Gamebox 2.0: Games of September 2024
As we get into a cozy fall season, the games we played this month haven’t slowed down the fun. For this month of Gamebox 2.0, we hit the borderline of madness in Edge of Sanity, battled zombies in Blood Purge, fought unholy abominations in Immortal Hunters, and gunned down some meaty invaders in Iron Meat. Check out everything we played this month below.
Immortal Hunters (Zach): Out now in Early Access from Admiral Games and indie.io, Immortal Hunters is an action RPG set in a world where the world is on the brink of the apocalypse when hordes of demonic creatures known as Khemrids invade. Only a handful of holy warriors known as Hunters can fight them back, and there are four of them to play with. Each Hunter has unique weapons and abilities, mapped to keyboard keys and mouse clicks like an MMO, with certain powers requiring a cooldown. All the Hunters have a basic attack that never needs a cooldown, which will be your primary tool when fighting the demonic hordes, and there’s a dash mechanic to get in and out of combat quickly.
The game plays on a 2D side-scrolling plane, much like a belt-scrolling beat ’em up a la Final Fight or, maybe more appropriately, the old Dungeons and Dragons games from Capcom. There are also carriage sections, where you travel between locations in a steam-powered carriage that you must defend from Khemrid attacks. These sections feature an entirely different set of skills and attacks than the side-scrolling sections, and each Hunter also has a set of unique attacks and abilities in this section.
The game has a really awesome comic book-style art design with grotesque creature designs and cool, badass designs for the Hunters and their supporting cast. It feels similar to stuff from artists like Joe Madureira. The voice acting is a bit hit or miss, with some characters sounding great and some sounding like a random programmer was pulled into the VO booth with no prior experience, but given that this is an indie release, it’s admirable that’s full VO at all. Since the game is in Early Access, some features you might expect aren’t fully implemented yet, including a leveling system to unlock new abilities, more RPG elements, and new characters and storylines. What’s here is pretty solid, and the MMO-style skills and cooldown mixed with more of a beat ’em-up style to the gameplay is an interesting mix with a cool art style.
Blood Purge: Releaseburg (Alpha) (Zach): Coming from Steady Boar, Blood Purge: Releaseburg is a twist on twin-stick shooters/bullet heaven games set in a zombie apocalypse that we got to play the Alpha version of. A rogue-like, you are a survivor trying to fend off the zombie hordes in the city of Releaseburg. The game’s big gameplay twist is that you need to hit a Gears of War-style meter to be able to shoot the zombies, with a green sweet spot that grows or shrinks depending on the style of weapon you have. Each weapon has an effective radius, and you cannot hit any enemies that are not within that circle. Your starting pistol has the lowest radius, but guns like the sniper rifle can reach almost across the stage. You have several zombies to kill in each stage, then you warp out via a portal. Each stage you clear gives you rouge-like bonuses, like stat boosts, passive abilities, and new weapons. The game features procedurally generated stages; no runs will ever be the same twice.
You’ll start facing relatively normal zombies, but you’ll eventually face different types, including ones that spit acid (or fireballs?) and giant brutes that wield street signs as clubs. You do have a dodge roll that you can use to get out of the way, which you’ll have to remember to use because the meter-based shooting gives the enemies plenty of opportunities to rush you and attack you. Since this is just the game’s alpha, many things can evolve and change. The meter-based shooting is an interesting idea, and it definitely makes you focus more on aiming and movement than a normal twin-stick shooter. I would prefer a full twin-stick shooter or a Vampire Survivors-style bullet heaven game with massive hordes of zombies and auto-attacking. I’ll be interested to see how the game develops and what other systems and mechanics get added as it approaches a full release, which is expected in Q4 2024.
Edge of Sanity (Zach): Developed by Vixa Games and published by Daedalic Entertainment, Edge of Sanity is a 2D survival horror game inspired by Lovecraft. You play as Carter, working in the remote Alaskan wilderness for the mysterious (and almost assuredly evil) corporation PRISM. When an evacuation order is given for every PRISM facility, Carter and his friend Frank barely escape and find themselves trapped in the Alaskan wilderness. Frank is too injured to leave their makeshift camp, so Carter needs to head out, gather supplies, try to find other survivors, and eventually escape to civilization. However, some otherworldly force is at work and starts to infiltrate Carter’s mind, which could drive him mad if he/you aren’t careful. The game has a “trauma effects” mechanic where your encounters with the Lovecraftian horrors can inflict Madness, which in turn can give you permanent traits that may be good or bad but will permanently change things like dialogue options, items you can craft, how you perceive the world and more.
The game is fully voice acted, and all of it is excellent across the board, especially the actor voicing Carter and the game has a great, compelling story that slowly reveals what insanity is happening and what PRISM was actually up to in this remote part of the world. The game’s look is solid, with comic book styling that sells the world’s gory horror and Lovecraftian madness. The gameplay is solid, with you controlling Carter in side-scrolling, 2D levels. One big mechanic is how much noise you are making, with a visual indicator emanating with every footstep showing how much sound you are making and what the radius is. You have a regular walk, a stealthy squat, and a full sprint. There are combat options, but you are severely undermatched compared to the creatures you encounter, so stealth is usually your best option. There are also opportunities to use the environment to kill enemies and solve puzzles.
As you explore the levels, you gather supplies that you can use to keep your camp going, and as you find other survivors, they join you at your camp and offer side quests and dialogue options. If you die while away from camp, you respawn at camp but lose everything you found. Each level has a specific objective to complete, but you can stay for as long as you want to explore and discover more supplies. It gives the game a nice push and pull as you can leave as soon as your main objective is completed, but you may not have found anything useful before that, which won’t help you in the long run but if you die while you are exploring when you could have went back to camp, you lose everything. If you’re looking for an interesting survival horror game with a Lovecraftian twist and excellent presentation, then Edge of Sanity is worth checking out. Edge of Sanity is available for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, and Nintendo Switch.
