Welcome back to Indie Insights, the fortnightly column that last came out a month ago! I’m nothing if not punctual.
It’s been a busy old time for games, with the looming release of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom overshadowing everything. This includes my own life, where the Zelda fan in my life is constantly asking me if Tears of The Kingdom will have fishing in it. The fact that I write about video games means I know Mr. Nintendo and, therefore, all details of all games. (I have no idea if fishing will be in the game, but by the time this is published, you will!)
I do know about some games I played this last month, though (that’s what we call in the business a perfect segue, folks.) So let’s get to the games!
Cassette Beasts – Demo
If you like to catch weird little guys and horde them as I do, then boy, do I have a game for you. From Bytten Studio comes Cassette Beasts, a game where you wake up in a mysterious land without knowing how you got there. This new place is filled with lost souls from across time who also have no idea how they ended up there. Also, monsters are everywhere, and you catch them on cassette tapes.
Shortly after you arrive, you are thrown into a battle with a creature. Like Pokémon and other creature-catching games, the combat is turn-based, and you have to knock down the HP of the creature before you can catch it. Unlike other games of its ilk, in Cassette Beasts, you transform into a creature through cassettes on your handy Walkman. A fusion system also means you can smash any creature’s atoms together and make a new monstrosity. Truly a game made for me.
Cassette Beasts is out now on Steam.
Night of Full Moon – Free To Play On Steam
Night of Full Moon came out in 2019 and flew completely under my radar. A roguelike card battler, the game incorporates the classic fairy tale of Red Riding Hood with deckbuilding and random story events. Set up like a storybook with minimal animation, you choose from a display of random events. Each section has a set number of events or pages, and once you have played through the required amount of events, you move on. You can remove an event, but it will use up a page.
Events include battling friends and foes alike, entering stores, and encountering a fairy godmother that will grant you some kind of bonus. There is a lot of content for a free-to-play game, and while it is simple, it’s easy to lose a few hours to it. The only downside is some poor translation in the written elements of the game.
Night of Full Moon is free to play on Steam.
Epic Manager – Steam
Management sim meets D&D campaign in Epic Manager from Manavoid Entertainment. Stylized heavily like the Munchkin board game, you play as the manager of an adventurer agency. Your job is to recruit heroes and build teams of adventurers who can go into the world and help people by completing quests and battling bad guys. Any combat encounters are turn-based and will help elevate your reputation and bank balance if you win.
Traveling across the map will present random encounters and quest events, and you can make traveling between main cities easier by opening portals. Each week you can send out scouts to either recruit new adventurers, look for quests or perform other admin tasks. Choose wisely because you only have so many scout points to spend. The whole thing is framed as a sports management game, but for fantasy fans, and while it is a fun take on the premise, the game is lacking. It’s dull, clunky, and some battles are hilariously drawn out. While I love management sims, this one isn’t for me.
Epic Manager is out now on Steam.
Upcoming Releases
- Metroidvania Elypse is coming to PC on May 17.
- Sanity-sapping horror No One Lives Under the Lighthouse comes to PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on May 18.
- From the studio behind Myst, puzzler Firmament comes to PC on May 18.
- Dwarven engineering sim Mountaincore comes to early access on PC on May 18.
- The latest game in the Amnesia series, Amnesia: The Bunker, comes to PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox One on May 23.
- Beautiful puzzle platformer Planet of Lana comes to PC, Xbox Series X, and Xbox One on May 23.
