Digital Down-Low Year End Extravaganza: Yule. Tide. Repeat.

[MetManMas]

Quite a few things dropped onto the eShop yesterday!

Pixel Game Maker Series Cham the Cat Adventure is a retraux platformer throwback that is very much inspired by Super Mario Land, right down to the timers, general boss stuff, and shooty stages!

Speaking of Game Boy throwbacks, JEWELiNX and OUMUAMUA also popped up as part of this Pixel Game Maker series! The former is a drop-down puzzle game with gems and the latter is a Breakout-like.

Also part of the Pixel Game Maker Series, but made of polygons instead, is Biggerman.io! Have your little man find other little men to assimilate so he can grow bigger and crush his enemies!

Cape's Escape Game 5th Room has your protagonist trapped inside his dreams by the titular cartoon ghost! But this time, he's brought along his friend Mummy Girl! You must now figure out how to escape from this dream replica of Mummy Girl's pre-mortem house.

And Escape from Mirrorland ~ The Adventures of Nyanzou and Kumakichi: Escape Game Series ~ has the titular cat and bear figuring out how to get the former out of the mirror world mess he's gotten into after playing with mirrors and ending up in Mirrorland.

 

[Becksworth]

There was also a Tetris like Faux-GB Pixel Game Maker title.

I patiently await the faux Gargoyles Quest and Donkey Kong 94 games.

 

[MetManMas]

There was also a Tetris like Faux-GB Pixel Game Maker title.

JEWELiNX looks pretty Tetris-y, even though it uses jewels instead of blocks.

 

[Becksworth]

Ah, my bad. I was reading too quickly and thought you only mentioned two of the faux gameboy games…

 

[MetManMas]

It's Decemberween week! Tis the season for...

Santa tracking!

Modernized remakes nobody asked for!

The odd Christmas special where Santa Claus is so thin skinned that a single child not believing in him ruins everything for everyone!

With the holiday filler out of the way, here's the games!

Gardener's Path is a roguelikey-looking puzzle game where you go through 60 not-procedurally-generated dungeons and protect plants from giant insects via top-down turn-based action!

Beastie Bay DX is the latest Kairosoft simulation game on Nintendo Switch! Fight monsters and catch monsters to fight and catch more monsters so you can develop your island home into a thriving paradise.

Tunnel of Doom has you as Angel, a young woman who heads into a procedurally generated mine looking for her husband and ends up having to do tower defense stuff to fight off hordes of monsters.

Windstorm: Start of A Great Friendship is a game adaptation of some book and movie series I've never heard of where a young girl named Mika lives out every other young girl's usually financially impossible dream of owning her own horse and having a nice big property to ride him around in.

It's always nice to have non-murdery sandbox game options, I'll say that.

Merry Christmas Snowball Bubble is a game where a fox shoots bubbles from a cannon to reveal pixel images in snowglobes. But this time it's actually seasonally appropriate!

And American Man is another of those delusional racist armamans patriot fantasies. This one is a Contra knock-off where those "scary" foreign countries have used genetic engineering to turn animals into killing machines and you're the only one who's white, privileged, and male enough to stop them.

I had multiple brain cells die upon reading up on this game and working on the photo shoot for it.

 

[MetManMas]

More games releases for the week!

Zombie Watch is a top-down zombie survival game. We can never escape the zeds, likely because zombie games are as easy as slapping some decaying textures on boring old human models.

In things I'm surprised weren't already a thing on Switch, we have a bundle of Bayonetta 1 & 2! Shoot up all kinds of demonic angels that work like gore-filled Viewtiful Joe mooks and mess around with time travel in these games where Mary Fucking Poppins stylishly shoots and stabs stuff and slaughters stuff with hair monsters.

Madness Beverage is a sci-fi shooter where demons are everywhere and you gotta kill 'em all. Your power-ups are drinkables, apparently.

Planet Quiz: Learn & Discover is an edumacational game where you and three friends can learn about the history, culture, and aminals of this big blue spaceball we all live on.

It's all fun and games until somebody brings up that Columbus asshole.

And our Arcade Archives thingy of the week is XEXEX*! Breaking from the Namco/Taito back-'n-forth is this highly acclaimed shooter by Konami, the king of highly acclaimed shooters (in the 80s and 90s)!

* Posted under its US localized name ORIUS in the NA eShop.

 

[MetManMas]

It is Toy Day in New Horizons and Christmas Eve elsewhere. Here's a few more games before the week is out.

The most bewildering release by far is Shinya Ichizoku the Battle for Hokkaido's Delicious Foods! This vidyagame spinoff of some popular Japanese TV show I've never heard of, and which brings up no results in the English-speaking side of the world other than the game itself, has you flying around a map of Hokkaido and bringing food and ingredients to a bear before aliens can get them. And as you play, photos and information on Hokkaido delicacies are added to a compendium.

And it is Japanese language only. On the US eShop.

It's amazing something like this got here at all, but it'd be nice to be able to read about those delicacies without having to learn another whole language.

Santa Throw is a game where Santamen uses his flying pod to shoot presents into stockings hanging outside skyscraper windows. Or the Grinch shoots trash and dead fish into them.

