This month, adventure calls. Sometimes when ID@Xbox team decides the monthly Selects, we pull from our cozy bag, or our introspective bag, or maybe even our abstract bag. This was not that month. We all felt the need to take action, to explore, and to fight.
The six, handpicked Indie Selects this month are about kicking some serious butt. The question is: how do you want to kick that butt? Do you want to meticulously plan, position, and time your attacks? Do you need a team of spirits to aid in the difficult battle ahead? Or maybe you’re just a cat that handles conflict as it comes and asks questions later? Here’s what we’ve got for you this month (in no particular order):
A story-driven action-adventure combining exploration with fast-paced combat. The developer, Ember Lab, led by two brothers, began as an animation studio in 2009. Kena was their first game, and blends breathtaking Pixar-like animation with fantastical environments, loveable characters (the Rot are adorable, made even more so with all the hats you can find for them), a heartfelt story, and super satisfying and compelling gameplay. Though the game’s combat can be a bit tough for some, the game offers a wide array of difficulty and accessibility settings to accommodate players at all skill levels and to help ensure that everyone can make their way through the story. This title is just pure magic and fun and stands as a testament to what a team can achieve when they pour their hearts into a project.
Kena: Bridge of Spirits
Ember Lab
☆☆☆☆☆
76
★★★★★
$39.99
Kena: Bridge of Spirits is a story-driven action adventure set in a charming world rich with exploration and fast-paced combat. Players find and grow a team of tiny spirit companions called the Rot, enhancing their abilities and creating new ways to manipulate the environment.
Kena, a young Spirit Guide, travels to an abandoned village in search of the sacred mountain shrine. She struggles to uncover the secrets of this forgotten community hidden in an overgrown forest where wandering spirits are trapped.
Find the Rot
Timid and illusive spirits scattered throughout the forest. They maintain balance by decomposing dead and rotting elements.
Key Features
• Build Your Team: Find and collect Rot to gain powerful abilities, make discoveries, and transform the environment.
• Explore: A forgotten village and a strange curse. Draw on the power of the Spirit Realm to restore this once-majestic world.
• Fast-Paced Combat: Spirits have become corrupt, trapped and unable to move on, challenging Kena at every turn.
Hunt: Showdown 1896 is the big Xbox Series X|S upgrade that players of this incredible game have been waiting for. With the console version transitioning to Cryengine 5.11, Hunt has never looked better. The UI has been completely revamped, new weapons added, a new enemy is roaming the maps, and there’s even an entire new location for veterans of the series to explore. For first timers, this game marries the extraction shooter genre with the words ‘creepy’ and ‘unique’. Aesthetically, the game hones in on the quiet horror of a 19th Century wilderness, where you find yourself listening for every gunshot, every animal sound, and every footstep that is not your own.
The core mechanic comes down to the high stakes nature of death. Whether playing solo or as a team of two or three, the objective of Bounty Hunts is to track down and eliminate monsters by following clues, exorcise their souls, collect a bounty token from their remains, and head towards the extraction point. Easy right? Except for all other monsters that try to kill you on the way, or the other players who would love to take that bounty off your hands. If you die, you only collect half the XP, but worse you lose everything collected in your run, and the hunter you chose. You may even run out of hunters, requiring you to either spend your double skull bucks to buy more, or jump into Soul Survivor mode to defeat a boss and protect the corpse until the timer expires. But escaping with a bounty means unlocking dark powers and incredible wealth. So pro tip: don’t die.
Hunt: Showdown 1896
Crytek
☆☆☆☆☆
240
★★★★★
$29.99
Hunt: Showdown 1896 is a new era of the addictively unforgiving extraction shooter. In corrupted backwaters lost to history, fight back alone – or with friends – against timeless evil. Twisted monsters and other ruthless Hunters stand between you and your Bounty. Risk everything as Hunt consumes you.
Bounty Hunt: Take rich bounties and kill anyone that tries to stop you – and they will try. Race competing Hunters to track down bosses, send them to hell, claim their bounty, and fight your way to extract. If others only slow you down, go alone. If you find strength in numbers, take up to two teammates along.
Progression and Permadeath: Risk everything to unlock dark powers and forbidden wealth. Every bullet counts. Every wound hurts. And every death is permanent. But if you succeed, every victory will be unforgettable.
