Vidjama Gmaes Work

Alongside a few other games.

It’s been a good while since we had a week on Steam packed with releases with big followers.

#1: Dead Island 2

Fresh off its one year Epic Games exclusivity, Dead Island 2 is finally coming to Steam.

I’ve played through Dead Island 2 a couple of times and it remains one of my top games from 2023. The melee combat is completely fine but what really blew me away is the amount of detail put into damage textures for the zombies. You hit a zombie with electric damage and just watch their skin and muscle melt away and burn off. There’s really something beautifully disgusting about it, and I don’t think that feature gets discussed enough.

The writing? Okay, it’s not great. They stop using the term Hell-a much after the first couple of hours and some of the characters are downright unbearable. Thankfully this is a looter…slasher, so story isn’t a big part of the game. It’s all about tearing down zombies by the thousands so you can get bigger weapons to destroy more zombies. Delicious. No price on Steam yet however the game is $60 on Epic Games Store.

Also available on Xbox Game Pass.

#2: Manor Lords

Manor Lords is bound to be the biggest release on Steam this week, with over 300,000 followers at the time I’m writing this article. The creation of developer Slavic Magic, Manor Lords is launching into early access on April 26. The game is a city builder that promises it isn’t competing with Total War nor is it a competitive game. It’s for people who pine for that feeling of being a medieval lord and to build their kingdom from the ground up.

Oh and there’s big battles kinda like Total War.

#3: Bellwright

The fact that Steam is littered with the corpses of a million dead survival crafting games that never left early access apparently hasn’t harmed the enthusiasm of gamers to keep coming back to the next release. With 45k wishlists, Bellwright comes from the minds of Donkey Crew, those Polish folks behind…Bellwright, Bellwright has the backing of publisher Snail Games who can’t don’t seem capable of finding a survival crafting game they don’t want to put their name to.

#4: Rotwood

Finally a developer with pedigree. Rotwood is the creation of Klei Entertainment, the folks behind well beloved titles like Shank, Don’t Starve, Crypt of the Necrodancer, and yes even Oxygen Not Included. A cooperative dungeon crawler that is also launching into early access on April 24, this game has over 24 thousand wishlists at the time of this writing.

I have nothing else to say about this game.

#5: Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes

This game has 100 playable characters to choose from so good luck with that choice paralysis folks. Eiyuden Chronicle is being launched by Rabbit & Bear Studios, founded by some of the folks behind the Suikoden series. So it’s being billed as a spiritual successor to Suikoden games. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s not launching into early access. We’ll see how this one goes when it comes out.