Reviews of Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon went live a whole five days ahead of launch, showing a sign of confidence from Nintendo. The Metacritic score is currently sitting pretty at 80% – with dozens of reviews clocking in at 9/10 – but not everyone was smitten by this puzzle-filled adventure spin-off with Nintendo Life settling on a 7/10 and VGC opting for a 3/5.
“Repetition creeps in later in the game and, although it ends with some bombastic sequences and a few nice shoutouts to the main series, it feels like a little more challenge and experimentation in puzzles and combat could have made this one absolutely essential for all ages,” said NL.
RPG sequel The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure also launches on Switch this week. We cast our critical eye over it yesterday, resulting in an 8/10. “If you’ve played Trails from Zero there really is no reason to hesitate picking up Trails to Azure,” said our resident RPG wordsmith James.
The Wreck has gained positive reviews too, being an emotional journey starring thirty-six-year-old Junon – whose world is about to be turned upside down. Pocket Tactics dished out a 9/10 while Well Played went with an 8.5, calling the adventure smart and compelling.
Then there’s Alice Gear Aegis CS: Concerto of Simulatrix, an anime mech shooter recalling a pastel hued Zone of the Enders. Siliconera took a look at this one, resulting in a 7/10. “Alice Gear Aegis CS is a solid, if simple, arena fighter with great mecha musume characters. But its thin storytelling doesn’t endear players to a world that’s largely been Japan-exclusive until now,” was their verdict.
1950’s style sci-fi shooter Squad 51 VS The Flying Saucers (nee Squadron 51) is one we’ve been keeping an eye on since its reveal back in January 2021. It seems to have been worth the wait, with the first review score out the door being an 8.5 from NWR, finding only the long loading times a downer.
We can also expect the foxy arcade space shooter FUR Squadron – best described as vapourwave Star Fox. The 1995 space shooter Terminal Velocity is also back this week in a new Boosted Edition, boasting improved performance and audio.
Also look out for the ravishing pixel art Metroidvania Vernal Edge, musical puzzler Backbeat, the bargain priced hypnotic retro FPS Post Void, dark-fantasy adventure The Guise, and the fire stoking roguelike Flame Keeper.
Alice Gear Aegis CS Concerto of Simulatrix – £24.99
Alice Gear AEGiS CS: Concerto of Simulatrix, is an exciting 3D battle arena game filled with action and loveable characters! Gear up, strap in, and get battling!
Vice has taken your world and only you can take it back! As an actress with an aptitude for wielding this special gear, you train under AEGiS, a corporation charged with defence against the Vice. Fight against your fellow teammates in simulations, using unique customisable combinations of your Alice Gear to get stronger, faster and better than ever before!
Follow the lives of your teammates, learn about their motivations and feelings as you bring your team together.
Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon – £49.99
Join Cereza and her demon Cheshire on a journey through a faerie-filled forest in Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon for Nintendo Switch. Turn the pages of this vibrantly-illustrated storybook adventure to discover the origins of the titular Umbra Witch.
Inspired by the golden age of street skating – the 1990s – Session: Skate Sim lets you experience true skateboarding and its culture: no scoring system; just you, your spot and your imagination! There’s no need for judges to tell you that your noseslide or varial heelflip are perfect for this spot. And because certain locations are iconic, the developers have added several of them to the game for you to skate in and express your creativity, including Black Hubbas (New York City), Brooklyn banks (New York City), FDR Park (Philadelphia) and many other spots.
The Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure – £35.99
Following the events of Trails from Zero, the Special Support Section find themselves with new members and new duties. However, rising tensions in Crossbell along with pressure from two neighboring political powers threaten both the safety of their home, as well as the integrity of their team.
New York City is calling – and so are Paris, Australia, London, and a world tour of other fun places! You and your friend Peppa can make pizza in Italy, walk down Hollywood Boulevard, sail on a cruise ship together, and more. There are new characters to meet, exciting quests to try, and countless accessories to dress up with!
Become a cat, a kangaroo, a goat, a donkey, or whatever you choose! Turn your family into Peppa Pig characters too, including your brothers, sisters, and grownups, to make them a part of your story. Build your own home in Peppa Pig’s neighbourhood, and display the souvenirs and items you collect around the world to make your family’s house dazzling and different.
Make a splash all over the world as you play with Peppa – and don’t forget your wellies!
