month), there’s usually a reason why!

But then I caught my wife playing Powerwash Simulator, and I was fascinated by how absorbed she was. I played a little bit with my son (well, I played, he told me what to do and then got bored after two minutes!), and found myself oddly engrossed. Hardspace Shipbreaker seemed a bit like Powerwash Simulator iiiiin spaaaaaace, so I thought I’d dive in and try to give it a fair chance.

Hardspace Shipbreaker

Hardspace Shipbreaker is an “action-adventure simulation game”, developed by Blackbird Interactive (which goes to show how meaningless the phrase “action-adventure” has become!).

You are a shipbreaker, whose job is to break down and salvage old spaceships. You’re given a variety of tools and a series of spaceships that you have to systematically take apart, salvaging the various components to earn money, unlock bigger, more complex ships and buy better equipment.

Story & Writing

You create a profile, then accept various terms and conditions, all saying that you’re probably going to die (probably not dissimilar to the real-life EULA that I had just skipped over!). You then start the game as a new recruit with an enormous debt to the Lynx Corporation. You are shown how much debt you’re in, including the charge for viewing the debt report. (This would be funny if we weren’t already living in a dystopian capitalist nightmare!) You are then introduced to your mentor, who takes you through the process of dismantling these old ships.

There are lots of interesting environmental details and plenty of flavour text to read, all of which is well-written and tells you more about the world. After a few missions, you’re introduced to the rest of the crew, which adds more character and depth to the game between jobs. Again, this is all well-written and voice-acted; my only complaint is that I wish they had been introduced earlier. And that’s a common theme for me, though there’s also a big caveat coming up later!

Gameplay

You have to manoeuvre your character around in 3D, find cutting points to cut the ship into smaller pieces and then use your gravity gun to fire the parts into one of three different bins. It can be a pretty satisfying loop, if you get into the right mindset. The movement physics are pretty good, though sometimes it feels like you’re just a floating head!

You have to be slow and methodical and get lost in your work. But then you’ll accidentally cut through a fuel line and get set on fire. Or ironically pull a medkit towards you so fast it smashes your helmet and you asphyxiate in the cold vacuum of space. A lot of trial and error is involved, and while your boss keeps saying “call me if you need anything”, you usually don’t get a lot of warning before you blow yourself up!

Initially, the game felt a bit slow and cumbersome. It does improve as you unlock upgrades for your gear, but I would have appreciated having those upgrades earlier. It kind of feels like they deliberately made the gameplay worse to justify having an upgrade tree. Oh, and you have to manage your oxygen supply and fuel for your jetpack. Given that real-world astronauts regularly perform spacewalks that last over 6 hours, it was annoying to have to keep going back to replenish supplies so regularly. And, of course, they both run out at different rates. Again, there are upgrades, but it doesn’t make it any less annoying.

Between jobs, you return to your “Hab”. This is where your bed, computer and workbench all live. There’s a janky navigation system that acts like a glorified menu, taking you from component to component. I would have preferred to be able to freely roam around this space, but it looks great, is full of environmental storytelling details and allows some customisation (not that you spend much time there!).

Craft

Finally, it’s worth saying that it’s a gorgeous and beautifully made game. It feels like it accurately simulates what it would be like to float, relatively unprotected, in the void next to a spaceship that could explode at any moment. It doesn’t have quite the same sense of scale as some other games, like Mass Effect, but it looks amazing.

In addition to the great writing and voice acting, it has well-implemented and immersive sound effects, and a gorgeous Firefly-esque soundtrack. As I said, I did end up putting podcasts on in the background, but it’s not because the soundtrack and effects weren’t really good!

My Experience

I’ve added a new section this month, as I feel the need to describe my experience and why I feel like it’s partly my fault for “playing the game wrong”.

After my first session, I ended up restarting the game on “open shift”. This removed the requirement to refill my oxygen supply, making things less tedious. It felt like I had more control and fewer distractions. You still have to refuel your jetpack, but at least you’re not managing two depleting gauges. That was, I think, the right decision for me.

