Prime Gaming – August 2025

Well, of all the months of Prime Gaming, this is certainly one of them. I’m not saying it is good, but I’m half interested in saying it is rather crap. As usual, the only “in-game loot” is Lost (T)Ark, while you can be a 58-year-old housewife who doesn’t have a pool boy to entertain her by playing crap mobile games of Wheel of Fortune and Scattergories Daily. I’ve another word for this level of offering that also starts with S, C, A, and T.

We’ll start as usual, wishing the death of the universe would come sooner or that Gandhi would hurry up and use those nukes to kill us all. Sid Meier’s Civilization III Complete is available for GOG now, but if I’m honest, it feels a little too late for this one. Several years ago, I believe Prime offered Civ IV, and if we’re honest, that’s sort of the peak of the series; unless you have the correct opinion for Alpha Centauri: “The drones need you, they look up to you.”

Very far from the worst of Civ games, it is still a step sideways at best or back at worst. In my opinion, there are three distinct points of the main Civ series being at its best: You have Civ II for a real classic, Civ VI is a very modern take on it, and Civ IV is the mid-point that’s just right for this goldilocks. Then Alpha Centauri, which is better because it is in space.

Moving on to what else is available right now, this next one is a repeat, I believe. Or a repeat of a repeat, quite possibly. Available for the Amazon Games App, you can pick up The Academy: The First Riddle. Released in 2020, The Academy is a puzzle game set around a rather posh school. When I was at school, the only puzzle was which of the teachers/staff to stay away from for your safety. Turns out, it was the Home Economics teacher, as she used the carrots during the lunch break to entertain herself, allegedly.

Pine Studio’s The Academy: The First Riddle is another one of those nice, colorful, let’s do Hogwarts without the terfy nature, games. It also tries to do something with puzzles. The trouble with doing a puzzle game is that you really have two options: You have the Jonathan Suck version, where you want to burn The Witness to a CD, smash it up, and spread little broken flakes of CD in his cereal, or you have Lucas Pope’s Return of the Obra Dinn. I won’t say The Academy is the former, but its puzzles are rather easy.

Speaking of easy, let’s remind you how easy it is to mess up a stealth game: You give it to a major publisher in the modern Triple-A development space. Rebooting the series into the grave and never returning, since 2014, you can pick up Thief: Definitive Edition for GOG and never play it because you have Thief 1-3 there too. With the awful decision to turn all the made-up swear words into actual swear words, what a load of taff!

Theif (2014) is exactly what Dishonored would have been if it was designed by people who hated fun. It has none of the charm of the old games, and quite frankly, using Dishonored as the example is sort of an insult to Dishonored. It is Dishonored if it stars a vague description of Batman from the perspective of a Joker (2019) fan’s idea of the character, boiled down into a game that is made for mass appeal. “So you don’t like it then?” Noooooo!

“Well, look who woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” wouldn’t you if you had to write about 2009’s FATE: The Traitor Soul. From the 14th, you’ll be able to pick this one up for GOG and realize that maybe the 2000s were just as bad for poo-shaped ARPGs that age like milk on the surface of the sun. I’d have liked to have been nicer to WildTangent and its 2009 release, but if I’m honest, I’d rather go back and kick Eidos-Montréal to death a little more for Thief.

At least I care about that series. FATE, on the other hand, is the Little Tikes Cozy Coupe of Diablo and classic RPGs like Baldur’s Gate. I think the only thing I could find more unappealing than that prospect is going out to the New Mexico desert and searching for all those copies of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. That or anal hemorrhaging.

Speaking of something only enjoyable to psychopaths, Lemmings has a special place for a lot of us, and sometimes that place is in hell. Also available from the 14th for GOG is Rogue Sun and Wired Productions’ Tin Hearts. You’d think after the number of emails I’ve received on this from Wired Productions and its PR people, I’d have a lot to say, but in reality, I don’t. It’s an odd little game about tiny toy soldiers exploring and solving puzzles in what is described as an emotional story of their inventor, Albert J. Butterworth.

What I find interesting is that part of Tin Hearts‘ written PR, even on the Steam page, notes that it is developed by at least part of the team that worked on the Fable series. A quick search told me that it was the game’s director, Kostas Zarifis, who worked as a programmer for Fable II and (the one everyone but me likes) III, with Zarifis also playing music for Fable III. If you want a modern Lemmings, maybe without the desire to commit murder, then I think Tin Hearts might be a wonderful little take on that idea. Though I doubt the VR aspect will be available over on GOG, sadly.