Become Ignis, a special coal tasked with liberating that world of Orbis, recently overrun by forces of darkness. Luckily, it just so happens that you’re trained in the art of mortal combat! Learn how to fight, upgrade your abilities, venture through increasingly hostile worlds, and restore the Eternal Flame.
Backbeat is a homage to the 16 and 32-bit story-driven games of the 1990s, recreating the challenges and victories of the last days of analog life and the birth of the internet. The suburban Washington D.C. area is reflected in diner parking lots, shopping malls, and dimly lit arcades.
A colorful cast of supporting characters both friend and foe join Watts as she struggles with leadership, success, and holding together a band.
Loot Box Simulator – Heroes of the Dark Age – £2.99
Be rich for once and buy all the loot boxes in this awesome simulator game.
Live your life like there is no tomorrow.
Earn money by finishing crazy jobs from a random selection, just to spend all of it on loot boxes.
“Loot Box Simulator – Heroes of the Dark Age” brings pretty dark rpg girls and exciting loot boxes to your console. Choose between 4 action options and win great collectible pictures of the cutest and sexiest rpg fantasy girls.
Enter the charming world of Blocky Farm where you can manage your lands, take care of animals, harvest fields, deliver goods to the town and create friendship with citizens. Create farm of your dreams and grow big! Start your village life today!
4 heroines of your harem. 12 unique pictures in different locations. Interesting puzzles.
You just have to help them undress!
Life of Delta is a point-and-click adventure game set in a post-apocalyptic world.
After the Great War, all humans are wiped out. The only survivors are decaying service robots and humanoid lizards that were born from a long nuclear fallout.
Our story follows Delta, who is a small service robot and like any other robot, he is just trying to survive in this harsh environment. One day he is forced to embark on a journey through a vast post-apocalyptic world in order to find his lost friend. Because of his small size, he needs to use all of his wits to overcome all dangerous scenarios and challenges.
Terminal Velocity™: Boosted Edition runs the original Terminal Velocity natively on modern systems with the Infernal Engine, rendering the original graphics with an improved HUD for widescreen displays!
Climb back into the cockpit! Terminal Velocity™: Boosted Edition is a 360-degree combat flight simulator, featuring a variety of different planets to battle across and a high-powered weapon arsenal to aid you in all of the fast-paced action. In the far future, armadas from surrounding systems have suddenly waged war on Earth. You are a pilot from the Ares Squadron, flying the fastest, most dangerous aircraft ever made. You’re outgunned, outmanned, and strapped inside a flying coffin. Are you ready?
Terminal Velocity™: Boosted Edition is more than your routine flight simulator, with combat as the main objective, and a straightforward control layout to thrust you right into the action! Explore nine unique planets, each with three levels, dozens of tunnels, and miles upon miles of terrain to fly over. To support you in battle, you’ll have access to seven destructive spectacular air-to-air and air-to-ground combat scenarios.
Play as a little redhead and help them steal all diamonds! Getting to the diamond may seem simple, but the challenge begins when you want to go back. The alarm system activates traps that you can’t fall into or you fail.
Can you steal the diamonds in four unique and different lands? Run through caves, ice caves, forest, dark forest and gem mines. Then return home safely.
Get ready for a stealthy spin on tile-based sliding puzzles as you navigate the brainteasing chambers of Tricky Thief!
Take the role of a slippery burglar as you hug the walls of each room and collect coins while outwitting the patrolling guards across dozens of top-down single-screen stages presented in charmingly minimalistic 3D style.
Can you figure out the most efficient way to tackle each situation to become a master thief?
Welcome to the Kingdom of Haricot.
Years ago, the land took to the sky, becoming a mysterious series of floating islands, where the power-hungry Church of Aloe now rules with an iron fist.
Enter Vernal, A young woman bent on finding her estranged father. With the help of some abnormal martial prowess and an amnesiac automaton named Chervil, She’ll need to make her way across this mysterious land if she wants to satisfy her need for revenge, and the truth.
Take control of Vernal in this beautiful pixel art Metroidvania. Unravel the secrets of her past and the mysteries of Haricot as you battle your way through this broken kingdom.
The original tangrams first appeared in China. These addictive puzzles had players combining triangular pieces (called tans) to form a simple image. All pieces had to be used and could not overlap. It is the elegance of this format that made tangrams a worldwide sensation!
