Amazon Luna Games with Prime

Another month, another article to bemoan a Jeffrey. I honestly can’t be bothered to even try and pad this section out by moaning about the name now – call it Prime or call it Luna, whatever. The games now added to the standard Luna (streaming/”cloud gaming”) offered are Control: Ultimate Edition, Wobbly Life, Overcooked!, House of Golf 2, Mortal Shell, and ClayFighter. Could be worse, could make Overcooked 2 the game to celebrate International Women’s Day, huh, Jeffrey?

Onto what is available now via whatever we’re calling this nonsense this week. We’ll start with Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep: A Wonderlands One-Shot Adventure, which is one of about two Borderlands-related games that I can suffer without wanting to put someone’s skull through a concrete wall. Basically, the crew of the USS Annoying plays D&D to deal with Tina’s survivor’s guilt, spoiler for a game older than the newest parent in Southend, I guess. You can pick this one up for the Epic Games Store.

Sticking with Epic for a minute, we’ll move on to something that I’m actually interested in, CrazyBunch’s Tattoo Tycoon. As the title might suggest, Tattoo Tycoon is a weird little 90s-style tycoon game focused around a tattoo shop, albeit with a brighter, more accessible art style that won’t let you tattoo someone’s nipples, genitals, or chocolate starfish.

Onto the first of the classics, and of course, onto the GOG offerings, we’ve got Siege of Avalon. Released in 2000, when your parents were still watching Disney Channel, this was a fantasy ARPG when ARPG meant you could click the fight rather than have it mildly described to you in flowery text. Developed by Digital Tome, there is a reason you haven’t heard of either the game or the developer; it is one of those Texas studios that folded faster than a lawn chair.

Let’s move on to the 12th. This next one is available for Epic: Total War: Rome II – Emperor Edition. Now, by all means, crack on with a sequel to a game if you want, but you’re offering the sequel to one of the best grand strategy games of all time and arguably the best Total War game, Rome: Total War. Rome II (Arsenal nil) isn’t a bad sequel, but it launched a decade and a bit ago with technical issues and the fact that it’s not 30 million times better than something already out.

From something we don’t talk about enough to something I’m sick of talking about, Gamious’s Turmoil. You already have this one on the Epic Games Store if you’ve been around for more than 5 minutes, but released in 2016, this black gold management simulator is alright in small bursts now and then. It is a simple management game that is entirely about digging for oil, as you might guess, but with simplicity can come mundanity.

If you thought I had little to say about Turmoil, I’ve got a surprise for SNEG and Event Horizon Software when it comes to Veil of Darkness. Released back when Jesus got his first pair of sandals (i.e., 1993), this was what your action-adventure games looked like when the economy wasn’t scraping its face along the ground. Noted for its short run time and lack of originality as a spooky vampire-based adventure, Veil of Darkness was well-received for its time. However, its time is also before sex scandals felt like they could rock the White House. No need to tell you this one is on GOG, do I?

I can genuinely look at this next one all day, and I can’t for the life of me work out why I’m supposed to be excited for it in general. Available for GOG from the 12th of March, Mahokenshi – The Samurai Deckbuilder looks like it wants to be Civilization mixed with a deckbuilder. I hope that makes some sense, because otherwise I’m without an explanation for how this one works and how to get you excited about it. It is pretty in places, the artwork is nice, but it is one of those deckbuilders that just isn’t speaking to me as Slay the Spire, Balatro, or others of the genre do.

Speaking of things that fail to excite and moving on to the 19th of March, Sir Questionnaire. Released in 2022, you’ll pick this one up for GOG, and it was developed by Orangepixel. Sir Questionnaire is a dungeon-crawling CRPG with a very minimalist idea of tactical gameplay.

Effectively, you go room to room, deciding if you attack, run away, or use items, which doesn’t sound too different from anything else. It is, however, the way that Sir Questionnaire is presented that just isn’t jumping out and exciting me. Your inventory is always open, the actual dungeon space you see is small and bland, and only ever two optional actions per turn. Like most religions, it doesn’t reach out and touch me.

Sticking with GOG for the only other offering on the 19th, we’ve got Double Damage Games’ 2015 release, Rebel Galaxy. While last month offered the second in the series, which goes a bit more first-person full-3D, this original is a bit more third-person and menu-based to give a more “classic” version of what I’ve recently read described as “blue collar space games.” It is an odd one; think of a blend between No Man’s Sky and Elite Dangerous, but less action-focused. Certainly an underserved section of gaming.

From something simple but difficult to explain in a paragraph or two to something complicated that’s easy to explain. From the 26th of March, for Epic, you can pick up Total War: THREE KINGDOMS, the 2019 grand strategy set during the end of the Han dynasty, as fought between Cao Wei, Eastern Wu, and Shu Han. That’s also where the history lesson from me ends. If you’re a fan of Total War games, chances are you’ll enjoy it – I know a shocking statement to make.

Not as shocking as the blurb for the next game, though. “Swing into a heartwarming tale in Chimp Quest: Spirit Isle,” oh, how descriptive for the Legacy Games offering, which can climb into a bin as is. At only a couple of levels of “point-and-click time management” that is “like those nostalgic gems we used to play,” I want to have a word with the PR people. I am sure they have very good drug dealers when they are stealing a living like that. No, just no.

Somehow, it gets worse. Available for GOG on the 26th, you can pick up the three Phantasie games in the Phantasie Memorial Set. Three games older than Adam and his gay lover Steve The Snake, originally released consecutively between 1985 and 1987. “Respect the history of the industry;” These games, in terms of gaming history, are one step away from becoming petroleum. The people who originally played these games had sciatica 10 years ago and are now picking out the box they’ll be buried in. I’m sorry if I’m supposed to be “geeing them up,” but if I do, the people who are actually interested in them might have a stroke and die.

The final offering is the only offering for the Amazon Games App. Oh, remember her? Released in 2018, Snowhound Games’ Deep Sky Derelict was building on the niche carved out by Darkest Dungeon, this time with a dark retro-futuristic comic book style, and a depressing Rogue-like deckbuilder. If nothing else, the art style is certainly attractive if the prospect of a dark and depressing deckbuilding RPG isn’t doing it for you alone.