Atmosphere and Sound Design: Hear footsteps squelch in the mud as you wait with bated breath to strike. The world speaks. Every gunshot is a message; every howling dog a klaxon. Gramophones murmur with the haunting melodies of Port Sulphur Band. Listen, and you might live to die another day.
Constantly Evolving Game: Keep striving for more, the world is always growing. Frequent updates challenge you with new Events, expand your arsenal of weapons, introduce new characters, and offer the chance to get ornate rewards. Join the thriving Hunt community, stay informed, and get an edge over the Corruption.
We play a lot of cat games on this team, but this was not at all like any cat game we have ever seen. This game is wild in all the best ways. This is a surprisingly violent, foul-mouthed, gory, stylish, unhinged action-platformer cat game. Gori is equipped with a plethora of lethal tools and actions that will let you slice, hammer, and crash into various foes – some who can only be killed in an extremely specific manner. As you become proficient in these abilities, you will find yourself charging into an arena, slamming into the ground, launching into the air, unleashing a barrage of missiles, brutally slicing through unicorns, and performing executions seamlessly. Visually, the enemy designs and level art are either straight out of your childhood dreams or nightmares, but in either case are truly inspired. The gameplay is gory, the levels are vibrant, and the experience is joyously chaotic.
Gori: Cuddly Carnage
Wired Productions Ltd
☆☆☆☆☆
91
★★★★★
$21.99
Humanity has been destroyed – and it’s up to Gori, along with his deadly but wise-cracking sentient hoverboard, F.R.A.N.K, and morose A.I companion, CH1-P, to slay the evil Adorable Army with lethal combos.
Fuelled by insatiable demand, ‘Cool-Toyz Inc.’ created ‘Ultra Pets’. The ultimate companions that never hunger, never require bathroom breaks and are impervious to the ravages of time. Little did anyone expect the mutation that transformed these perfect pets into twisted toys straight from your nightmares, hell-bent on wiping out humanity.
Master explosive weaponry and devastating combos in an epic battle to prevent the Adorable Army from conquering the galaxy, and rescue Professor Y, their missing creator and only human who showed Gori and his friends love. Push your combat and platforming skills to the limits as you fight your way through twisted landscapes filled with environmental hazards, razor-sharp adult humour and a bone-crunching, pulse-pounding soundtrack.
These reluctant heroes must track down and obliterate the generals of the Adorable Army, and with the help of a wild cast of unlikely allies – discover the truth about Cool-Toyz Inc. and unravel the secrets of this thrilling, action-packed hack ‘n’ slash adventure. Get ready to unleash the cuddly carnage!
PLAY AS A BADASS CAT – One of the last prototype synthetic pets, smuggled out of Cool-Toyz Inc before destruction, Gori is cute, cuddly, yet extremely deadly.
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE… – Save the galaxy with a team of the unlikeliest heroes, from F.R.A.N.K and CH1-P to a host of unexpected allies, with a script packed with heart and adult humour that’s as razor-sharp as F.R.A.N.K’s blades!
SLAY WITH STYLE – Battle the blood-thirsty hordes of the Adorable Army in fast-paced combat where your hoverboard is your weapon! Power slide, grind and spin to cause MAXIMUM carnage and high combo scores.
LEVEL UP – From neon-drenched city streets and toy factories awash with deadly toxins, to twisted carnivals and the insides of arcade machines – each level is filled with lethal environmental hazards and mutated toys to push your combat and platforming skills to their limits.
LOCK AND LOAD – This cat has claws… and a devastating arsenal of explosives, razor-sharp weaponry and unlockable moves to lay waste to the Adorable Army in the most brutal and stylish way possible.
HUNT FOR SECRETS – Use your extreme hoverboard parkour skills to explore every corner of the level for collectables that unlock radical new filters, outfits and fur-styles for Gori!
PACKED WITH GORE – Paint the town red with F.R.A.N.K’s blades as you slice and dice with gratuitous amounts of dismemberment – body horror and the most twisted toy designs you’ve ever seen!
EXPLOSIVE AND SOUNDTRACK – Skate and slay out to an original bone-crunching soundtrack bursting with energy across multiple genres.
