Birdigo
Call it Words with Birds — Birdigo is an offshoot of last year’s excellent The Twin Geeks Game of the Year pick Balatro, another deck builder but this time about helping birds migrate by playing the right letters which spell words that help them flap their way to freedom. It’s such a sweetly refined experience, one of the best word games in a good while, but also a chilled out version of a formally stressful game presentation. Like it’s direct inspiration, Birdigo is inherently moreish and provides unlockable decks with diverse letter selections to keep things interesting as you take on harder routes and daily challenges. It’s simply one of the best one of these and as a note of interest, it’s been co-created by screenwriter John August (Corpse Bride) who put out a call on a podcast to help him create a blend of Balatro & Wordle but with birds, a call answered by one of our best puzzle game creators, Corey Martin (Bonfire Peaks).
Ink Reverie
A gentle city-builder with a very slow pace, Ink Reverie has cute presentation, in its inky, unassuming Chinese township simulation, but takes a very long time for your work to produce results. The building process is almost an idle-like premise. Buildings generate resources and when you have enough of the buildings, you can use those resources to merge them into larger, and larger versions, so they produce more resources. The scaling is too slow to recommend really sinking into the game, as it could take hours on each map to really fill the Prosperity bar and complete it, but it’s a laid back little incremental game, and may be what you’re looking for in that lane.
Rockbeasts
Rockbeasts is drawn from a great premise. In the ‘90s era of grunge and MTV, a rock band composed of some caricatured animals is on their way to stardom, but are at odds with the capitalist machine running the music industry. Includes loads of good voice acting (including… some by Iggy Pop!), the game is about managing the career of this band and keeping the members of the group happy. The choices you make really do matter and it’s such a promising slice of Early Access content, that we’re curious to see how the rest of the game develops.