When the seas boil into the red giantess of our sun, one grand monument will escape the ravages of solar apocalypse. Secure in the Humanity Memorial on Titan, future civiliations will find an ancient leatherbound tome with a thousand pages. It is the Crashbook.

A new page beckons, containing eighteen more games I have not played.

386/ “Project C”

Gifted with the┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄ ┉┉┉┉┉┉┉┉kaleidoscopic┉┉┉┉┉┉┉┉ ┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅┅future. Sam Barlow ╳ Brandon Cronenberg.

Crash notes: Sam Barlow’s next project.

Steam Link | Unreleased

387/ (the) Gnorp Apologue

(the) Gnorp Apologue is the journey of the gnorps as you guide them towards their goal of delightfully excessive wealth accumulation.

Crash notes: Seems to be a clicker of some description which has a pretty pixel aesthetic and rated OVERRRRWHELMINGLY POSITIVE on Steam.

Windows | Steam Link | Released Dec 2023

388/ UFO 50

UFO 50 is a collection of 50 single and multiplayer games that span a variety of genres, from platformers and shoot ’em ups to puzzle games, roguelites, and RPGs. Our goal is to combine a familiar 8-bit aesthetic with new ideas and modern game design.

Crash notes: This package looks fascinating. From Mossmouth who developed a relatively unknown game called Spelunky.

Windows | Steam Link / Official | Unreleased

389/ The Crush House

Film and produce 1999’s hottest reality TV show: The Crush House! Select a crush-worthy cast, satisfy voracious audiences and keep the show on air to uncover the sinister secrets behind this darkly comic thirst-person shooter.

CRUSH notes: Picked this up via Doug Wilson on social media. Sure, it might say developed by Nerial (Reigns, Card Shark) but it’s more important to know this is a project from Nicola He as nothing she makes is conventional. And why thirst-person shooter? Because you’re a camerawoman on the show.

Windows | Steam Link | Unreleased

390/ Felvidek

In Felvidek, a JRPG set in 15th century Slovakia, you embrace the role of an alcoholic knight Pavol. Meet diverse and interesting characters to help you drive out the Hussites and Ottomans who blight this land.

Crash notes: I know little about this Slovakian JRPG but those who’ve played it swear this is a great game.

Windows | Steam Link | Released Mar 2024

391/ Exographer

Exographer is an exploration game based on science. Become an explorer, stranded in an alien planet, and discover the secrets of an extinct civilization. Gain new powers to avoid dangers and obstacles in your journey, and use your camera to reveal particles and hidden clues.

Crash notes: Based on science? I’m going to stop you right there before you contradict that with some guff about gaining new powers – too late.

Windows, Mac | Steam Link | Unreleased

392/ Generation Exile

You are aboard humanity’s first and final generation ship, a last-chance expedition now teetering on the rim of collapse. One step at a time you must rebuild society and the ship’s fragile ecosystems — using only what you brought with you — in this turn-based narrative city-builder.

Crash notes: Come on, look at that picture. I am not taking questions at this time.

Windows | Steam Link | Unreleased

393/ Neongarten

A minimalist cyberpunk city builder inspired by Islanders and Luck Be a Landlord.

Crash notes: Sorry, yes, I was intrigued by the visuals.

Windows | Steam Link | Unreleased

394/ Cave Hikers

Cave Hikers is a relaxing and humorous 2D interactive cartoon mockumentary that follows three characters through a cavernous world, on a quest to find the mystical “cave with an infinite ceiling”.

Crash notes: It’s not the same art style but this gives me such Amnita Design feels.

Windows | Steam Link | Unreleased

395/ Strange Jigsaws

A game of strange jigsaws.

Crash notes: FLEB’s new title following on from the free 20 Small Mazes.

Windows | Steam Link | Unreleased

396/ Anthology of the Killer

Join BB as she makes rent and zines in a world of drinky birds, secret rooms, dream resorts, bort dolls, waterparks, immersive theater, beachfront t-shirt stores, police men, art freeports and unorthodox medical treatment. Nobody gets out of here alive!!

Crash notes: IGF Nuovo winner 2024. The Catamites. Anthology of nine games. Need I say more?

Windows, Mac, Linux | Itch Link | Released May 2024

397/ Minds Beneath Us

Embark on a thrilling Sci-Fi journey in a futuristic Asian city in MINDS BENEATH US. In a society fully automated by advanced AI, you’re ensnared within a foreign body, accompanied by its original owner’s subconscious. Together, face impending challenges and confront an uncertain destiny.

Crash notes: The trailer looked really swish.

Windows | Steam Link | Unreleased

398/ Leap Year

Leap Year is a clumsy platformer about knowledge and discovery. Explore a compact, hand drawn world filled with hidden paths. Understand the game’s secrets to reach new areas and collect all the pages of your calendar.

Crash notes: Zarawesome brought this to my attention but I’ve just been handed a Steam key, so expect this on the next Thinky Stream.