Tangrams have come a long way since their global debut, with modern variations introduced beyond the original set of 7 puzzles. Tangram Collection furthers that reinvention, offering welcomed variety to players looking for the next step in tangram evolution.
Kung Fury: Street Rage – ULTIMATE EDITION – £17.59
A BRAND NEW HT-3000 CARTRIDGE GAME PACKED WITH:
* ENDLESS ARCADE-STYLE BEAT ‘EM UP NAZI FIGHTS
* PRO TIPS FROM HACKERMAN IN THE HACKADEMY PRACTICE MODE
* HASSELHOFF AS A PLAYABLE CHARACTER
* 5 HEROES WITH THEIR OWN ULTIMATE POWERS
Your mission is simple: place tents next to trees in a nature-filled grid. The numbers around the grid tell you how many tents must be placed in each row and column, but be careful: tents can’t touch each other. Each level has only one unique solution, so take your time and carefully plan your every move.
Follow failed screenwriter Junon as she attempts to make it through the most pivotal day in her life. Relive the past, alter the present, and embrace the future – or watch Junon’s story end in a wreck.
At 36, Junon’s life is in pieces: her career has stalled, she’s emotionally numb, and her personal life is falling apart. Things come to a head when she’s called to the ER to find her estranged mother in a critical condition. This is the most important day of Junon’s life, and unless something changes, it might be her last.
The button-based rhythm game that sends you on a voyage through space, Sixtar Gate: STARTRAIL, is finally available on the Nintendo Switch™!
Take command of the research vessel Ausflug alongside your partner Shii as you unravel the mysteries of the Sixtar Cluster!
Link The Cubes is a relaxing Top-Down puzzle game with cute little cubes. Your goal is to move the cubes to the portals to free them from the levels.
Play alone, together with friends or against your friends, and show your navigation and reaction skills in 6 different game modes and countless levels.
A haunted-house style spookycute walking simulator set on a ghost-infested train.! You play as Lizzbeth, a weird girl on an even weirder train. There’s a creep stalking you, the train isn’t stopping anytime soon, and your only option is to keep moving forward (and not die)…
In this whimsical, colorful, and downright creepy indie horror game, the player slowly unravels the story in these uniquely hand-crafted train cars. Hang out with ghosts, run away from a weirdo, and try not to become a ghost yourself.
Explore gorgeous landscapes, roll down highways and stumble upon welcoming cottages and abandoned dumpsters. Help your ideas find their way.
POST VOID is a hypnotic scramble of early first-person shooter design that values speed above all else. Keep your head full and reach the end. Kill what you can to see it mend. Get the high score or try again.
An incredibly fast-paced, surreal headache of an FPS where the rules are very simple – make it to the end of the level. The only way to live is to keep killing to stop your health idol from running out. Gain upgrades at the end of each level and try to reach the end of the void in a single run. POST VOID is fast, frantic, adrenaline-pumping action that requires speed, skill, and determination.
An all-out assault on the senses, from its daringly unique visual aesthetics and hypnotic animations, to its blink-and-you’ll-miss-it lightning speed action.
NONO ADVENTURE is classic nonogram game with a little twist!
As the story begins, you play as Ogden, an orphan whose curiosity got the better of him. He gave in to temptation and tried on a cursed mask that transformed him into a monster.
You will have to get used to his cursed, monstrous body and try not to lose the last remnants of your humanity. The world of The Guise is filled with terrifying locations, including dying villages, dark forests, labyrinthine dungeons, and deadly valleys swarming with demons.
Find secrets, hidden passageways, and concealed rooms containing treasures that shed new light on Ogden’s world.
A girl in a white dress wakes up in a ruined city. She uses her light to light up mysterious cocoons, reverse time, and restore the city to its former splendor. You take on the role of this mysterious girl. As you restore Amber City, more and more of its history will unfurl before you.
Loop is a vibrant Contemplative Puzzle Game; where you and your companion travel through a mysterious, ethereal temple.
During this Journey, you will traverse many riddles and face the ultimate enigma: can the endless loop be broken?
Loop will help you relax within beautiful and varied environments. The gameplay is centered in playing along with an AI which acts both as a reliable guide through the temple and as a faithful companion to discover the world with. The game narrative will take you through rich environments and unique and creative puzzles.
The story is beautifully told without any dialogue, everything is visual.
