Cities for vegetables, tactical wizards, and some cute crows

A lot of calculated chaos this week as we look at some tactics games, and a crow.

Steve Heller

Aug 23, 2024 — 7 min read

Happy Friday everyone! It is absolutely a swamp here in Tokyo. I can't remember the last time it was below 30C, without the wave of humidity that makes it feel like you are perpetually living in a sauna. My summers in Mississippi were tough, but the deep south can't hold a candle to the relentless onslaught of the Japanese summer. I think I might take this period of year as an excuse to go back home to Australia for a visit, just to get a sense of relief.

As a result of the heat I haven't been able to use my PC, so the Steam Deck has been getting a solid workout. I am currently putting together some thoughts on The Crush House, which is pretty neat indeed. I also started to play SteamWorld Heist. After all the buzz surrounding the sequel, I did the responsible soon-to-be dad thing and dove into my backlog, rather than buying a new game. Turns out that the original is a great time, and the perfect "let me squeeze in a couple of missions" game before I fall asleep at night. It's good stuff.

Before we get into it, we are about to hit 50 subscribers to this little newsletter, so a big THANK YOU to everyone who has shared it out over the last few months. Here's to 50 more as we continue to spread the word of cool indies that people should be playing.

Speaking of - if you are an indie dev, or you want to tell me about some cool game that needs more attention, please send some info to press@pixelsforbreakfast.net. If you want to support the newsletter with a few dollars to help pay for our server, or new indie games for me to review, please consider throwing them into our Ko-Fi too!

Alright, let's get to the games.

What came out this week?

Arco

Developer: Franek, Max Cahill, Bibiki, Fáyer
Steam rating: Very Positive
Store page

I vaguely remember seeing the trailer for Arco in one of those many Summer Game Fest broadcasts, promptly forgetting its existence until I heard Patrick Klepic taking about it in the latest Remap Radio newsletter. That's when I revisited, and this pixelated tactical RPG does look rather compelling.

You play as a band of characters who have a vendetta against the Red Company Gang. You will be fighting those folks, along with fighting off colonizers, and wild beasts as you traverse the deserts, forests, and plains of the country (which I assume is America).

The battles play out with a unique "simultaneous turn-based" combat system, which I will be honest, I cannot quite proc from the trailers. But this one is getting a lot of buzz right now, and being a tactical game, it has gone to the top of my wishlist for the next Ko-Fi donation so I can write a review.

And I normally don't do a shout out to publishers but this is another release under Panic, the same folks who just released Thank Goodness You're Here, and the adorable Playdate console. Interesting to see their slate grow.

Just Crow Things

Developer: Unbound Creations
Steam rating: Very Positive
Store page

The folks who made Rain On Your Parade are back at it with Just Crow Things, a fun sandbox game where you play a little crow trying to make their mark on this world. Sure, that mark may be some slimy, smelly. bird poo on an unsuspecting human's head, but it is a mark none the same.

Just Crow Things features ten levels for you to cause utter chaos in, each with unique trinkets to snatch, fun items to collect, and some cool puzzles to solve. You can also eat foods to discover new "poop modes", which sounds like a fun way to spend a weekend or two.

Gourdlets

Developer: AuntyGames
Steam rating: Very Positive
Store page

The newest Neighborvania (listen to this except for about five mins if you dispute this genre name) is here in Gourdlets, a low-key city builder that has you creating small towns for vegetable folks. Gourdlets is very relaxed, with no goals, no points, and promises to just deliver good vibes. The only thing you need to do is build your vegetable friends the perfect town, and watch them enjoy themselves.

There are plenty of structures to build, decorations to place, and then you can set the game to idle window mode on your desktop while you do other things, and watch the Gourdlets at play.

It seems like a real relaxing time, one that I might actually use once the baby comes to destress in the few moments of quiet I will steal for myself. I also like this line from the store description: "Zero currency! (Capitalism makes the gourdlets tired)". I can relate to that.

Terminus: Zombie Survivors

Developer: LongPlay Studios
Steam rating: Overwhelmingly Positive
Store page

Look, I have kinda hit the point where new zombie games are an immediate pass. I still dabble with Project Zomboid from time to time, and I do play State of Decay when I feel like killing a few hours in a bleak world. But just like in movies and TV, zombies are not in vogue for me, but Terminus: Zombie Survivors does look like something I may want to check out.

This Early Access turn-based roguelike has hit the all-important V1.0 this week, and the reviews on Steam paint a picture of a simple to grok 2D survival game, that has a lot of interesting mechanics under the surface.

Each run has you enter a procedurally generated city, with over 150 different areas to build said hellscape from. You will fight, scavenge, meet other survivors, and eventually make it to the Terminus. Oh, you'll also try to find a cure, that part is pretty important.

Maybe it has been my brief foray back to the original GTA that has me nostalgic for top-down games, but Terminus: Zombie Survivors does seem to be a neat idea that has earned its way onto my ever-growing wishlist.

Tactical Breach Wizards

Developer: Suspicious Developments
Steam rating: Very Positive
Store page

I have been waiting for Tactical Breach Wizards for about five years now, and today it finally has arrived. This is the next release from former game journo turned game developer Tom Francis, and his crew at Suspicious Developments. It's a pretty neat idea - imagine an elite team of Wizards outfitted with tactical weapons who need to clear rooms ala XCOM, and you are pretty close to what Francis and co. have created here.

What is super neat in Tactical Breach Wizards is that you have unlimited rewinds, which makes each encounter feel like a playground where you get to experiment with your powers. How can you chair each spell to try and clear a room in a single turn? That kind of thing, and as someone who is still new to the tactics and strategy genre, this is far less daunting and more fun than turtling up in fear to mitigate XCOM 2's hideous RNG goblins.

And much like Gunpoint and Heat Signature before it, Tactical Breach Wizards features fun and witty dialogue, that just ties it all together in a wonderful narrative meets fun gameplay way that few developers can even come close to.

I also applaud Francis' candor in this launch trailer - "me and a small team have been working on this for six and half years now, and as of today it's done, it's out you can buy it. In fact, please do, because we have spent six and half years on it, and we really need it to sell."

He then gives the elevator of the pitch and then winds up with "As mentioned we kinda have a lot riding on this now, and the thing that is going to make or break us is how well it does in launch week." It's tough for indies out there, and I super appreciate him just putting it all out there on the table in their launch trailer.

The game is 10% off during launch week, and those who do pick it up get some neat in-game cosmetics that have a completely different vibe than the base game if that's your thing.

CONSCRIPT is a harrowing look at the cost of war

This week I dropped a review of the survival horror gem CONSCRIPT, the work of a solo developer which evokes the original Resident Evil strongly. There are no zombies or viruses in CONSCRIPT however. Taking place during the battle of Verdun in World War I, this horrific survival game really has a lot of weight. Here's an excerpt from the review:

But perhaps the aspect of CONSCRIPT that I enjoyed the most was the starkness of it all. It’s dark, it’s gritty, it has moments of quiet, and it then it has moments of abject horror. There aren’t really jump scares waiting in these darkened halls, but every time I ended a play session I lay in bed, starting into the darkness, wondering how the hell I would have dealt with what was going on in those trenches on the Western Front. It’s a powerful experience, and sure, maybe I am just a mark for this given that I have a bit of a fascination with the period, but it is effective and deeper than anything else that I have personally experienced in the genre.

Want to read more? Head on over to the review.