Stardiver (Zach): Stardiver comes from Green Planet Games and it’s an underwater shooter where you explore the depths of an alien planet. Sent on a mission to investigate what happened to a base that went silent, you find it abandoned and needing repairs. Gathering resources, you slowly get the base up and running and figure out what happened and other questions, like why is the local aquatic wildlife suddenly so aggressive? You pilot your sleek submersible, armed with a machine gun and torpedoes, and complete various mission objectives. However, you can roam and explore to find resources, secrets, and other hidden areas. You can exit your sub to reach inaccessible areas and have a limited amount of oxygen before you need to return to the sub.
Your sub has all the moves you might expect from a space combat game, like dodges, boosts, and the ability to move up and down vertically without changing your view. You can switch between a third-person view and a cockpit view. The controls are, unfortunately, probably the weakest part of the game, as they feel clunky and unresponsive, which ruins the illusion of piloting a sleek and agile sub. There are also lots of bugs that will cause your sub to ricochet off non-existent walls or get flung across the map.
I’ve been playing Chorus (a bit late to the party, I know) on PS5, and that game is so responsive and makes you feel like a sleek space predator, and playing Stardiver is like driving a dump truck after racing a Lamborghini. The combat also doesn’t feel great and makes you feel like you are killing enemies more from luck than skill. The story isn’t the most compelling, mostly told via your bored-sounding submersible AI. I was hoping for a solid shooter from Stardiver, but there are many issues and a lack of interesting worlds and stories that make me say to pass on it. The aforementioned Chorus is a pretty great space shooter. If you’re looking for underwater shooters, Aquanox Deep Descent from 2020 offers better-feeling submarine combat and a much more exciting world and story. Stardiver is available on Steam.
Iron Meat (Chris): When an interdimensional creature escapes from the Moon and starts an invasion of fleshy parasites on Earth, a brazen squad of soldiers gears up to grind down the meaty invaders in Iron Meat. Developed by Ivan Valeryevich Suvorov and Retroware, Iron Meat is an exciting new entry in the arcade-style Run-and-Gun shooter. Heavily influenced by classic shooters like Contra, Doom, and Metal Slugs, Iron Meat features familiar mechanics that keep players ready to unleash a storm of bullets, while avoiding countless dangers from foes. There are no armors to upgrade, or skill points to invest, Iron Meat will test players’ ability to make a perfect shot while underfire attack from all angles. One missed dodge or bad shot could mean the player completes a level or becomes part of the mutated mass.
Iron Meat’s gameplay borrows from the Contra design of keeping things fast and simple. An interdimensional being known as the Meat is spreading across Earth and turned in touches into muscly creatures. It’s up to you to blast through waves of enemy forces and overcome crumbling obstacles as the Meat tosses everything it infects your way. There is only one attack button, but the type of weapon you are wielding affects how you attack. The player can hold up to two weapons at a time and can be swapped for another weapon found in the level. The player starts with a standard machine gun, which works fine for most situations but doesn’t have the best advantages. This can be traded for a few weapon types that increase shooting speed and attack patterns. A shotgun with a spread shot that can hit multiple enemies and has some uses for longer ranges. A laser rifle can fire multiple waves rapidly. An energy rifle shoots an orb that gives a tiny explosion when hitting an enemy, giving some splash damage to anything nearby. These weapons can become more powerful by collecting a second weapon of the same type, boosting the firing speed and damage, plus a green tint to the projectile.
Weapons and power-ups will provide some extra attack when navigating around, but a quick jump and crouch will make all the difference. Players will take on a variety of deadly behemoth boss fights that usually take up 1/4 of the screen. These fights will test how well the player is aware of their surroundings. Bosses have multiple attack phases and some sneaky tricks to bait the player, but nothing is guaranteed safe until that hulking boss has exploded. Getting killed in a battle is inevitable but hopefully, the player has a few lives stocked up to grind through some of the difficult attack phases.
The game’s presentation is solid as the Meat has infected objects, people, and landscapes. If you are a fan of morbid 16-bit horror, Iron Meat is packed with great twisted inhuman sprite work. Enemies and background assets have a look of pulsating muscles and jagged bones. However, stopping to stare too long at the visuals can lead to a quick death, so appreciate them quickly. Completing each level earns points towards unlocking new characters and accessories. These are just cosmetic only and contain amusing homages to other action titles. The game’s score has that fun aggressive metal beat that keeps the player in the mode for mowing down enemies, making them feel like the one-man army.
Iron Meat is a great classic Run-and-Gun shooter that does not rely on cheap tricks to increase the challenges. The three difficulty modes let players of a certain skill level explore the game or sweat over every projectile that was a near hit. The game is fairly difficult for most players in the normal settings, but if you faced down the original Contra without the Komani code, then you are meant to play this game hard. There are only nine levels in the game, but they are very well-focused and diverse, so the game doesn’t feel repetitive from start to end. There were some interesting weapons that I wanted to use more often like the grenade launcher. But once I upgraded any rapid-fire weapon, it was the only weapon I used until I got hit. The local co-op mode adds some extended playable so two players work together to take down meat or brag about high scores like the good old days of arcade shooting.
Overall, Iron Meat is a great action title for some intense bullet-spreading fun. It doesn’t reinvent many mechanics, sticking to the tried and true designs that keep the game flowing and fun. Iron Meat has a savory and satisfying depth of fun for any gamer to enjoy. Iron Meat will be released on September 26th for PC, Switch, Playstation, and Xbox digital stores. The physical edition of the game will be provided by Limited Edition for Switch and PS5
