GOG releases 7 dungeon crawler games

GOG’s contribution to the classic dungeon crawler genre has found 7 new DRM-free indie game entries.

Once upon a time when games weren’t considered to belong to the biggest entertainment industry and Dungeons & Dragons was known to a few people who weren’t seen to be particularly cool on the schoolyard, fantasy RPGs weren’t about long cutscenes and AAA production values, but about becoming lost in another world that usually took adventurers into the unknown underground. Fighting all sorts of monsters with a turn-based combat system, moving screen-by-screen in first person, with an illustrious cast of characters, drawing maps in order to find one’s way around, was more immersive than all the shiny graphics and soundtracks modern games now throw at you (which isn’t a bad thing, either, just different).

Thanks to indie development, the genre is still kept alive, and GOG now has seven new games on offer: cyberpunk roguelike RPG Conglomerate 451, boardgame-like RPG adventure experience Dark Quest 1&2, first-person dungeon crawler Heroes of the Monkey Tavern, Zelda-inspired isometric adventure Knightin’+, tribute to 90ies pixel art first-person dungeon crawlers Legends of Amberland: The Forgotten Crown, Might & Magic-inspired first-person RPG The Quest and its Islands of Ice and Fire DLC.

All the games are now available on GOG with their individual launch discount prices.

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GOG releases: “Tropico 6” and “Tropico 6: The Llama of Wall Street” DLC

The weather outside might not be very sunny, so the DRM-free release of Limbic Entertainment‘s and Kalypso Media‘s dictatorship sim Tropico 6 and its DLC The Llama of Wall Street might be the answer.

Last year I was happy to experience some of the Tropico series flair first-hand thanks to gamescom and devcom. On the first day of devcom 2019 I listened to a talk by Johannes Reithmann, design director at Limbic Entertainment, called Player Dreams: Designing the Dictator Fantasy in Tropico 6 and then on the fourth day of gamescom 2019 I played the console version of Tropico 6 only to be reminded of better controls on PC.

Tropico 6 again puts the player into the shoes of a dictator who has to manage a peninsula, which involves making money from tourists, keeping the population happy, and still keeping the status quo unchanged. Building an infrastructure with all sorts of transportation systems might sound like typical fair for the genre, but being able to steal the wonders of the world like the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower shows that there’s a lot of humor found in the game that looks and sounds like a fantastic vacation.

Official website

Tropico 6: Llama of Wall Street expands the dictactorship fantasy by making the president reach out for the international market, making this a much more finance-focused game than before. Keeping a close eye on the stock market might be a rather boring thing, but sabotaging it again shows the series’ trademark humor. It’s certainly a much more complex proposition this time, as all the goods one deals with are influenced by the global market, but then again it’s obvious that the DLC is for those who’re looking for a new challenge after having spent countless hours on the base game.

Official website

Tropico 6 was originally released in March 2019 and Tropico 6: Llama of Wall Street in December 2019, but now both are DRM-free on GOG with a 35% launch discount that lasts until February 28, 2020, at 2 PM UTC. There’s also the Tropico 6 El Prez Edition which includes 2 new tourist outfits, a flamingo pond for one’s customizable palace, a digital soundtrack and calendar.

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Epic Games Store free games: “Faeria” and “Assassin’s Creed Syndicate”

Epic Games Store‘s newest free games are Abrakam‘s, Versus Evil‘s fantasy card-battling game Faeria and Ubisoft‘s action-adventure Assassin’s Creed Syndicate.

How these two games were chosen remains a mystery to me, as they’re different in both tone and gameplay, but maybe the reason was to offer something for indie and AAA fans. Be this as it may, Faeria is an interesting take on the card-building formula, mixing Magic: The Gathering battles and boardgame Catan‘s building mechanics. So one doesn’t simply collect various cards, but also changes the battlefield by deciding if it’s made up of mountains, forests, or lakes, for example. Although it’s clearly aimed at multiplayer with its many co-op missions, there’s enough content, including puzzles, for single-player, too.

The Assassin’s Creed series certainly needs no introduction, as its mix of history and sci-fi has become a mainstay in the gaming landscape. This time, the Industrial Revolution in London becomes the centerstage of where all the assassinations take place. Of course the gameplay still involves the same sneak, kill, and escape procedure, but with technological advances, this seems to feel a bit differently in setting, and as the bug-riddled first release is a thing of the past, it should be smoother to play, too.

The games can be added for free to the Epic Games library until February 27, 2020, at 5:00 PM.

Official Faeria website

Official Assassin’s Creed Syndicate website

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Game release: “Sky Cannoneer” (PC)

Element Games‘ arcade re-imagining Sky Cannoneer mixes strategy and action in an addictive way.

Arcade classics redone for a modern audience might sound like the easiest thing to do by only using flashier graphics, but in this case, the original game was Rampart from 1990 in which castles had to defended. Serving as a precursor of the popular tower defense genre, it was a mix of shoot-em-up and puzzle game. Sky Cannoneer uses the same concept, but puts it into a sci-fi/fantasy setting in which one plays as a corsair in the Sky Lord’s Navy to fight back enemy forces on one’s home planet Emoria.

As is typical of the genre, one places all kinds of defenses and upgrades them with new technologies, superpowers and even summons. While a story campaign mode is a welcome addition to gameplay that might become stale, the inclusion of boss fights sounds even more promising. So yes, there have been countless tower defense games before (and there will probably be even more after), but the beautiful sky setting might just be a refreshing departure from all the orcs/robots/plants/zombies one has become used to.

The game is out now on PC with a 10% discount that lasts until February 27, 2020, at 5 PM UTC.

Official website

Buy the game for PC on
GOG
Steam

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Game release: “The Suicide of Rachel Foster” (PC)

ONE-O-ONE GAMES‘ and Daedalic Entertainment‘s mystery adventure game The Suicide of Rachel Foster tackles a difficult subject matter in a suspenseful way.

Abandoned hotels, especially those in remote mountain regions, are always good for horror stories, but they can also be used for dramas and mysteries. So it’s no surprise to see a family hotel as the backdrop of this adventure game that tells a rather disturbing story about Rachel, a girl who commited suicide as a teenager. The reason for this was that the main protagonist Nicole’s father Leonard had an affair with her, resulting in her pregnancy, or so it seems, because there might be much more to the story which made Nicole and her mother leave the hotel and consequently Leonard. In order to fulfil her mother’s last will to sell the building, Nicole returns to it with the family’s lawyer, only to suddenly be stuck there due to bad weather conditions. With the help of a FEMA agent, she starts investigating the past to find out if the stories about a ghost can be true.

While movies have treated suicide in all sorts of ways, games have only recently started to deal with the subject matter, probably because of the rise of indie development and adventure games not having to feature lots of puzzles anymore, instead focusing more on atmosphere and storytelling. So this mix of drama, thriller, mystery and horror seems to provide plenty of emotional and chilling scenes, without falling back on cheap jump scares, giving the player the opportunity to slowly unravel the mysteries surrounding the death of a young girl in a setting so familiar to horror movies that is a perfect fit for a much more immersive feeling in game form.

The game is out now on PC with a 25% launch discount that lasts until February 26, 2020, at 5 PM UTC.

Buy the game for PC on
GOG
Steam

Official website

If you liked reading this article, make sure to LIKE it or comment on it on EMR’s Facebook page :). Or FOLLOW the blog on EMR’s Twitter page.
Using the GOG link and buying the product also helps ;).