Squad 51 vs. the Flying Saucers – £15.49
Warning! Extraterrestrials from outer space arrived in our planet bringing promises of a bright new future for the earthlings. However, this intergalactic partnership soon reveals its darker side as the VEGA CORPORATION, the alien enterprise led by the hideous DIRECTOR ZAROG, is imposing its predatory politics on the human kind. In the midst of this oppression, the rebel group Squadron 51 rises as a response against the violent acts spread by these inhuman beings. Will the brave pilots of Squadron 51 and their aircrafts stand a chance against the Zarog’s diabolic fleet of flying saucers?
Join the rebel cause as LIEUTENANT KAYA, facing flying saucers, alien fighters and monsters in the skies of the 1950’s! Remember: the future of the Earth is in your hands!
Earn money in many aerial missions and buy new machines or upgrade the ones you already have in your hangar.
Fight with waves of different enemy machines and do not get hit in a bullet hell.
Unmatched: Digital Edition is an adaptation of the critically acclaimed board game, where two (or more) opponents command characters from myth, history, or fiction in a battle for the ages! Have you ever wondered who would win, King Arthur (aided by Merlin) or a sword-wielding Alice of Wonderland? How would Sinbad and his trusty porter fare against Medusa and the three harpies? The only way to find the truth is in battle with a quick game of Unmatched!
“Bitter-Sweet Cohabitation” is a novel game in which the protagonist, who seeks a girl, meets a girl who leads him to face other heroines who are in various circumstances.
A Bishojo Game released in 2017 under the “Noirsoft” brand has been reworked for the “PandaShojo” platform for players of all ages worldwide to enjoy.
Gangster Life: Criminal Untold , Cars, Theft, Police – £4.99
Gangster Life is the number one game on how to grow from a simple crook into a gangster. Who controls the whole city where you were born and where you will start doing your illegal work. Explore a large detailed city with realistic textures. Lots of crime missions will help you become the most powerful gangster in the area. Different guns, a lot of cool cars and interesting gameplay you will find all this in our product. Never give up and you will be who you want to be. Only you decide what kind of lifestyle you will have.
Labyrinth Runner – Horror Escape Survive Simulator – £4.99
A game for puzzle lovers, everyone knows that there is always a way out of any trouble, also in this game we give you the opportunity to find a way out of the labyrinth in which there are many different obstacles in addition to the way out of it, for the allotted time you have to get out of it, failing to do this, the one who locked you in this labyrinth will find you, from the auxiliary things you only have the ability to mark the locations where you have already been and your own memory.
We were able to find the door, this is not the first problem, to open it you also need a key, which is also hidden in the labyrinth, you won’t be able to run for a long time, use your stamina wisely.
An excellent game for hardcore and puzzle lovers, sharpen your memory and open new levels with pleasure.
Combine a heap of chaos, some physics-based fun, a dash of fluid movement and some poorly driven trains, and what do you get? Off The Tracks – a chaotic physics-based first person platformer.
Experience the original adventures of the Treflik Family. Get ready for a wholesome journey through childhood. A new Nintendo Switch™ children’s show is here!
Don’t be afraid and discover monstrously cute cakes, bats, and other unusual creatures.
Step into the darkness and look fear right in the eye.
Friendly monsters will accompany you on this remarkable adventure.
Here begins the Fantasy Ball Tournament !
Gather your friends and play with or against them in frantic matches set in a fantasy cartoon world for up to 4 players in the same arena!
Play fantasy characters such as the Knight, the Mage, the Archer or the Rogue and score as many points as possible !
In this mind-blowing journey through retrowave aesthetic environments and synthwave music you will shoot your way through the simulations (or not?) of the units and minions of the evil Skal Empire.
Next week: Remnant: From the Ashes, Have A Nice Death, Omen of Sorrow, Atelier Ryza 3: Alchemist of the End & the Secret Key, FLASHOUT 3, Saint Maker, FurryFury: Smash & Roll, Animals Names, Unheard – Voices of Crime Edition, Storyteller, Rakuen, Gekisou!Benza Race -Toilet Shooting Star, Anyaroth: The Queen’s Tyranny, Numolition, Scramballed, Steel Defier, Nefasto’s Misadventure: Meeting Noeroze, Sushi Bar Express, Sakura Neko Calculator, and Mighty Mage.
Matt is Games Asylum's most prolific writer, having produced a non-stop stream of articles since 2001. A retro collector and bargain hunter, his knowledge has been found in the pages of tree-based publication Retro Gamer.