New Releases: November 23-29th, 2023

This week, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! moves from print and television to Switch screens. But that’s not the only visual novel arriving over the next seven days, with Criss Cross (pictured) also imminent. Here’s the complete list of everything that’s arriving:

PlayStation 4
Alina of the Arena (digital, $14.99)
Calico (digital, $11.99)
Evil Diary (digital, $4.99)
Forest Grove (digital, $TBA)
Orten Was the Case (digital, $14.99)
Roots of Pacha (digital, $24.99)
The Traveler’s Path (digital, $4.99)
Very Bad Dream (digital, $19.99, $15.99 PS+)

Switch
Alina of the Arena (digital, $14.99)
ASMR Slicing (digital, $4.99)
Astro Miner (digital, $4.99)
Charrua Soccer – Pro Edition (digital, $8.99)
Colored Effects (digital, $4.99)
Criss Cross (digital, $21.05)
Deleted (digital, $6.99)
Drawing Carnival (digital, $4.99)
Evil Diary (digital, $4.99)
Final Shot (digital, $5.99)
Frogvival (digital, $9.99)
Gothic II Complete Classic (digital, $23.99)
Guns and Spurs 2 (digital, $26.99)
Mom Simulator 2023 (digital, $12.99)
My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- (digital, $44.99)
Nora: The Wannabe Alchemist (digital, $19.99)
Rally Race: Offroad Simulator (digital, $12.99)
Roots of Pacha (digital, $24.99)
Snakebird Complete (digital, $14.99)
Starlight Drifter (digital, $19.99)
Super Solitaire – Card Game (digital, $9.99)
Tallowmere 2: Curse of the Kittens (digital, $4.99)
The Traveler’s Path (digital, $4.99)
Train Traffic Manager (digital, $14.99)
Train Valley 2: Community Edition (digital, $24.99)
Tricky Taps (digital, $4.99)
The Trotties Adventure (digital, $14.99)
Zombies Rising xXx (digital, $4.99)

Xbox One
Alina of the Arena (digital, $14.99)
Evil Diary (digital, $4.99)
Forest Grove (digital, $TBA)
Orten Was the Case (digital, $14.99)
The Traveler’s Path (digital, $4.99)
Train Traffic Manager (digital, $14.99)

PC
Ball Pit King 3D ($TBA)
Beast Collector (free)
Brox ($TBA)
Cross Blitz ($TBA)
Deleted ($TBA)
Galactic Field
Golden Axe Idol – Escape the Room (free)
Mighty Marbles ($TBA)
Noctuary ($TBA)
Orten was the Case ($14.99)
Pallet Panic ($TBA)
Pingo Adventure ($TBA)
Pretty Girls Escape PLUS ($TBA)
Pygmalion ($TBA)
Reptile Chronicles (free)
TEVI ($TBA)
Wizordum ($TBA)
World of Blocks ($TBA)

Rob’s Pick: As much as I enjoy otome, the protagonists are often unremarkable, allowing the spotlight to be aimed on romanceable characters. This week, My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance- demonstrates that a visual novel isn’t obligated to follow that approach. Instead, Catarina Claes is quite a curious lead character. She’s been reincarnated as a malevolent royal in the fictional otome, “Fortune Lover”. As such, she’s fated to do rotten things and end up dying in spectacular ways. But in a previous life, she was an otaku, so she’s not a skillset that might help her circumvent an unpleasant destiny. Mercifully, the plot in a spin-off on the light novel, manga, and anime, making Pirates of the Disturbance an ideal entry point into Satoru Yamaguchi and Nami Hidaka’s persistently playful property.

2016’s Rabi-Rabi fused together two favorite genres, and the mixture of Metroidvania-style exploration and bullet hell-influenced showdowns were both enjoyable and thoroughly challenging. This week, developer CreSpirit’s ups the ante with a spiritual successor that provides plenty of projectiles, defensive air dashes, and yes, a protagonist with bunny ears.

Ryan’s pick: It’s no secret that 90s’ FPS games have always been my weakness. Wizordum releasing on Steam gets my vote this week as the game really captures a lot of the nostalgia and things I love about the genre. The tone and colors used for the sprites are a bit brighter than those that were used in older FPS games such as Heretic or Rise of the Triad, but I think that helps to make this one unique in its own right. There’s also plenty of homages subtly present in the game, from the slight screen flash when picking up items seen in Quake, to firing projectiles using your hands like the Frost Shards from Hexen. I think the only thing missing would be to simulate the DOS prompt to run the game.

I think outside of the game above I don’t see much else this week. I’m playing through the first Blasphemous on Steam and really have been enjoying the game. It’s currently on sale for $6.24 until November 28, so if you want a more difficult metroidvania with some souls-like elements please give it a try. My only qualm with the game is that sometimes it’s not spelled out too well when you get an upgrade or how to use it, but I guess I’m a bit spoiled from other metroidvanias that make it pretty obvious that once you unlock an upgrade you are going to be shown the basics of its mechanics soon after. Maybe I just need to read the tooltips better for the relic items. If you can get past that, then this one is really fun.

Matt S’ pick (editor, DigitallyDownloaded): I’m going to have a retro week this week. I wasn’t hugely entertained by the re-release of the original Gothic on Nintendo Switch, but nonetheless I am looking forward to giving Gothic 2 a whirl. This is one of the very few Eurojank games I haven’t played at this point, so whether it’s brilliant or a thing best left in the past I am still looking forward to finally remedying that.

Meanwhile, I am of course looking forward to My Next Life as a Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom! -Pirates of the Disturbance-. It is an Idea Factory otome that Idea Factory itself is localising. With very few exceptions, those are top-quality stuff, so while I don’t know much about this one I just assume I’m going to love it as well.