Windows | Steam Link | Released June 2024

399/ Uncover the Smoking Gun

Dive into ‘Uncover the Smoking Gun’, an immersive detective adventure. Find clues and dissect evidence, but don’t stop there. Engage with suspects, where even the trivial unravels the truth. Watch information converge into surprising revelations. Are you ready to solve the mystery?

Crash notes: Might also show this on the next Thinky Stream too…

Windows | Steam Link | Released June 2024

400/ Arctic Eggs

A Sci-Fi Cooking game where you take up the role of a Poultry Peddler stuck in Antarctica and longing for a way out. Cook your illegal eggs for those who look hungry.

Crash notes: Nicholas McDonnell (Samurai Punk) flagged this one up on social media. The description doesn’t sound like much but this “Overwhelmingly Positive” in the Steam reviews.

Windows, Mac, Linux | Steam Link | Released May 2024

401/ Clickolding

The man in the corner of your hotel room wants you to click something. He wants to watch you click it.

Crash notes: First of three titles I picked up from a “Crashbook-inspired” thread by njamster on Mastodon. Clickolding is from Strange Scaffold and the trailer has major Inscryption vibes.

Windows | Steam Link | Unreleased

402/ The Berlin Apartment

One apartment, many stories: Witness turning points in the lives of the inhabitants of an apartment in Berlin over the course of a whole century.

Crash notes: The next njamster suggestion. Not a clue how this game works, but those apartment interiors are tight.

Windows | Steam Link | Unreleased

403/ DIGGERGUN

DIGGERGUN is an atmospheric life-sim, platformer with a rich narrative featuring player choice and multiple endings. Tasked with mining lithium, you’ll need to earn £3,000 to leave Bal Island. Will you be able to save enough working your minimum wage job, or will you escape through other means?

Crash notes: The last njamster suggestion. What the game loses in naming mystique it makes up for with the phrase  “Low wage. Exhaustion. Expensive fish and chips. Welcome to the United Kingdom.” Trailer implies a lot going on here.

Windows, Linux | Steam Link | Unreleased

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11 thoughts on “Crashbook #26

  1. Did you post about Crush House on socials or did I run across it some other way? Because the “thirst person shooter” description raises the question: did someone finally make that “reskin FPS mechanics as paparazzi” game I’ve been nattering about for years? WILL THERE BE HEADSHOTS? I hope someone lets me know because I can’t play it.

    John Walker at Buried Treasure was talking up Leap Year and it sounds very cool, more puzzle than platformer? Maybe I should make an extra effort to catch it on the stream! It’s the sort of thing that maybe I would avoid watching a stream of so I could play it myself, if I could play it.

    Generation Exile looks like extremely my jam, like that is something that has been specifically extracted from my mind as a game idea I would like to play (I have this obsession with generation ships that hasn’t manifested itself in some way). And I guess I will not wind up being disappointed by its reality, since I can’t play it!

    Exographer also looks like extremely my jam. Too bad that… hey wait *immediately downloads demo*

    [disclaimer: my complaints about these things are all directed at Apple and not at anyone else! and there are too many games to play, so I am glad to read about interesting things I can’t play. and I already am playing two different forever games anyway. plus trying to work back to the part where I got stuck in Can of Wormholes and see if anything shakes loose. Anyone played Nine Sols? I hear from Buried Treasure comments that it might work for someone who can’t git gud at those kind of games.]

  2. At first glance Uncover The Smoking Gun looked like very much my kind of thing, but it seems much of the content is AI generated so maybe not. Shame.

    Strange Jigsaws looks potentially fascinating, though!

  3. Okay, so I was up all night watching the Tory wipeout, because this is the kind of thing I live for. Unfortunately, this also meant I slept through the whole of Friday. Ergh, I am still tired.

    MATT. I think I reposted Doug Wilson’s Crush House tweet but nothing else. I was thinking of you when I posted the above but I was in a rush so forgot to put an official Matt Reference (TM) with a wink. I’ve just tried out Leap Year to check it works and, yeah, at least the start is highly entertaining.

    Crashbook is defined as the regular “Matt Wiener tease”. I always feel a little bit sad not to include anything Mac-worthy. Some of these games might end up on Mac but their Steam pages have betrayed nothing.

    (For reference y’all, Nine Sols was Crashbook #16 entry 248.)

    PHLEBAS. It does look like AI is involved with the conversations, which makes me feel a little icky. I’m not a fan of injecting AI into games right now, simply because of all the creative-industry-killing baggage and energy costs. Still, I’ve signed up to play it, so.

    I’m pretty sure Strange Jigsaws will be good, clean fun if 20 Small Mazes is anything to go by.

  4. Ah yes! Crashbook #16! That reminded me that Inkulinati exists, so I bought it. Also my comments there re: Hyper Light Breaker and Hollow Knight are relevant to my interest in Nine Sols (apparently it has some adaptive difficulty, which would help because I can’t git gud. Can add Hades and Dead Cells to the not gud at list).

