Sometimes it’s hard to be in the games industry and maintain your sense of joy and discovery. A lot of what’s coming out are iterative franchise entries and triple-A titles. That’s great — who doesn’t love chocolate ice cream? But sometimes it’s nice to have the joy of tasty butter pecan for the first time. I felt joy like that this week when Xbox held its ID@Xbox Showcase this week, which showed off some of the fun indie games coming to Xbox and Game Pass in 2024 (and beyond). Between that show and the Nintendo Indie World showcase earlier in April, I’m feeling very excited for the weird indie games that are coming out this year.
The games shown at the ID@Xbox show include bizarre horror-adventure game Centum, silly co-op shape-based puzzler All You Need is Help, “snack ‘n’ slash” RPG (the dev’s words, not mine) Hangry and the turn-based rhythm PRG Keylocker. Say what you will about those games — there’s something in there for almost anyone, and you’d never mistake any of those games for the other. One particular indie game — Lorelei and the Laser Eyes — is one of my favorite new games I’ve played so far this year, so I look forward to what else the indie scene is giving us this year.
Meanwhile, we over at GamesBeat are prepping for our upcoming GamesBeat Summit event in Los Angeles on May 20-21. Your favorite games writers are going to be moderating, speaking, interviewing and just generally hanging out there, and I’m looking forward to speaking about the current state (and future outlook) for the games industry.
In personal news, I’ve finally started playing Tales of Kenzera: Zau and I’m also still dipping into Stellar Blade. Both scratch very different itches for me as a gamer, so it’s very weird to be playing both at the same time, but I’m not going to let that dampen my enjoyment of either one. I’ve also gone back and started a new farm in Stardew Valley (which looks suspiciously like the last one I built in the game), because I heard that the most recent update has almost transformed it into a different game. It’s kinda nice to sink back into that old familiar cozy space again.
GB Event
GamesBeat Summit Call for Speakers
We’re thrilled to open our call for speakers to our flagship event, GamesBeat Summit 2024 hosted in Los Angeles, where we will explore the theme of “Resilience and Adaption”.
What to play this week
What’s new:
- Endless Ocean Luminous
- MotoGP 24
- Gray Zone Warfare
- Front Mission 2: Remake
- Braid: Anniversary Edition
- Indika
- Foundry
- Sclash
- El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron HD Remaster
New on subscription services:
- Have A Nice Death (Xbox Game Pass)
- Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition (Xbox Game Pass)
- LEGO STAR WARS III: The Clone Wars (Prime Gaming)
- Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (GeForce Now)
- Stormgate Closed Beta (GeForce Now)
- Orcs Must Die! 3 (GeForce Now)
- A Slight Chance of Sawblades+ (Apple Arcade)
- Dicey Dungeons+ (Apple Arcade)
- Summer Pop+ (Apple Arcade)