We have really been looking forward to this fantastic solo-dev creation, and once it finally dropped, we devoured its cozy top-down Metroidvania vibes in one fell swoop. As a newly deceased cat named Pluto (we told you we play a lot of cat games), you’re unfairly condemned to an eternity spent sweeping up trash that seemingly appears out of nowhere. But nothing will stop you from making friends with other animal spirits sentenced to forever clean and hatching a plan that involves lots of exploration, upgrades, and good old’ fashioned friendship-making. We loved its variable difficulty settings and challenging boss fights, not to mention the plethora of secrets and collectibles that had us scrambling to 100% the entire map.
Crypt Custodian
Top Hat Studios, Inc.
☆☆☆☆☆
30
★★★★★
$19.99
Sweep up the afterlife as Pluto the cat in this charming action adventure/Metroidvania about life, relationships, and moving on.
Step into the shoes of Pluto, a mischievous cat who has just died, and landed in the afterlife’s palace. After a brief and disastrous meeting with the Afterlife Guardian – Kendra – you’re banished from the palace and sentenced to clean… FOREVER!!!
Explore the vast grounds that surround the palace, battle beasts with your trusty broom, and gain new abilities to expand your world. Hang out with doomed ghosts, solve puzzles, discover secrets, and… organize an ambush to break back into the palace!
What would you do if the love of your life dies of a mysterious affliction, and the only way to bring her back from the dead is harnessing the power of Yaoguai – dangerous, supernatural beings of immense power? That’s the dilemma faced by Emperor Hong of the Crimson Empire, the character you play in My Lovely Empress. Expect to make deliciously dark and tough choices as the imperial ruler – like whether to sacrifice human souls to revive your Empress, which diplomatic factions to keep happy, and what bidding you’ll send your Yaoguai out to do. Come for the wonderfully crafted cast of characters, Yaoguai and mythological folklore, and stay for a masterfully woven tale of the burdens of leadership and morality you’ll experience in ruling a kingdom while trying to save the life of a loved one. With multiple endings, it’s a lot of fun to see where all your different decisions will take you.
My Lovely Empress
Neon Doctrine
☆☆☆☆☆
7
★★★★★
$19.99
You have an empire at your command and the world at your feet. Your hands hold the happiness, hopes, and lives of an entire nation, and those who call you, their ruler.
You have everything, and yet, in your heart, you have nothing.
You are Emperor Hong, the esteemed Emperor of the Crimson Empire, and you have experienced profound loss. Following the passing of your mother, the former ruler, you tragically lost your beloved Empress as well.
Faced with no other options, you are compelled to summon and seek the aid of the Yaoguai, forbidden but powerful creatures of the north with a taste for human souls, to assist you in resolving imperial challenges, enforcing your will, and supporting the welfare of your citizens.
You are far from the only ruler in the world, and balancing the needs of your people with the businesses you conduct with other rulers will be a difficult necessity on the path of growing the Crimson Empire. However, once your land has hit the peak of its prosperity, you are given a choice—live with all you have created or command the Yaoguai to bring about a calamity to devour your empire and sacrifice your people in a bid to resurrect your beloved empress.
This is such a different roguelike. Most of the roguelikes we have played are focused on how long you can survive. However, this one challenged me to be an incredibly precise warrior, with no wasted movement. You start with two tiles (the “cards” of this deck-builder) and as you defeat foes you earn additional tiles and can upgrade the ones you already have. The battles are 2D, turn-based and focus heavily on tactics and placement. A crucial element of the gameplay is being able to see the enemies’ next moves. There are predictable patterns that you can plan around as you queue up to three tiles that can start a sequence of attacks to eliminate all your opponents simultaneously. Once you get the hang of it, it’s like directing a short-form 8-bit samurai film – especially when you obliterate a powerful group without a scratch. This game will sharpen your wits and creativity as you experiment with all the cool weapons and strategies.
Shogun Showdown
Entalto Studios
☆☆☆☆☆
24
★★★★★
$14.99
Shogun Showdown is a turn-based combat game with rogue-like and deck-building elements. Position yourself and attack at the right time, upgrade your tiles and combo them to get ready to face the Shogun!
Turn-based combat where every action counts. Carefully position yourself, build up and unleash your attacks at the right time!
Upgrade your attack tiles and combo them!
Gain new skills and build the best deck you can before facing the Shogun.
Rogue-like: death is not the end, but the beginning of your journey towards mastery. As you play, you will unlock new characters, attacks, skills and more!
Enjoy a Japanese-inspired setting with pixel art graphics.