Soul Injector Commando makes you turn billionaires into humans

Hello friends! We are well and truly in the thick of it now, with the latest Fire Emblem dropping to critical acclaim across the board. The first Onimusha game in 20 years continues Capcom's hot streak. The next six weeks or so will be drop a cavalcade of highly anticipated games just in time for the end of the year, and somewhere in the middle of it all, a bunch of indies will be floating out there waiting for you to discover them.

I am getting ready for an international trip back to Australia, so my gaming time has been light. Moonlighter 2 has been a really fun "Hades but cozy" adventure on the Steam Deck that has captured my attention in a way that the original game just was not able to do. I hope to keep picking away at that on my upcoming 10 hour flight.

But enough of that, let's take a look at what you should be playing this week.

And what came out this week?

Dimraeth (Early Access)

Developer: Mudtek
Steam rating: Very Positive
Store link

Kicking things off this week is a very ambitious project from Mudtek. Dimraeth is a pixel art fantasy ARPG that blends Soulslike combat with settlement management and crafting. What does that mean? It means unlike the pew pew of a Diablo clone, Dimraeth has slow and deliberate combat, which means that you need to react, and plan your attacks rather than mindlessly click. When you aren’t out adventuring you will be crafting new items and upgrades for your warrior, or expanding your settlement to get more bonuses and keep civilization from the brink of extinction.

The real neat thing is that Dimraeth has drop-in, drop-out co-op for a max party size of 8 players. So if you have a group of dungeon adventurers in the wing, I predict you will have a real good time. The game currently has 3 classes and races, and the entire first act of the game available. The reviews are looking pretty positive, and I have a feeling this one could be a pretty big deal in a year or so when it has hit 1.0. Get in early!

Soul Injector Commando

Developer: Jeremy Couillard
Steam rating: Positive
Store link

Avant-garde indie dev Jeremy Couillard is back at it this week with Soul Injector Commando, a truly weird and wonderful delight. I will let the Steam page do the talking for this one.

If that’s not a compelling pitch, I don’t know what is. You basically are sent to Earth to go down and inject souls into the corpo billionaires who don’t give a hoot about a pleb like you or me. With an insane art style that is beautifully ugly, Soul Injector Commando looks like it deftly walks that tightrope of satire and big ideas. One for the art gamers out there.

Woodo

Developer: Tiny Monks Tales
Steam rating: Very Positive
Store link

This adorable cozy puzzler crawled into my inbox this week and I immediately wanted to escape the stress of packing to check it out. Woodo is a relaxing puzzle game that is told across handcrafted wooden dioramas. It is trying to capture the feeling of an interactive toy, and judging by what we see in this trailer, I think it hits the nail right on the head and delivers.

The devs wanted to capture the tactile feeling of playing with toys, so a lot of the puzzles here are about poking and prodding, and building things. There’s a super chill narrator who guides you through a simple story, one that aims to make you smile for every second of the journey. If you need some warm and fuzzies, this is the one for you.

Anomaly Company

Developer: Kekdot
Steam rating: Mostly Positive
Store link

This one is not quite friend slop, but if is dangerously close. Anomaly Company sends you and three of your mates into liminal environments. You need to walk around and spot dangerous and disturbing anomalies, and make a call on whether the timeline is safe. Get it wrong, you pay the consequences and start over again.

It has this real unsettling vibe about it, but at the same time feels a little like Control if it had a weird dose of silliness on the side. I really like the fact that there appears to be 0 combat in this game, and it’s all about spotting those subtle differences to unravel the mystery of each map. If you have some friends and you are ready to face some horror, check this one out and let me know how it is!

Tenebris: Terra Incognita

Developer: Phantasmica Studios
Steam rating: Mixed
Store link

After a stint in Early Access, tactical turn-based RPG Tenebris: Terra Incognita is out, and it looks pretty interesting. If you took the brutal gameplay of Darkest Dungeon, and mashed it up with a bit of DOOM gloom and added a dash of XCOM, you pretty much have an idea of how this one plays. You position your units and have them fire off attacks, and abilities, and try to survive will exploring the galaxy. It has a classic space marines sci-fi vibe, without all the space church stuff of the Warhammer 40K universe.

While the steam rating sits at Mixed right now, from what I can tell a lot of the Early Access community were expecting a little more, especially when it comes to the difficulty. Reading all the recent reviews however, it seems like this is Darkest Dungeon but in space, and I am so down for that. This might be my plane game!

Combolands is a cozy citybuilder that you should check out

For the past two weeks I have been dropping what precious gaming time I have on Combolands, a cozy roguelike citybuilder that is an utter joy. While I found it to be lacking a little in the tutorial area, after a few hours I internalised what it wants from me, and it’s become a daily habit at this point.

Combolands is a fun and joyful take on a Citybuilder that feels like it has a lot of strategic depth, but isn’t actively asking you to live in the stats and minmax every decision. It feels like sitting at a table with a few of your mates, drinking a few beers, and having a yarn over a heated game of Carcassone. I like that, and there’s a strong chance that if you are at all strategy-game curious, you might too.

You can check out the full review on Pixels for Breakfast.

And that's a wrap

That’s a wrap!

Thanks so much for reading. If you like what you see, please share it with a friend. If you want to help support me to grab some indie games to get some reviews, please consider dropping some money in the ko-fi cup.

See you next week

Steve