Where I went wrong was in not having shifts. I didn’t want to be interrupted; to just zone out and meticulously dismantle each ship until the job was done (usually while listening to a podcast). However, this is part of the reason why the game felt slow, and why I felt it took so long to unlock upgrades or meet my crewmates. The story only advances when you return to the Hab, and in normal mode, you presumably have to do this regularly at the end of each shift.

I nearly gave up at one point. But after one more session, I realised my mistake. In that session, I acquired a ship of my own and had to start scrounging spare parts to repair it. I also discovered a mysterious hard drive in the wreckage and became embroiled in a story about forming a workers’ union and the corporation trying to stop us. This made the game much more interesting!

So, my recommendation would be to pay attention to your XP bar and return to the Hab every time you level up to upgrade and advance the story. It might feel like you’ve left a job unfinished, but it will get you to the meat of the game more quickly.

Stats

• I got the game free on the Epic Store (via Prime Gaming). It is currently available at the full price of £29.99.

• I played it for 10 hours (including the hour I played before restarting) and reached Rank 9.

• I can’t see myself playing it regularly, but I may dip in and out from time to time.

Final Thoughts

I’ve tried to push myself to play games I normally wouldn’t during this challenge. I don’t regret that decision, but the last couple of months would seem to suggest that there’s a reason I don’t usually play these games!

I tried to get into the right frame of mind. Hardspace Shipbreaker is not a game you play for excitement and to rush to the next objective. You have to be slow and methodical… and I’m just not sure I have the patience. It also possibly captures the experience of working for a soulless corporation a little too well! And while I eventually became more absorbed in the story, the gameplay just didn’t grip me enough to want to play regularly.

So, it seems my initial instinct was correct: it’s a well-made game that I’m sure a lot of people would enjoy. I just don’t think it’s for me!

Reminder: For the Year of Gaming Challenge, I’m supposed to play one of the many games I’ve bought in Steam sales and never got around to playing, give it a fair chance and write up my thoughts by the end of each month. (That may not sound like much of a challenge, but as a father with a lot going on right now, it will be hard to fit it in!)

The Ascent

The game I started playing was The Ascent, a top-down cyberpunk shooter. Not the sort of thing I normally play, and it turns out there’s a very good reason for that! For the challenge, I’ve committed to giving every game a fair try: at least three sessions or three hours to give it a chance to draw me in. Sadly, The Ascent failed to do that.

I should say that I’ve never really liked Diablo or any other such games. The only time I’ve enjoyed them is when I played them with friends. Maybe The Ascent is better if you play it with friends, but I’m nearly 40, a dad, and I barely have time to play games with my few friends as it is. I probably won’t get a chance to find out!

It’s a good-looking game. But I found myself mainly slogging from one side of a massive and overly complicated map to the other. A slog that was only broken up by mediocre combat that went on a bit too long, or by dialogue filled with inaccessible cyberpunk terminology.

• I spent about three play sessions getting just over three hours into the game before giving up.

• The game is £24.99 full price, currently on sale for £6.24

I don’t think it’s a bad game; it just isn’t for me. And hell, I’m not a professional games journalist. I have a life and I don’t want to waste it.

So, I tried something else!

Absolum Demo

I decided to try some demos instead. After discovering that it’s hard (if not impossible) to filter your wishlist to show games that have demos, I went browsing through the Steam store looking for games that caught my eye.

The first was Absolum, a rogue-lite fantasy beat-em-up developed by Dotemu. I’d best describe it as the offspring of Hades and Golden Axe. You play as either Karl, a dwarf, or Galandra, a sort of necromantic assassin. You must battle across the world to overthrow an evil emperor and restore peace and harmony.

You move from left to right, battling a range of colourful enemies, occasionally riding giant lizards, using a combination of weapons and magic spells (which pleasantly reminded me of Golden Axe). After each encounter, you get to choose from a number of different upgrades, which you lose when you die (and you will die! A lot!). You also collect some materials that can be used to upgrade your heroes (which is where I felt the influence of Hades). Combat was basic, which could be because it was a demo, but it was functional and fun. The game has a beautiful cartoony art style, with a world and characters that are brimming with personality.

