Okay, okay, fine. I’ll review some games instead of obsessing over video quality and gaming-adjacent tools. For now. I have one game in the pipeline right now and Mists of Noyah is supposed to release an update at some point this month, but it never hurts to request everything that looks interesting. Sure, you can end up slammed going that route, but the last time I was overwhelmed with keys was when PQube came through with Aokana and Nexomon: Extinction, and that was great. It’s a weird time for requesting keys, though. Keymailer seems to be only starting to grow out of that weird period where every developer makes you request a notification to request a game. Another of the main requesting sites went through an overhaul that was supposed to last a couple of hours before Christmas and everything broke so much that it still isn’t totally up and running. Just saying—my little vacation from reviewing and look into other types of content isn’t totally unwarranted. Especially since reviews are the worst content type for site growth.

Ancient Abyss

Naturally, the first stop is to see if anything I’ve requested has been rejected. There was some game that I was rejected for a couple of weeks ago, but that notification disappeared. Some sequel to a drawing game or something. Not a huge loss. The only other rejection came a couple of days ago for Yaga, a game that 17% of critics on OpenCritic recommended. I can always count on rejection for games published by Versus Evil regardless of how terrible they are. In a way, it’s comforting to have that kind of thing as a constant.

Ancient Abyss is an early access game that was on the front page of Keymailer. It actually released today, January 14th, and it’s not going well. There’s a single visible review for me right now and it’s negative. It looks interesting, though, and since I don’t do reviews for early access games until they’ve reached 1.0, I could cover it as creatively as I want. That’s super appealing to me right now, coming off a burnout.

Who Needs A Hero?

One of the perils of digging through games is the number of porn ones that don’t immediately look like porn ones. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve been browsing through games, minding my own business, only for giant, naked anatomy to fly across my defenseless screen and rob it of its innocence. It was inevitable that this would happen in a video, and the day has come: a couple of semi-undressed 3D models have infiltrated the above video. Only for a brief moment since I exited out immediately, but be aware that it’s a thing that happens, and it’s easier to stumble across on Keymailer than you’d think.

Shortly after being flashed by that low-effort nonsense, I came across a game where you choose between two choices, with some of these choices supposedly having drastic effects. It doesn’t look like it’s a game with a huge focus on the gameplay, but you know what? It looks fun, and so many modern indie games are focused on atmosphere—I can only see so many first-person, Cthulhu-mythos horror games before I want to punch my screen—and other ancillary concerns that they tend to forget to be fun. You can quote this hot gaming take on the record, but I prefer games to be entertaining and fun. I’m nuts like that.

Disjunction

There was a shot from a horror game that I had to see in full size at 4:10. It looks like the monster is dancing. I love it. Right after that, I found a game called Disjunction that looked vaguely familiar to me. A tech-noir, stealth-action game with sight cones you have to actively avoid? That’s when it dawned on me: this thing looks like an aRPG thrown into a blender with Metal Gear. The old 2D ones. Sign me up.

UTAWARERUMONO: PRELUDE TO THE FALLEN

You may notice that this game is the only one with an all-caps title. That’s because I copy/pasted the ridiculous name that would take me a week to accurately remember. Umamarumor: Prelude to the Fallen is a weird-looking game in a long-running series, and while that’d usually deter me, it’s an sRPG. If there’s any genre that I could devote myself to fully without becoming bored, it’d probably be the humble strategy RPG. My bread and butter. I may not be familiar with Utruebluegrue, but I breathe sRPGs.

Blue Fire

“Ugh,” I thought to myself, “there’s no way that ‘blue fire’ is going to be first in search results. People probably talk about actual Blue Fire too much.” Except I searched for it and it was the first search result. Touché, Blue Fire. This game sends you through a bunch of temples full of enemies and the movement looks very interesting. It kind of gives me a “3D Zelda if it went through a parkour phase” vibe. And the character looks small enough to aid the precise platforming. Blue Fire was just too weird not to request.

Finding games, requesting games: 1/14/21 first appeared on Killa Penguin