Prime Gaming – October 2025

Ah yes, my favorite time of the year, Prime Gaming during October. In a change of pace, Prime Gaming has done away with the daily challenges and the regular tripe for live service games like World of Tanks, or as I’d like to call it, WoW. So I guess I should just mention some of the Luna offerings for Amazon’s tepid attempt at doing cloud gaming: Dave the Diver, MotoGP 25, Farming Sim 22, Borderlands 3 if you’re criminally insane, and A game about Digging A Hole, the latter of which I quite like.

Moving on to what is available now and throughout this month on Prime Gaming, let’s start with the “FIRST-EVER dragon combat simulator!” which inconspicuously doesn’t mention that it is also the last. Developed by Westwood Associates for MS-DOS in 1990, DragonStrike is a very early flight-combat sim with UI that takes up 75% of the screen, which was the style of the early 3D games of the time.

Adopted from D&D during the Dragonlance campaign, you might as well place the TV outside your house and play GTA through the letterbox. Available through GOG for the next while, DragonStrike is either for those of us older than Jesus’ sandals or to remind you kids to stop complaining so damn much.

Jumping to a bit more of an advanced age, heading to Duel Effect and Abstract Digital’s 2021 release, Tormented Souls. It is October, so you know what that means: I bitch about Halloween the same way Mariah does about Jennifer Lopez. You play as a young woman stumbling around a mansion that is so dark you’ll think Game of Thrones looked like a Chapel Roan concert, and for the straights it is filled with just as many horrifying puzzles to solve before the Cenobites start having a go.

With a sequel set to release on October 23rd, the spookiest of all days, you can pick up and play through this Resident Evil-inspired survival horror ahead of its release. Available now through the Amazon Games App, you can pick up Tormented Souls.

Onto October 9th and it is time for the scary to be turned up because it is Firaxis Games’ highly praised XCOM 2, available through GOG. If I’m honest, I don’t like XCOM 2 as much as I like the first of this reboot, simply because it is one of those terrible sequels that does what the previous one did but more of it. There is a bit more refinement in the base building segment, but if we’re totally honest, that’s about the only positive addition. “What about the stealth?” You mean the stealth that makes the nightmare of timed missions feel like being kicked in the testicles? Revolutionary!

Speaking of revolutionary, people bang on about the second adaptation of the Vampire: The Masquerade series like the sailors your dad knows bang on about herpes, so it is no surprise in the month of its sequel we get one of those. Too bad for us that it is the visual novel RPG that is Vampire: The Masquerade – Reckoning of New York. Released last September, it is the worst thing ever to happen on September 10th anywhere ever. Available via the Epic Games Store from the 9th, it is certainly more of the world, but how much of that is good is a different question entirely.

Empty Shell, not just the name of one of the games available from the 16th, but also how I feel after doing one of these godforsaken weeks of Epic and Prime Gaming. Available through GOG for reasons of “eh, looks retro,” CC ARTS’ 2023 top-down dark action Rogue-like does what a lot of games I’m starting to call “nostalgia bait” do. The CRT monitor stylization gimmick works in small doses; however, these monitors in front of me cost money for a reason. Reasonably popular with those who enjoy Rogue-like horror in a top-down view, Empty Shell has an audience, but I’m not it.

Now, you might have heard of this next one, but it is hardly ever spoken about on the internet by people who are very eager to tell you their political opinions. Also available through GOG on the 16th of October, Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition. Yes, those that aren’t so dense that light bends around them might have noticed that there was a hint of sarcasm to the first sentence, because you certainly don’t need me to tell you why certain people ride the pole of Obsidian like your dad does sailors. Though I thought we’d see this one in December for obvious reasons.

Hold on, can I find a claw hammer and just use it to cave my own face in before I speak about this one? Released in 2016 and available through GOG on the 16th, Goblinz Enterprises’ True Fear: Forsaken Souls Part 1 is the first part in a hidden object game trilogy. A trilogy that didn’t end until this past April. I know there is an audience for hidden object games, mostly OAPs, but a near decade for a game series like this to be completed is a bit of a cruel joke if you ask me. Though it is horror-themed, it is still a hidden object game, which puts it right up there with Jimmy Savile, in my opinion.

Speaking of Jimmy Savile… Available from the 23rd of October through GOG, True Fear: Forsaken Souls Part 2. Released in 2018, that’s a decent time frame for a trilogy to be completed, so the pensioner-based audience sees it out. It is still a hidden object game; the people at Goblinz Enterprises didn’t just make it a racing sim out of nowhere. However, there are toned-down horror themes this time out, by the looks of it.

Onto something a bit more “interesting” of sorts, in that Ars Goetia’s 2022 dungeon crawler is stylized enough that I might actually be interested, until I look at the menus. Also available through GOG on the 23rd, Hellslave takes a lot of design influence from 90s/2000s dungeon crawlers like Diablo, but with an art style that is a bit gothic, a bit religious, and I want to say there is a heavy influence from Mike Mignola (Hellboy). It looks rough, and like it was developed by a small team. Its sequel was just recently announced, so it certainly got a wishlist from me.

Quick, bring back that claw hammer, I want to wrap my face around it! Available from the 23rd through Legacy Games, you can pick up Lost & Found Agency Collector’s Edition. Yet another bloody awful hidden object game that your nan would love for the afternoon before going back to watching Bargain Hunt. Here’s a good question: Is Bargain Hunt still on, is David Dickinson still looking like a 20-year-old leather couch, and is Tim Wonnacott still alive? I’m done talking about AviGames’ 2023 release. I want to talk about Bargain Hunt for a while.

Speaking of an antique that is tinted an unhealthy color, Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition is also available through GOG on the 23rd for reasons I’ve yet to fathom. Yes, someone doesn’t have the full Fallout series in their library, but as I said above, season 2 of Fallout is coming in December, so it feels like this is coming two months early. I’m not complaining that I don’t have to have a moan about crap horror games, but it feels like we’re going to see these repeated in December, unless we’re “treated” to Fallout 4 and 76.

See, this is what I was on about, crappy horror games no one has ever heard of or wants to play by developers making their first game. You Will Die Here Tonight is not only what I said to that one bloke who kept bothering me for attention the other week, but it is the name of Spiral Bound Interactive’s 2023 “retro top-down” horror adventure thing, with out-of-place first-person combat. Available from the 30th through GOG, I said for a reason at the top, “crappy horror games no one has ever heard of or wants to play,” unless they are criminally insane.

I’ll give Different Tales credit for one thing: The studio at least has an art style that is interesting for the type of game that it has made. Released in 2020, the year I think R.E.M sang about for “Shiny Happy People,” Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest is a visual novel horror piece set in the forest outside of the Polish village of Białowieża where only the nicest of things can happen. Another spin-off of the World of Darkness tabletop series, this was the first successfully released Werewolf: The Apocalypse adaptation to be released.

That’s it, I swear to the baby Jesus, I’m going to take the sharp end of a claw hammer to the back of someone’s head at high speed, maybe even my own. The final game available from the 30th, and this time through the Amazon Games App, is Halloween Stories: Horror Movie Collector’s Edition. I’m serious now, you need to go out and shred your nan’s credit card so she stops buying Big Fish Games games like this, and yes, it is actually a Big Fish Games game. You know, maybe the rapture did happen, and this is the hell I’m left in.