• I played a few sessions, again spending about 2-3 hours.

• The full game is not out yet and is currently listed as “Coming soon” on Steam.

Once I realised I was enjoying it, and that my progress wasn’t going to carry over to the main game, I decided that I was convinced and decided not to spoil any more of the experience of myself.

Dispatch Demo

Demo number two was Dispatch, “a superhero workplace comedy” by AdHoc Studio. That’s the quote from the Steam page, by the way. It’s a hard game to describe.

It seems to be drawing inspiration from the likes of Invincible and The Boys. It’s a crass and profanity-filled game which took a while, but did manage to make me laugh out loud a few times. The cutscenes are gorgeously animated and the voice cast is excellent.

The actual gameplay is set on a map of the city. Calls will come in about different problems, from cats getting stuck in trees to an armed heist at an art gallery. You have to decide which of your z-list heroes to send, based on their availability and skills. There’s also a weird hacking minigame you have to play from time to time, which I was less keen on (though it did employ key combos, which allowed me to use the skills I’ve developed by calling down stratagems in Helldivers 2!).

It features some obvious rip-offs of Marvel characters, in particular. One has a magic sword and can open portals (which would have been less conspicuous had I not played Marvel’s Midnight Sunsa few months ago!). The main protagonist is also called Robert and has the alter-ego “Mecha man”. Up all night coming up with that one, were you devs?

• I played for around 30 minutes before I hit the end of the demo.

• The full game is not out yet and is currently listed as “Planned release date: 2025”.

I would have liked to have seen more, but I’m convinced. It’s on my wishlist and I’ll probably end up buying it at some point, probably when it’s on sale.

Songs of Silence

The final demo was Songs of Silence, a fantasy strategy game from Chimera Entertainment. This one is an odd one. It’s been on my radar since I saw a news story about it last year. It was released at the same time as another strategy game called Songs of Conquest. It was a huge coincidence that two “Songs of…” strategy games came out so close together, which could cause friction. But the developers were nice about it, praising and cross-promoting each other’s work, which I found endearing. (Unfortunately, the latter does not have a demo yet!)

Again, there’s some beautiful artwork and animation, and I was drawn into the story of a young queen trying to find a new home for her people. The story is full of quirky characters, mysterious creatures and betrayal.

The game features a turn-based overworld, followed by relatively simple auto-battles, with a (sigh!) deck-building element. You have no direct control over the real-time battles, other than setting up formations ahead of time and playing cards to influence things. It feels closer to Civilisation than to games like Starcraft, which I am more comfortable with. I felt strangely detached from the action. I also struggled, as some enemies are hard to defeat without the right army makeup, but I’m not sure how to tell what the right makeup is before you ride into battle.

• I spent about 4 hours playing all of the campaign missions that were available in the demo.

• The full game is currently full price at £23.99.

It’s different from the strategy games that I’m used to, but I enjoyed my time with the campaign and would like to see more.

Final Thoughts

So, a bit of an odd month, not helped by going away on holiday with my family (which is why this blog post is late). Part of me feels like I’ve broken my streak by not giving more time to The Ascent, but the rest of me is glad that I spent my time checking out other potential games, many of which I think I would enjoy a lot more.

The demos are still available if you want to try them for yourself, and I’d recommend all of them. I will do more detailed reviews of these games, if I ever get around to playing them.

Hopefully, normal service will resume next month, although it is the school holidays, so we’ll see how it goes!

Reminder: For the Year of Gaming Challenge, I have to play one of the many games I’ve bought in Steam sales and never got around to playing. I give it a fair chance and write up my thoughts by the end of each month. (That may not sound like much of a challenge, but as a father with a lot going on right now, it will be hard to fit it in!)

This game had been on my wishlist for a while. I remember its popularity and glowing reception when it was released, but then the controversy started. The studio was shut down, despite the game’s success, in another terrible decision by the souless, asinine corporate morons that run the games industry. I wasn’t sure whether to buy it, if not even a penny would go to the actual people who made it.

My conscience was eased when the studio was saved from closure, and ultimately, the conundrum was solved when someone bought it for me from my Steam wishlist! So, it was finally time to find out what all the fuss was about.

