Sometimes things just happen to line up, and today is one of those days: no less than 4 titles that have been on our radar are officially out in the world today. Make room in your library for Strange Jigsaws, Is This Seat Taken?, Öoo and The Royal Writ. Read on to learn more about each of them and see some trailers:
Strange Jigsaws
The first of these four new games has the most sparse trailer of the group, but it might also be the one I'm most excited about. The developer FLEB previously released a game called 20 Small Mazes that was awash in creative, playful, imaginative ideas, and this new follow-up looks to continue that trend. Odd mechanics and aesthetics are everywhere in this collection of ~50(!) jigsaw puzzles, and I always love a game that looks like it's actually doing something new and different.
You can get Strange Jigsaws on Steam now at a 10% launch discount.
Öoo
Here's another new release from developers that people are excited about: Tsuyomi and NamaTakahashi previously made the robotic puzzle-platformer ElecHead, and they're sticking to that genre for their latest project Öoo. This is a cute, pixel-art platformer/metroidvania where your central ability is placing small bombs that push you around, allowing you to traverse the cavernous levels. If it follows in the footsteps of ElecHead, it's likely that this game too will feature a steady but gentle difficulty curve and introduce interesting mechanics at a reasonable pace.
Öoo is available on Steam today and currently features a 20% launch discount.
Is This Seat Taken?
We've been anticipating the extremely charming Is This Seat Taken? for a while now: it's being published by our friends at Wholesome Games who debuted this trailer during our Thinky Direct presentation earlier this year, and I did an interview with the developers back in February.
These little shape-people need your help to arrange themselves in various life settings so that everyone ends up happy. As you might expect, however, everyone's picky with their preferences, making this a puzzle of a task. Help people find quiet seats on the bus, sit near their friends at the movie theater and get what they ordered at the diner.
Is This Seat Taken? is out now on Steam, and was also surprise announced to release simultaneously on Switch. If you'd rather play on the go, you can get the game on the App Store or Google Play Store.
The Royal Writ
Last but not least on our list of new releases today is The Royal Writ: a lane-battling deckbuilder published by Yogscast Games aiming to do some new things with the formula. It's got a very nice aesthetic that's a combo of hand-drawn illustration, medieval manuscript influence, and anthropomorphic animal townspeople and soldiers. It's also got big Balatro-style score multipliers that climb like crazy. There's a risk of losing your cards permanently if they're felled in a battle, which sounds interesting... could this not also be used strategically to prune and remove things from your deck? I wonder...
The Royal Writ is out now on Steam, and it's 20% off until August 21st.
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