You know, public domain character the Grinch. Who is seen entirely in silhouette but is referenced directly by name. And who is clearly not here with the blessing of Dr. Seuss's estate because they are not credited at all.

This will go well.

And Moorhuhn Jump and Run 'Traps and Treasures' is the latest game in the Moorhuhn property! You've shot them, you've defended/asploded castles with them, you've gone go-karting with them, you've shot them again but in the wild west this time. Now one of these shoot-deadable cartoon chickens is starring in his own pre-rendered platformer!

Get your Indiana Jones on as you go through the jungles and ruins in search of a valuable relic all Mayan Adventures-ish.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Santa Throw is a game where Santamen uses his flying pod to shoot presents into stockings hanging outside skyscraper windows. Or the Grinch shoots trash and dead fish into them.

You know, public domain character the Grinch. Who is seen entirely in silhouette but is referenced directly by name. And who is clearly not here with the blessing of Dr. Seuss's estate because they are not credited at all.

This will go well.

Legally, it's The Granch

 

[MetManMas]

The ol' Cephalobot has given me the O.K. to go ahead with a third week of adding images to this one thread 'cuz the release schedule is just that thin right now!

Somehow I still managed to get a 10-pack of games together though.

Cold Science is a horror survival platformer that brags about being minimimalist while featuring an always on display UI showing your hearts and the various junk you've collected and all kinds of effects and stuff.

Minimalism in this case is basically just limited to the color palette.

Unstrong: Space Calamity has a planet that done got exploded and as the chonky potato-head alien girl named...Glasses Unstrong? SERIOUSLY!? That's like if I'd named my ACNH avatar Photomaker or something! WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN

Anyway, Glasses teams up with a star child to fix the asploded planet by way of 3D platforming action in space.

Sky Games is some kinda competitive party game where bulky blob things fight over balloons or something.

My Universe - Interior Designer has you building happy homes for people.

Lacuna is a sci-fi mystery adventure game where your choices matter, conversations are one-time only, and everything has consequences! Everything is going to shit and it's up to CDI agent Neil Conrad to try and not fuck things up too badly.

Frogs vs. Storks is a game where frogs must eat bugs and evade evil storks on the way to the yellow lily pad! I have yet to see a stork villager or service character in Animal Crossing, but I made due with what I have for this shoot.

Hollow 2 is a sci-fi shootmans game and the sequel to Hollow 1 (also on Switch). Horrible monstrosities are attacking the ship you're on and you must stop them and learn about your past.

Given that it's published by Forever Entertainment, it will no doubt sell for the cheapest price Nintendo will allow them to get away with in one of Forever Entertainment's many, many, many sales within a few months.

Pawn of the Dead is chess with zombies.

Deathsmiles I.II is a compilation of three shooters where angels (which is this world is a catch-all title for winged gothic lolitas, whether bird or bat wings) fly around shooting up all kinds of crazy monsters like giant cows and stuff.

And Canceled! COVID19 Super Puzzles Dream is a game about puzzles based on the Corona virus and celebrating the heroic doctors who fight it.

Now don't get me wrong, it's awesome that people are giving a shout-out to the doctors battling our horrible virus, but puzzles reminding us all of said horrible virus isn't exactly the first thing I'd go to video games for. And the battle definitely is not over yet, not without all the variants out there.

Stay safe, y'all.

 

[MetManMas]

Here's a few more!

Menseki: Area maze puzzles is a mathematical logic game where you figure out unknown lengths and areas by using the known lengths and areas already at your disposal.

Drive Drift X is a racing game all about drifting. I have no hopes of recreating said drifting in a game that lets me place vehicles in all of four directions, but I do appreciate a game that doesn't limit things to just cars.

Superpanda is a game where a panda superhero does 2D platforming. And he's really mad on the boxart, aiming for that Angry Kirby demographic.

I still do not have any pandas over in Photopia, but I did make a house for one over at Lottie's workplace. So I have borrowed the school for this shoot.

(I don't have the remote control to their emotions here.)

Cartoon Tower Defense advertises itself as a toon tower defense game...but really, it looks like any other tower defense game? I mean, cartoon art styles are the #1 way that the countless tower defense gachas out there part man from money. So unless you're like, based on a specific style like Looney Tunes or that Rocko guy's cartoons or something, saying you have toon characters doesn't amount to much unless you're hurling anvils and giant BANG! flags all over the place.

Anyway, typical tower defense action. Various outsiders want in your castle, keep them out with your most murdery methods.

Eufloria is a game where you grow plants on space rocks and try to grow your plants on all the space rocks while competing against others that want the same resources to grow their plants on space rocks.

And if keeping monsters and bandits off your goddamn lawn wasn't enough for you, Sorcerer Knights is a beat-'em-up where you can directly go out across the land hitting them with your sword and smiting them with lightning. YOU METAL BASTARD.

And our Arcade Archives game of the week is Mutant Night! Have some kinda camera headed alien thing go around weird places shooting weird robots. And a bubble dragon from Bubble Bobble shows up as an enemy! In this game not made by Taito!