Hi-Fi Rush

Hi-Fi Rush is a rhythm action game, developed by Tango Gameworks and published by Bethesda (who made the mistake of getting into bed with Microsoft, who, as usual, ruined everything!). It was released in January 2023 to overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam and won numerous awards for its sound design and animation. It was also nominated for various game of the year awards and by August 2023, it had reached 3 million players [according to Wikipedia]. Which is, of course, why the gibbering goons at Microsoft thought it was a good idea to shut the studio down! (OK, I’ll shut up now!)

Story & Writing

You play as Chai, a hapless young man with ambitions of becoming a rock star. He arrives at Vandelay Technologies with his arm in a sling, volunteering for a program that will give him a new arm. Through a contrived and ridiculous series of events, he ends up with a robot arm and his MP3 player embedded in his chest. The arm is equipped with a magnetic litter picker, which becomes a guitar-shaped axe/hammer that he uses to beat up robots. Oh, and the whole world is moving to the beat of the music for… some reason!

It’s wacky and nonsensical, with strong Saturday morning cartoon vibes. There’s a villain who wants to take over the world and a little Scooby gang of misfits trying to stop him. Not particularly original, and I suspect you’ll see the ‘twists’ coming from as far off as I did! Chai is also a bit of an unlikable asshole (at least, in the part of the game that I played), with no discernible skills or talent other than an entire Uncharted trilogy’s worth of sheer dumb luck. But the writing and voice acting are all really good, and all the insane parts somehow seem to fit together. At one point, fairly early on, you end up beating up a giant robot to a song by Nine Inch Nails. Does it make sense? No! Was it fun? Absolutely! (Remember when games used to be fun and didn’t just feel like a second job?!)

Gameplay

The game is mostly a mix of platforming and combat. You navigate huge, detailed environments, full of secrets and platforming challenges. Then, occasionally, you’ll get locked into an arena full of enemies that you have to defeat to move on.

The platforming is mostly pretty basic, but there are lots of hidden resources and collectables to find. Everything has a gameplay use as well, like items that increase your health or unlock extra upgrade slots. Some sections involve a series of obstacles that you have to pass within a time limit, full of platforms that move in time with the beat, so some skill and rhythm are required. However, I rarely had to repeat a section more than a couple of times once I’d worked out the timing.

Combat is basic too, but still fun. Chai always attacks on the beat, and you can just mash buttons a lot of the time. Particularly in the early levels, it doesn’t matter if you miss the beat too often, but you’ll do more damage, get more flashy moves and a higher score if you can do the actions on the beat. There are some sections where a mini-boss will attack you and you have to perfectly parry to a rhythm to defeat them, but I didn’t find any of it too tricky. Because of the rhythm-based nature, I guess it is a bit repetitive, but in a zen-like way, rather than an annoying one.

Craft

The quality extends beyond the writing and voice acting into pretty much every aspect of the game. There’s definitely a reason they were nominated for so many sound and animation awards! There are a few licensed tracks mixed in, but the original music that plays through most of the levels is great. The characters are expressive and well-animated… the whole game just oozes personality. Sure, at times, we’re reduced to crudely animated 2D faces talking by opening and closing their mouths. But for a lot of it, particularly during cutscenes and the occasional taunts from the bosses on big screens, the animation is wonderful.

It’s just such a rarity these days to play a game that is fun, so full of personality and is incredibly well-designed and well-made.

Stats

• I received the game as a gift on Steam. It’s currently £26.99 full price.

• I have played it for around 8.5 hours and have beaten level 9.

• I intend to keep playing it through to the end of the story at least.

Final Thoughts

I’ve really enjoyed playing this game, and wish I’d been able to find more time to play it this month. I will definitely continue at least until the end of the story. I might even be tempted to go back and look for the collectables locked behind inaccessible paths.

This game deserves every ounce of praise it received. This is the sort of thing the industry needs: more original ideas and creative creations from little studios, rather than the bland, bloated slop that the AAA studios are churning out. I’m so glad the studio was saved from the whole Microsoft debacle, and I’m excited to see what they come up with next!