The sun saw fit to rise again, so of course that means we need to talk about a turn-based tactical auto-battling Rogue-like “with vast deckbuilding.” Available via a GOG code, KORO.GAMES and Alawar’s Necroking is a strange little one from 11 months ago. I’ve said throughout these articles and elsewhere that the auto-battling genre is something that I don’t fully understand; either it has not been explained well, or I simply don’t like it. The same can be said for Necroking.

You play as a necromancer, forming an undead army as you go through a series of maps with the express purpose of fighting a boss in the top right corner. Sounds simple, right? Well, battles use points-based systems such as Mana as you draw cards from your deck to place units on the field, and effectively, boss battles are endless until you harvest enough souls, which allow you to play strong units to beat the boss. Here’s the kicker, though: Beating a level means you lose your progress and start your deckbuilding again unless you use a very rare currency that you lose if you lose a level.

From one game that feels like it is punishing you, to a genre that feels like punishment for being alive, I couldn’t think of a worse fate to live. Developed by Pewter Games Studios and LoPoly Games, the top-down (I guess) party game Filthy Animals | Heist Simulator is available to pick up from the 14th for the Epic Games Store. Think Overcooked with a worse art style and the pretense of robbing a bank or a nuclear facility.

The premise seems to be that you are one of the mutant animals that have been controlled by some bloke called Tony. I assume not the one that controls the Columbian Marching Powder out of Miami. What I think puts me off is the fact that Filthy Animals is aimed at the multiplayer people. By that I mean the people who play a thing for five minutes because it is popular with a Streamer once, not because they think it is actually fun. That, and maybe I don’t like the art style.

Onto the 21st, it is actually something that is really cool, but only if you’re a fan of fun and not calling men with glasses and a red and white stripey shirt Waldo. Created by Hiro Kamigaki (that’s the weebs on board), the Pierre the Maze Detective books are a Where’s Wally-style book series for children, but it is also a Maze that you have to solve. So in 2021, when Darjeeling and Pixmain put out Labyrinth City: Pierre the Maze Detective, I was ready to snort it like that Tony Montana product. Available via the Amazon Games App, this is probably the highlight of the month for me.

In Labyrinth City: Pierre the Maze Detective, you play as Pierre as he explores a heavily detailed and magnificently colored series of scenes in the style of the Where’s Wally books. I swear, if you call him Waldo, I’ll [Redacted for legal reasons]. Solve puzzles, interact with the many weird characters you’ll find, maybe find your way through the chaos, and find the hidden collectables. Brilliant, love it, couldn’t be anything better on offer.

From brilliant to, “Oh Jésus, give me strength.” Released in 1988, 1989, and 1991, respectively, the next one is a collection of games dustier than your granny’s underpants. Available for GOG from the 21st, the Silver Box Classics is a collection of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of the Lance, Dragons of Flame, War of the Lance, and Shadow Sorcerer; all part of the Dragonlance series. Based around early D&D, the only way I could explain how old these games are is that three pixels might make up someone’s entire face.

With the inexplicably old out of the way, let’s move on to something that is trying to be inexplicably old, Heroes of Loot 2. A sequel to last month’s Heroes of Loot, obviously, this 2016 offering is available from the 28th of August for GOG. With slightly more appetizing pixel art in the vein of 2013 Rogue-likes, I’m possibly a little too burnt out on the dungeon-crawling idea to be excited by Heroes of Loot 2.

I’m not ending on another god awful hidden object game in the vein of Big Fish Games; I’d rather talk to Piers Morgan on the ethics of his colleague’s hacking a dead kid’s phone. Three guesses where this one is available. City Legends: The Ghost of Misty Hill Collector’s Edition was released in 2023 and comes from Do Games Limitied, as you might also be able to guess, though, this is the Legacy Games offering. A lawyer has advised me not to go further because I’ll talk someone into abusing themselves.

The final game for this genuinely dreadfully dull month of Prime Gaming, available from the 28th of August for GOG, is Silicon Knights’ 1993 RPG Fantasy Empires. Remember when I said three pixels could be used for someone’s face? Fantasy Empires is slightly more generous… it gives people five pixels. Do you really care for a game older than you (probably by a decade) that is based on a version of Dungeons & Dragons from 1977? I’m forgetting that young people are annoying hipsters, and anyone 29 or older is more nostalgic than White supremacists for the 18th and 19th centuries.