New Releases: December 19th-25, 2019

With the holidays here, Steam and the Nintendo eShop are filled their digital stores with lots of new titles, ready to be purchased with those newly required gift cards. Traditionally, that means this week doesn’t have a whole lot of notable titles, but games like Princess Maker: Faery Tales Come True, Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX, and Bokuten – Why I Became an Angel just might those with a bit of digital credit.

Header image: Holiday Hatsune Miku, a Holiday wish granted

PlayStation 4
Demons with Shotguns (digital, $17.49, $8.74 PS+)
Straimium Immortaly (digital, $11.99)
Tamashii (digital, $11.99)
XenoRaptor (digital, $14.99)

Switch
60 Parsecs (digital, $9.99)
8-Ball Pocket (digital, $5.99)
AeternoBlade II (digital, $29.99)
Arcade Archives – Mat Mania Exciting Hour (digital, $7.99)
Barbarous: Tavern of Emyr (digital, $7.99)
Bayala – The Game (digital, $39.99)
Clumsy Rush (digital, $4.99)
Crazy Zen Mini Golf (digital, $4.99)
Demon’s Tilt (digital, $17.99)
Down to Hell (digital, $9.99)
Drawngeon: Dungeons of Ink and Paper (digital, $4.99)
DreamBall (digital, $4.99)
Dual Brain Vol.1: Calculation (digital, $14.99)
Farabel (digital, $9.99)
Funny Bunny Adventures (digital, $4.99)
JDM Racing (digital, $4.99)
KUUKIYOMI: Consider It! (digital, $4.99)
Melbits World (digital, $9.99)
Mirror (digital, $9.99)
Mushroom Quest (digital, $2.99)
Oniken: Unstoppable Edition & Odallus: The Dark Call Bundle (digital, $19.99)
Phar Lap – Horse Racing Challenge (digital, $TBA)
Princess Maker: Faery Tales Come True (digital, $26.99)
Princess Maker Go!Go! Princess (digital, $13.49)
Regions of Ruin (digital, $9.99)
Rush Rally 3 (digital, $14.99)
Scared Stones (digital, $13.49)
Straimium Immortaly (digital, $11.99)
Super Trench Attack (digital, $TBA)
Tamashii (digital, $11.99)
The Adventures of Elena Temple: Definitive Edition (digital, $3.99)
Warhammer Quest 2: The End Times (digital, $29.99)
XenoRaptor (digital, $14.99)

Xbox One
Aery – Little Bird Adventure (digital, $6.99)
Cold Silence (digital, $4.99)
Demons with Shotguns (digital, $12.99)
Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX (digital, $14.99)
Straimium Immortaly (digital, $11.99)
Tamashii (digital, $11.99)

PC
Baldr Sky ($TBA)
Bokuten – Why I Became an Angel ($TBA)
Card Princess ($TBA)
Chrono Ark ($TBA)
Hexon ($TBA)
Hitotsu no Mori ($TBA)
Oh Jeez, Oh No, My Rabbits Are Gone! ($TBA)
Princess Maker: Faery Tales Come True ($TBA)
PuPaiPo Space Deluxe ($3.99)
Suzunaan on Fire ($TBA)
Terminal Squad: Sentinel ($4.24)
The Magician’s Workshop ($2.99)
Your Little Story: Winter ($TBA)

Robert’s Pick: A few years ago, I picked up the original Steam release of Princess Maker: Faery Tales Come True, the PC port of the franchise’s third major iteration. The game itself was enjoyable, adding nuances like occupations for the father and a mood system for the young noble, although the loss of the series’ adventure mode was disappointing. But the real deal breaker was the slipshod quality of the port. Text was depicted in a tiny font, the localization was appalling, and if you could get the game running on your PC, you were forced to play in Windowed mode.

This week’s release of Princess Maker: Faery Tales Come True is supposed to fix those issues. This isn’t a game for everyone, with plenty of trial-and-error when royal raising, which is imagine is a bit like real parenting. It’s also a relatively short experience, clocking in at under three hours. But gratification comes in replay, using experience from past games to thrust your daughter into upper echelons of high society, at least if that’s your intention. After playing a lot of city management and bridge building games, simulated child rearing can be a nice refresher.

Matt’s Pick (Editor, DigitallyDownloaded): For some really weird reason I always thought the Princess Maker series were eroge. Perhaps it’s just that they were ultra-niche anime Japanese games and I could easily see something titled Princess Maker being an eroge based on its title, but that’s not the case as it turns out!

Actually, I really did like Princess Maker. Sure, the translation is terrible, and the anime-style art looks like it comes from the PC98 era (I’m much more a Tsunako-era fan as far as pretty anime girls goes), but this game is charming stuff. It’s a simple, menu-driven, turn-based game where you give your “daughter” two tasks per month, be that study, work, or rest, and need to build her stats up while making sure she doesn’t get stressed out. Do well and she may well become a princess. Do badly and… well, you wouldn’t be the first bad daddy out there.

With dozens of statistics to manage, from the abstract “elegance,” “intelligent”, through to the physical “weight,” “bust,” actually doing well at Princess Maker has proven more difficult that I figured it would be… but it’s just so damn charming that I’m going to be hooked on this until I’m producing the best princesses the kingdom has ever known.

Also, Merry Christmas peeps, and thanks for putting up with my innuendos and unending thirst this year. I will – Robert permitting – be back next year with bells and whistles on! Perhaps Robert will even be so kind as to put Hatsune Miku or Marie Rose or Dee Dee in Christmas lingerie as the header image this week. Let’s see how much he loves me. ^_^

Ryan’s Pick: It’s pretty difficult for me to pass up visual novel games mixed with 3D action so this week’s pick goes to Baldr Sky. It’s important to note that this release actually contains two games – both Baldr Sky Dive 1 and 2, which is an immediate plus if you are on a budget this holiday season. One other really interesting fact about this game is that they have self-rated it as mature. Having the obligatory “all characters depicted are over the age of 18” in the game description brings back many funny memories when I worked with Japanese games. It’s just something you have to say, even if the girls are 3000 years old.

The actual 3D gameplay when piloting the mechs is really fast, which should keep me pretty engaged and it certainly looks like a lot is going on during the battles. As for the story, I am curious to see how our protagonist Kou is able to catch those that are responsible for Gray Christmas, and how the gameplay helps push the VN portion forward. Sekai Project is known for releasing some really great VNs over the years, including Clannad and the cat paradise, NEKOPARA. It’s great to see that they’re slowly incorporating games with offer both some gameplay and visual novel aspects. Again, pretty excited to try this one out. I tried to make a Gray Christmas joke as an ending thought here but it kept coming out cringeworthy despite many valiant attempts. On that note, have a great week everyone.