This was 2024’s best week of new video games
Gorgeous games, smart games, there was even a cooking Metroidvania.
When the year is done and I look back, my favorite video game of 2024 will probably have come out in the third week of February. Or maybe during the second week of May. The fourth week of September might have a contender, too.
If, for some reason, I’m forced to declare which week was the best week for gaming, I’ll go with this one—the third in July.
Rarely have I experienced an abundance of so many wonderful and different new games. Many have been pleasant surprises.
The most impressive game I played…
Dungeons of Hinterberg (Xbox, PC)
What I thought I was getting into: A third-person adventure set in an Alpine village that’s been transformed by the appearance of magical enemies; a game that uses a day-night schedule to split protagonist Luisa’s time between clearing enemy-filled dungeons by day and socializing in town at dusk.
What surprised me: Hinterberg is refreshingly sophisticated. Its characters, mostly adults, talk mostly like adults: see, for example, Luisa confessing to her new friend Alex that she has traveled to Hinterberg to distract herself from her miseries as a lawyer. “I feel like I’ve kept delaying every liberty other people take in their twenties to focus on getting ahead,” she laments. Each evening, Luisa can sit with fellow travelers around a campfire or have more intimate chats while pondering her life choices, the politics of Hinterberg and just what it means that so many people’s escape involves coming to this town to smack monsters with a sword. As for the dungeons, they’re descendants of Nintendo’s best puzzle-filled Zelda chambers, and they avoid the tedium that befalls other imitators by being fun to solve and survive.
The most beautiful game I played…
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess (PC, PlayStation, Xbox)
A time-warped PS2 game: That’s how reviewers are describing Capcom’s Path of the Goddess, celebrating it as a “defiantly odd” throwback to when the company produced relatively small, creatively experimental games. This new one is a strategy game about clearing a goddess’ walking path, through demon-infested villages. As protagonist Soh, you wave a magical sword to cleanse polluted structures and free villagers from cocoons, then task the townsfolk to defend the goddess as night falls and fresh demons pour in.
An artist to follow: The costumes, the demons, the transformed towns are so colorful and captivating that I got to thinking… didn’t I play some similarly beautiful game from Capcom several years ago? An underwater Metroid-syle game that also had a Japanese title? I did! Capcom’s Shinsekai: Into the Depths was initially an Apple Arcade exclusive that later came to Switch. It was also full of stunning landscapes and knobby, grossly gorgeous creatures. And—ah ha!—it too was directed (and also art directed) by one Shuuichi Kawata, who I’m now adding to the list of developers whose future projects I must follow.
The most novel concept…
Magical Delicacy (PC, Console)
This plus… what? Magical Delicacy is Metroid, but with cooking. It’s a 2D adventure/exploration game in which you unlock new areas and skills by cooking new dishes for people. I hadn’t heard of this game a month ago, but once I saw the pitch, I had to play.
What I’ve done: About two hours in, I’ve made dessert for a princess so she’d help me cross a bridge, then met a witch who taught me how to double-jump. I’ve advanced one quest by cooking two stews for traveling adventurers, expanded my kitchen to make more varied dishes, and am hoping that one of these recipes is going to help me find my way through dark caves.
I must point out…
All of the above games launched into Xbox Game Pass this week. I didn’t play them all that way. I started Kunitsu-Gami on PlayStation 5.
Nevertheless, what a story that tells. A week ago, Microsoft said it would be jacking up the price of Xbox Game Pass, prompting many deliberations (including here in Game File) about what Microsoft promises with its subscription service, what it delivers and what it’s worth.
Now, this week’s Game Pass line up sends a simple, if seldom-marketed message: This service is curated by people with extremely good taste.
That said, Game Pass isn’t everything. The next three aren’t on it.
The weirdest game I played…
Clickolding (PC)
It’s creepy: You play the game from a first-person view, standing in a low-rent hotel room, while holding a numerical clicker in your hand. A hooded man sits in a chair in the corner and exhorts you to click, tells you just how to click, gets excited as you keep clicking—is the metaphor obvious yet?—acts domineering and insecure and creepy.
And it’s short: It’s meant to be played in one go (you can’t save), in about 30 minutes. But I put it down after 10, suspending the game with plans to return. I’m savoring how uniquely uncomfortable it is to play.
Most chill game…
Schim (PC, Console)
You’re a frog? A shadow? A frog-shadow? The point is, you’re a little critter that jumps, from shadow to shadow across urban settings. The whole game, best I can tell after a couple hours playing, is just that: survey a sidewalk, a plaza or a playground, note where the shadows are cast by trash cans and lampposts and moving cars, then jump from shadow to shadow, with only the gentlest of penalties for failure. One bad hop is fine; two send you back to where you first jumped.
My daughter keeps asking to play more. She’s been picky of late, giving most games I try to show her a mere minute or two before bailing. But a few days ago, when she was sick and I handed her the Switch assuming she’d get some comfort from A Little to the Left or Mario Kart, I was pleasantly surprised to find her hopping into Schim. It’s tricky for her, but she keeps going back.
