It’s creeping ever closer to Halloween, so we are ramping up our coverage of games with a spooky twist. The Darkest Tales falls into that category perfectly as a Metroid-like hack-and-slasher title featuring dark takes on popular fairy tales and a teddy bear hero with attitude.
Marie Brownhill, our Modern Gamer columnist, continues to look at spooky and seasonal titles. This week, she dives into the Lovecraft inspired madness of Last Threshold, a visual novel that has a soundtrack driven atmosphere and is dripping in hand-painted haunting backgrounds.
Just in time for the fall season, the cozy and relaxing visual novel/witchcraft simulator Witchy Life Story has arrived on Steam. A young witch has been exiled to a town by her grandmother, and you as the player must help her make the town’s harvest festival a success in order for her to be allowed to continue with her witch’s training.
Flush with the success of the Edgerunners anime series, the Cyberpunk 2077 game is experiencing a resurgence in popularity, with millions of players diving back into Night City’s dark utopia. And thankfully, the developers have released another patch that adds a bit more single player content and quite a few nods to Edgerunners.
Cult of the Lamb is a unique game that combines elements of village-building, community management, role-playing, and combat. As the newly resurrected lamb cult leader, the player is tasked with going into the various regions to build a community of followers, and then lead the flock while keeping them in order, content, and safe.
Stray is one of the most unique games to come out in a long time. It offers players an open cyberpunk world to explore, and places them into the paws of a cat as the main character. And experiencing this brilliant sci-fi world through the eyes of a clever cat is absolute purr-fection.
The pre-October festival of horror games continues this week with the review of Ikai, a game that adds Japanese folklore and culture to a somewhat traditional ghost story. Be ready for some serious jump scares if you journey into Ikai’s dark world.
If you are looking for one of the most terrifying gaming experiences available right now, look no further than The Mortuary Assistant. It’s destined to become an instant classic in horror gaming even though many players will rightfully be too grossed out or even afraid to fully enjoy all that it has to offer.
Midnight Fight Express is an over-the-top, two-fisted action-adventure that nearly anyone can pick up and play for hours on end. This is one of the most stylish and simple beat-em-ups to come out in a long time.
Norco presents a distinctively sci-fi look at a fairly dark future. Set in and around Norco, Louisiana, it weaves its haunting narrative through the eyes of a young person who recently came back home following the death of their mother. This is not an experience that adventure gamers will want to miss.
