FutureProject.TV

I lost nearly 7.5 hours to this without even noticing, The Dead King’s Secret is packed with clever puzzles, fresh monsters, and that constant “just one more room” feeling.

A clearing filled with statues, many without faces, leads the party into a fight they didn’t want but couldn’t avoid. As the truth behind the gnome and the tree is revealed, Runtar is forced to act quickly to survive, leaving him questioning whether some things can be fixed, or only left behind.

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker hits a great balance of challenge and charm—right up until one particularly brutal level nearly made me quit.

In a land where lies carry consequences long after they’re spoken, the party encounters a mother and her changed son. When the boy turns violent, Runtar is forced to make a difficult choice, and is left wondering whether some costs can ever be undone, or only endured.

I’m still not sure if I liked Lumo or hated it—clever puzzles kept me going to the end, but constant deaths and that awful death noise made it hard to truly enjoy.

A strange dream of a school that shouldn’t exist, where ghosts linger, swords fight on their own, and problems are solved in ways that don’t quite make sense. Runtar isn’t sure what it means, only that it doesn’t feel finished.

Following a map Bawbaggins recovered from the pirate ship, the party reaches a quiet beach marked by ancient standing stones and a carved riddle. Giant crabs interrupt the investigation, and somewhere in the chaos Runtar finds himself compelled to dance… before everything goes dark. When he wakes, the crabs are dead, the riddle is solved, and the stones have revealed a second map.

Not wanting to buy another game, I raided my six-year-old’s cartridge collection and rediscovered Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. The story mode’s mix of puzzles and turn-based battles ended up being far more enjoyable than I expected.

When a whirlpool summons undead pirates and something vast beneath the waves, survival becomes the only goal. Gloom shields Runtar, a parrot terrorises Bawbaggins, and even a barrel of Chrisgles fails to soothe the deep. Sometimes victory means simply getting away.

After finishing Subnautica, I jumped straight into Below Zero—and found it far less challenging. With the Seatruck removing much of the survival tension, progression felt smoother, but also slightly less intense.