GYGO: Christmas Games, the Wizarding World Becomes (Augmented) Reality, and Documentary Games

Howdy, gaming lovelies! I’ve already polished off a turkey and am ready to hibernate for the winter—in a much warmer fashion than Red Dead Redemption 2, I might add. Before I sneak a pie away from the holiday table, let’s catch up on all the week’s news.

Break Out the Christmas Games!

Here in the Northeast the holidays are in full swing since the arrival of last week’s snowstorm. Get your festive spirit on with Christmas Carol, freshly released on November 19th. This Dickens-inspired mystery adventure is set in Victorian London and is chock full of puzzles and hidden objects. Grab your eggnog and game your ghosts of Christmas past away.

Protect the Wizarding World

Anger over casting Johnny Depp as Grindelwald won’t stop the powers that be from taking advantage of Fantastic Beasts fanfare to announce the next big Wizarding world news. Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is an augmented-reality digital game slated for a 2019 release. The premise is that traces of magic are appearing in the Muggle world and it’s only time before someone starts asking questions. Players are presumably witches and wizards helping to mitigate exposure. The game is being developed by Niantic (Pokemon Go) and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s Portkey Games label. Wands crossed that we can expect great things.

Cosmic Top Secret

If you suspected your parents were spies during the Cold War, what would you do? And more, importantly, would you make an indie game about it? Danish filmmaker Trine Laier did just that. Cosmic Top Secret is a true story game that includes real video and audio recordings, as well as dozens of documents and files from the Cold War era.

The design aesthetic reminds me of the Spongmonkeys but with much better sound editing and, thankfully, without the high pitched voices.

Other News You Can Use

• Mushroom foraging goes digital; Morels coming to mobile
• Fortnite esports team as army recruitment marketing tactic
• Couple ordered to pay $12 millions to Nintendo for running ROM sites
• TV-inspired Narcos: Rise of the Cartels announced 

Games Bleat

Welcome to Games Bleat! I’m Kael, your local cosmic lawyer, and I OBJECT to people not knowing about all the amazing games deals and new releases available right now. There’s some pretty wild variations in price this week, with the implementation of itch.io’s reverse sales causing some strange fluctuation.

First I’d like to present these deals to the court.

PC

• Super Potato Bruh $0.99
• Water’s Fine $4.20
• Super Strawberry Man $1.19
• Invisigun Heroes $4.49
• Dead Horizon $10,000
• Kolumno $1.49
• Let’s Play a Game $0.00
• Where is My Family $7.96
• 10S $4.20

Now I have some new releases to call to the stand.

First is Storm Boy: The Game, coming to everything from phones, to PCs, to consoles, to Switch. It’s rare that a game goes for the full cross platform gambit, but I think Storm Boy might be worth all the effort. It’s a retelling of a classic 1964 children’s book written by Colin Thiele, that puts you in the shoes of a South Australian boy who rescues some orphaned pelican chicks after a major storm. The game follows all the major points of the book, and renders them in a charming way.

Next is the fun and silly Beach Date. It’s a short physics based game from Nina Freeman and Jake Jefferies about having fun with a date. Pour some wine, dump some chips onto the ground, throw sand everywhere, and make penetrating eye contact deep into the evening. In all honesty, this game is a super entertaining half hour at least, plus it’s completely free!

Finally I have Gumgem, a cute dungeon platformer with a candy sweet aesthetic. It’s short and fun, plus pay what you want—with all donations going to making even more cute games! Rescue a prince, jump over some spikes, live the dream, really.

And that’s it for this week’s bleat! I’ll catch you next time after I finish suing the sun for disappearing from the Northern hemisphere.