    Crashbook #16 also mentioned Can of Wormholes, making this update on-topic: Puzzles still fantastic, still stuck around 35% on some opaque overworld metagame stuff which is outside the wonderful hint system, started a new save to replay to that point and see if I thought of something, found another nagging thing where I was unable to start one puzzle because of something that sure looks like opaque overworld metagame stuff, am pretty annoyed at the opaque overworld metagame stuff. I blame Jon Blow. Next step is probably to post on Steam asking if anyone has any advice, or if this is like That One Level of Stephen’s Sausage Roll where if I don’t figure it out myself I will regret it forever.

    Congratulations on the Tory wipeout! We were just over in Northern Ireland (and London, and Leeds a bit) visiting in-laws and it is exciting that Paisley lost, though perhaps less exciting that he lost for not being enough of a rabid Unionist. Politics here are stressing me out rather (please nobody say anything about them). Also don’t feel any guilt about not posting Mac things, as I said it is entirely Apple’s fault and I complain about them just because I like complaining! I’m almost loth to report that the Exographer demo doesn’t work (I think maybe they took it down after the Next Fest but the link is up somehow?)

  5. I don’t think we can be too jubilant. The combined vote for the Tories and Reform significantly exceeded that for Labour, *despite* the last 14 years of blatant mismanagement. The liberally-minded (I would say left wing, but I don’t actually think Labour really represent them anymore) should be down on their knees kissing the hem of Farage’s red trousers today – he’s the reason Starmer is in no. 10. Estimable as it is, this majority is built on thin margins.

    We can expect a less performatively cruel and nakedly corrupt government for the next 5 years, which don’t get me wrong, I’m all for. But I don’t expect much by way of substantive change. Just a milder regimen of the neoliberal poison that has slowly been killing the country for the last 40 years. And God help us when the right wing vampire resuscitates; I dread to imagine the twisted new form it will take.

  6. CA–from this side I certainly see why the jubilation will be tempered, though I’d weigh the Tory/Reform share not just against Labour but against the Greens. And dare I say, the Lib Dems are part of the “not a complete shit” coalition? One of my mutuals voted Lib Dem (in a safe Labour seat) because they were the only party really holding the line against transphobia. (It’s my understanding that the UK Greens are a real left-of-center party, unlike the US Greens who are basically funded by the Republicans to try to take votes from Democrats in close elections.)

    That said I do see how the triumph of Starmerism is nothing to get overly excited about. But there’s something to be said for bad people losing badly.

  7. I stayed up to watch the only aspect of the election I could enjoy: the Tories being escorted out of the seats. It’s been a long time coming and I was sure as Hell going to savour the moment.

    But it is not enough. I feel like these elections have been misread. The last one was a one issue election, a referendum on Get Brexit Done which delivered a landslide to Johnson’s Conservatives. (There’s also an anti-Corbyn sentiment to wrestle with, but let’s keep it simple.) That referendum was going to crumble but I did not expect Johnson to undo himself so quickly; further, he had allowed rot into his party with (a) normalizing political mendacity (b) chucking out the moderates and (c) enabling rabid Euroscepticism to go wild. This was ALSO a one-issue election, a referendum on the Conservative party. This delivered a landslide for Starmer’s Labour. And Reform softening the Tory vote is responsible for the win being so deep.

    This apparently vindicated Starmer’s Ming Vase strategy – that he did little to alienate anyone or present easy attack lines (or any goddamn attack lines at all).

    Low turnout and Reform doing so well shows this to be anything but. I hope Labour can build on this lucky moment but I’m not that hopeful they will. New Chancer Reeves has always struck me as an austerity supporter from her earliest years. Labour will be better than whatever we called a government since the Brexit vote, but I will need some convincing they have what it takes to enact anything resembling “change”.

    I hope that Reform was the longtime Tory voter get-out and that they won’t be able to build on this; however, I heard far too many people hearing they didn’t know who to vote for. It has been said Britain is, surprisingly, the anomaly in a world going to fascist shit; again, I think this is a misreading. The Conservatives are likely to shunt further right, although the next few months will tell. The anomaly is not Britain but this *moment* – there’s plenty of evidence in the numbers that the UK is hankering for a strongman. This is a dangerous moment and Starmer has been given one chance to get us out of it. But I don’t know if he is up to this task.

  8. Felvidek immediately sounds interesting! too bad for me that they dont have a demo on steam anymore.

    (also the link under Clickolding goes to Arctic Eggs)

  9. I looked at njamster’s thread and found a game with this description: “Frogue is a stylish turn-based action platformer with bits of roguelite, bullet hell and time manipulation.”

    What does that mean? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?

    (ok the reviews suggest that instead of being a mishmash of buzzwords it’s actually a bunch of different mechanics joined in a novel way? like maybe you plan moves in a way that means enemies go after you do, but then there’s an action element?)

  10. update: I just went into Steam and was like WHERE ARE MY GAMES until I realized that, while I slept, someone had typed “un” into the search bar in order to play Untitled Goose Game.

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