For more, check out my other Year of Gaming 2025 reviews, as well as my other Game-related posts.

So, what’s it like? Was I right to be cautious?

Reminder: For the Year of Gaming Challenge, I have to play a game I’ve never played before (one of the many games I’ve bought in Steam sales and never got around to playing), give it a fair chance and write up my thoughts by the end of each month. (That may not sound like much of a challenge, but as a father with a lot going on right now, it will be hard to fit it in!)

I’ve clocked up nearly 800 hours in XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2 (not to mention hundreds more hours across several Civilisation games). So, when Firaxis announced they were making a Marvel game, it should have been a no-brainer. But I’d heard mixed things from the original reviews, plus, I have a thing about deck-building games… If I wanted to play a card game, I’d play one in real life. Card-based systems in video games just never seem to click with me.

Well, this was a chance for one of my favourite studios to prove me wrong!

Marvel’s Midnight Suns

Midnight Suns is a turn-based tactics and role-playing game, developed by Firaxis and released in 2022. You play as a legendary hero who has been resurrected to battle an evil demon by assembling a Scooby gang of characters from across the Marvel Universe, including the X-Men, Avengers and Spider-Man.

[caption id=”attachment_7800” align=”aligncenter” width=”1024”] The Midnight Suns Logo above a lineup of characters. From left to right: Wolverine, Spider-Man, Iron Man, The Hunter, Blade, Scarlet Witch and Night Rider.[/caption]

Story/Writing

A demon called Lilith has returned from the grave and teamed up with Hydra and a parade of colourful bad guys, including Crossbones and Venom. To fight this new threat, The Hunter is resurrected. Hunter is Lilith’s child and the one who defeated her centuries ago. Hunter becomes the leader of the Midnight Suns, a group that now includes heroes like Dr Strange, Iron Man and Blade, along with some minor X-Men characters too obscure to even cameo in the first Deadpool movie. You can customise the Hunter, choosing their gender and appearance, and must then lead the Midnight Suns to stop Lilith and Hydra, before they… OK, I’ve only completed the first act, and I’m not sure where the story is going. There’s a prophecy, something about a Midnight Sun (singular)… probably Mephisto or Cthon will show up, and there’ll be a blue skybeam at some point… Look, she’s a demon working with Nazi’s, so I’ve got to assume it’s something BAD!

So far, the story has been fairly compelling. Like in XCOM, it feels like you’re always on the back foot, even if some of the fights are relatively easy. It’s a suitably world-ending threat to bring these characters together, with twists and turns that I won’t spoil, and the writing is generally pretty good. There are a lot of quips, and they don’t all land, but they’re not as unbearable and cringeworthy as they could be - high praise for a Marvel game! (Plus, there’s an option to reduce the frequency of quips during combat, which all Marvel games should have!)

The bit that I suspect will be the Marmite in this tactical combat/RPG sandwich is The Abbey. The game has a daily cycle, where you wake up, train and level up your teammates, then go out on a mission, before returning to hang out at night. It’s a nice little loop, and there’s only a certain number of activities you can do each day, which means you have to prioritise and sometimes make difficult decisions. I like it, but it depends how much ick you get from the whole “I created an original character, who gets to hang out with the X-Men and go for picnics with Captain America” thing. It can definitely be cheesy. And the tone is all over the place, with fate-of-the-world melodrama one minute and characters quipping and squabbling like children a few seconds later… but hey, that’s basically the formula for MCU dialogue at this point!

I do like that it’s not always obvious what the ‘right’ answer is. I was trying to play as a light-side good-guy (oh, there’s a morality system, because of course there is!), but the light options can sometimes negatively affect your relationship with certain characters. So you have to choose whether you keep pushing towards the light, which presumably grants some bonuses, or to prioritise your friendship with the characters, which can unlock new outfits and abilities for that character and the rest of the team. Even with characters I was more familiar with, like Captain Marvel, I would sometimes make a choice that didn’t work out as I thought it would.