Best/worst game for my kids…
Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition (Switch)
Things were going well when we started playing this new package of classic Nintendo games, cut up into speedrun challenges. My daughter started a Super Mario Bros. challenge and figured out how to grab the first mushroom. Then she did it again, faster. She passed the controller to my son, who did it even faster. He jumped into a challenge pulled from the original Legend of Zelda. He had to run into a cave and pick up his sword. “It’s dangerous…to… go alone,” he said, reading those words off the screen for the first time. What a weird and maybe wonderful way for my kids to experience the antecedents to the Mario Odysseys and Tears of the Kingdoms that they’ve enjoyed.
Then things went poorly. The Excitebike challenges were tough and kind of long. The kids got antsy. My daughter scored a quick time racing up the first ladder in Donkey Kong. My son made sure to immediately break her record. It was getting competitive. They were getting testy. A minute of twin-squabbling later, I turned the Switch off. Maybe we can find a better way to play this one….
And there’s more.
I didn’t even get to some of this week’s other releases: no Aerial Knight’s We Never Yield, no Flintlock, no Flock, no Vampire Therapist (what a title!). I want to play them all.
Then there’s EA Sports College Football 25, which is probably the hottest game right now. 2.2 million early access players this week, another 600,000 playing a demo, and the game didn’t even fully launch until Friday.
Wow. What a week!
Item 2: In brief…
🤔 The Federal Trade Commission says Microsoft’s recent Xbox Game Pass price increases and plan alterations—or “product degradation” in their words—“are the hallmarks of a firm exercising market power post-merger,” per a letter it has sent to the judge overseeing its appeal to get Microsoft's purchase of Activision-Blizzard blocked.
“Microsoft’s post-merger actions thus vindicate the congressional design of preliminarily halting mergers to fully evaluate their likely competitive effects, and judicial skepticism of promises inconsistent with a firm’s economic incentives,” the FTC writes.
No response from Microsoft yet.
🟥 Netflix has “set even more aggressive growth goals for ’25 and ’26” for their gaming division, after tripling engagement in 2023, co-CEO Greg Peters told investors yesterday, while skipping over the detail that the company is seeking a new head of gaming.
The company is planning to intensify its output of games based on its TV shows, positioning those titles as a way to engage super-fans between seasons.
A rework of Netflix’s homepage for TVs is also being tested, with the intent to offer a better structure for promoting more varied types of entertainment, including video games.
⚔️ Former World of Warcraft general manager John Hight is the new head of the digital gaming division at Hasbro/Wizards of the Coast, following former games president Cynthia Williams’ move to toy-maker Funko.
Flashback: In March, Hasbro’s head of digital told Game File the company has about 40 video game projects in the works.
📺 The “Halo” live-action show has been canceled by Paramount+, with producers hoping to shop the series and a potential third season elsewhere, Variety reports.
🤖 Former developers of the Nintendo-published Chibi-Robo series are hoping to crowdfund a spiritual successor called KoRobo, VGC reports. The games, developed by defunct studio Skip, featured a tiny robot who helps the humans he lives with.
Personal aside: I wish I could find a copy of my review of the original 2005 GameCube Chibi-Robo game, which I vaguely remember calling the most mature game Nintendo had released. Chibi-Robo doesn’t just scrub floors but helps a family whose lives are in crisis. (IGN’s review touches on it.)
Item 3: The week ahead
Now
Evo 2024, the world’s premiere fighting game tournament, is underway in Las Vegas. Polygon has a rundown of how to watch and what to watch for.
TennoCon, the official fan event for Digital Extremes’ massively multiplayer game Warframe, is held through Saturday. The event will include a new developer stream showing the studio’s upcoming fantasy game Soulframe.
BitSummit, the premiere event for indie games in Japan, is held in Kyoto through Sunday. There are livestreams (in Japanese) from the event, and some showcased games have demos available now via Steam.
Monday, July 22
Free-to-play adventure game The New Denpa Men (Switch), a sequel to a quirky line of augmented reality 3DS games, is released, as is briefly-delayed brick-based strategy game Cataclismo (PC),
Tuesday, July 23
Digital tabletop game Tales of Fablecraft (PC) is released.
Friday, July 25
“Role-puzzling adventure” Arranger (PC, PlayStation, Switch and mobile via Netflix), giant-bug-shooter Earth Defense Force 6 (PC, PlayStation) and comedy physics game Exhausted Man (PC, console) are released.
I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the variety of this week's newsletters - from parsing corporate securities filings to giving your impressions of indie/"different" games! Stuff like that is why I followed you here and subscribed. Thanks Stephen!
> How’d you feel about the Tuesday/Thursday/Friday newsletter schedule this week?
Eh, life inevitably gets in the way sometimes. I don't really mind the change, I feel like I'm getting amazing value for €10/month no matter the timing minutiae of your publishing schedule.
Keep up the great work!