Craft

I’ve played a lot of Firaxis games, and (particularly while playing XCOM), I often wondered if they even have a QA department! I love them, but they are buggy and janky as hell. Part of me wondered if they could deliver a high-quality, high-budget game worthy of having the Marvel logo slapped on it. But they’ve really impressed me.

The graphics during combat are a huge step up from XCOM. There are fewer characters on screen, but they are larger and more detailed. And the hero animations are perfect, brimming with personality; Spider-Man swings across the arena, while Dr Strange levitates serenely.

That’s not to say it’s without jank. There’s the classic XCOM problem of soldiers failing to point their guns in the right direction, and there’s often a lengthy pause between issuing an order and it being followed, as the character works out how to move across a relatively simple arena. There also seem to be unusually long loading times, given that I’m running it from an SSD, conversations occasionally get skipped without any input… But overall, I was impressed by how well it all works, most of the time.

The bit that really surprised me was the Abbey. It’s not just a small building where you go to hang out between missions. There are extensive grounds to explore with secrets, puzzles and mysteries to solve. It’s beautiful too, at all times of the day. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not an RPG to rival the likes of Mass Effect, but given that it’s Firaxis’ first attempt at something like this, it’s pretty damn good.

Gameplay

As predicted, the deck-building element is the weakest part of the game, for me. Each character has a hand of ability cards they can take into battle. Each turn, cards are drawn at random. Some generate ‘Heroism’, others spend it. You can also throw items, knock enemies into electrical boxes and drop lamp posts on them. It works well, and it’s mostly fun, but I think I would have preferred to simply choose which abilities and items to take into battle, with cooldowns and powerups, rather than relying on the randomness of drawing cards. You can redraw cards, and, to be fair, most of the abilities are useful, but still. I think there’s enough variety in the situations and your teammates that it wouldn’t get stale if you took the randomness away.

One disappointment was that boss characters like Crossbones and Venom can interrupt missions at random. That’s not the disappointing bit; it adds a bit of ‘War of the Chosen’ spice to the game. But a boss is just a regular enemy with more health that you have to KO multiple times. I just wish they were a bit more mechanically interesting. You also mostly seem to fight the same parade of Hydra goons, at least in the first portion of the game (unless you have the DLC, which unlocks a new enemy faction).

Which is not to say that they don’t spice it up. Occasionally, you will have to destroy or defend an object, focus on a particular enemy, interrupt a dark ritual or build up Heroism to finish off the boss. The heroes feel suitably different as well. I particularly like Nico’s abilities, which are random and unpredictable. There are also loads of buffs and power-ups to be deployed, some of which have tradeoffs, like making you deal more damage but making you more susceptible to damage. You can see how DNA from XCOM has infiltrated the game.

There’s a surprisingly deep amount of customisation too, and I enjoyed making Hunter my own. Though I would have liked more options to customise things like masks and headpieces with a broader array of colours. I basically didn’t use them because I couldn’t get them to match my outfit!

All in all, it’s a compelling loop of activities, and I enjoyed pretty much all of it.

The Stats

• I got the game free on the Epic store. It’s £49.99 full price, currently reduced to £7.49. Once I knew I was enjoying it, I paid £9.99 for the Season Pass (normally £39.99) to get the four DLC characters too.

• I have played it for around 35 hours and passed the end of Act 1. But I wasn’t rushing, I spent a lot of time exploring the grounds and doing optional missions to level up my team.

• I fully intend to keep playing it after this blog goes out, as I feel like I’m less than halfway through the story, and I’m sure there is more to see, even if I have already found most of the Abbey’s secrets.

Final Thoughts

I’ve enjoyed Midnight Suns a lot more than I thought I would. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the whole package and will continue to play it alongside whatever I choose to try next month. The turn-based tactical battles are great, the deck-building aspect is less annoying than expected, and the interactions with the team, the Abbey grounds and the RPG elements in general are a lot deeper than I expected.

I wouldn’t pay the full £90 for the Legendary Edition, but I’d definitely get it if it were on sale for under £40, as it currently is! I can understand why elements of the game would turn some people off, but my initial instinct was right: this game feels like it was made for me!

For more, check out my other Year of Gaming 2025 reviews, as well as my other Game-related posts.