Spooky trains, island utopia, and a classic time capsule

Hello everyone! This week has simply rocketed by so fast that I cannot believe it is already Friday! As I mentioned in the last dispatch, The Rise of the Golden Idol has become my obsession late at night, when I have the energy to sit down and try to make my brain work. I hope to get something together on the site for the best detective game I have played since, well, the first Golden Idol game, but until then I am just poking and prodding at the various games I have surrounding me in 15-30 minute chunks. It’s not much, but it’s honest work.

Also UFO 50 has been my go to comfort game when I find solving murders too taxing. Mesmaa from our Discord community has joined me in picking apart this relic to a lost console that doesn’t exist, but I think Andysaurus summed up my sentiment around the game after I shared this absolute banger from the Seaside Drive OST.

UFO 50 somehow makes us nostalgic for a console that doesn’t exist, by evoking the vibes of it’s would-be contemporaries so seamlessly, we can instantly be transported back to a real time in our lives. What a truly remarkable experience.

Anyways, enough about that. Let’s take a look at some new games.

What came out this week?

Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms

Developer: Gamera Interactive
Steam rating: Mostly Positive
Store page

I almost passed over this one because of the lazy marketing that describes it as “Baldur’s Gate and Dark Souls had a baby!”, but then I looked at the reviews and dove into the features, and it does seem quite solid.

Alaloth: Champions of the Four Kingdoms is an isometric RPG that combines the narrative and adventuring style of Baldur’s Gate with the skill-based real-time combat of Dark Souls to create a challenging mashup. I don’t really see that in the trailer - to me it looks like a Diablo-style game with slower combat, but all the of the Steam reviews are praising the combat which makes me think that there is something there.

There are 12 companions who are ready to join the fight, and over 250 quests, so I am expecting this is a meaty adventure. The cool thing that stood out is that in their USPs they specifically mention “Local Cooperative Mode up to 3 players, working online through Remote Play and no extra copies needed” which is super neat.

So if you have some friends and want to set forth with some fantasy adventuring, this one should be on the agenda.

Loco Motive

Developer: Robust Games
Steam rating: Positive
Store page

Ok, so I am a bit of a mark for this kind of game. Loco Motive is a comedic adventure game taking place aboard a 1930s express train. Murder? Mischief? Some laughs? This is 100% my vibe.

Fully voice acted, Loco Motive promises to deliver a mystery that has twists and turns, complimented by slapstick humour. That is the only thing that makes me take pause - humour is so subjective, and well… the trailer didn’t really have me in stitches. Still, I cannot ignore the Murder on the Orient express vibes, so I am definitely boarding this train.

One neat feature is that the game offers two control modes - direct control for a more modern experience, or classic point-and-click for older folks who grew up in the LucasArts/Sierra heyday. Not a necessity, but a nice approach.

Luma Island

Developer: Feel Free Games
Steam rating: Very Positive
Store page

Another cosy crafting sim in here! Luma Island is a relaxing crafting adventure which can be tackled solo, or with up to 3 other players. The devs are obviously targeting families here, as they mention family members in their store description more than once.

It pulls in everything you could want from the genre from farming and base building mechanics, down to island exploration which looks to have some basic combat. There are quests to complete, and puzzles to solve, and seven professions to master, each with their own unlock trees.

It looks fun and relaxing, with one review saying “it’s like Stardew but without the stamina or needing to go to bed at night. I like it because I can take it at my own pace”. If that sounds like you, grab some friends or family and have a chilled time.

Threshold

Developer: Julien Eveillé
Steam rating: Very Positive
Store page

Threshold looks to be another entry in the growing “weird, messed up, but totally awesome” PSX-era horror titles. This one takes place high in the mountains, where you must keep the train running on time. Air is a precious resource, and each task you undertake puts you at risk of running out.

There’s not much more I can say about it, because well… I AM NOT ENTIRELY SURE WHAT IT IS? It looks like an intense dark psychological thriller with a mystery at its core, but the store page and trailer are just ambiguous enough that I could be wrong. What I will say is that it looks incredibly unique, and totally up my alley, so I will be checking it out at some point.

Also I think it’s time that we take a look at Critical Reflex, the publisher behind this one. If you took the vibes of Inscription and turned that into the ethos for running a publishing label, that would be Critical Reflex. Between Buckshot Roulette, Mouthwashing, and now Threshold, they are carving out a weird little niche that I love. I know, they have plenty of other colorful and friendly titles on their label (very excited for TANUKI: Pon’s Summer), but their recent success has really crafted a vibe, and I hope that they stick with it.

Sorry We’re Closed

Developer: à la mode games
Steam rating: Very Positive
Store page

This one actually dropped last week and I missed it, but I am absolutely in love so I needed to highlight it. Sorry We’re Closed looks like a discarded Suda51 game from the Killer7 era, delivering a survival horror with impeccable style that really stands out.

It looks to have some really interesting mechanics where the movement takes place in locations with fixed camera angles like the survival horror games of yore, but the combat takes place in first person. There’s also a Third Eye view that lets you see between worlds, which will help you solve puzzles and discover the secrets of the world.

This one just looks incredible, and is yet another excellent showcase for indie survival horror this year. Dang, it has been a really good year for the genre!

Some other cool things that I saw this week

IMG_0001 is a time capsule from a better internet

So I discovered this thanks to the excellent Garbage Day newsletter, so I won’t take any of the credit here. But I am so in love with IMG_0001, a site that really captures a time and place in the world in such a unique way. I will let the official site description tell you what it is.

Between 2009 and 2012, iPhones had a built-in "Send to YouTube" button in the Photos app. Many of these uploads kept their default IMG_XXXX filenames, creating a time capsule of raw, unedited moments from random lives.

Inspired by Ben Wallace, I made a bot that crawled YouTube and found 5 million of these videos! Watch them below, ordered randomly.

I have already wasted far too much time on this site, but I smile every time. One second I am watching some kind of salsa dancing party, then a family excitedly cheering at Disney on Ice, followed by a video of some kids racing petrol-powered RC cars somewhere in Louisiana. It’s seriously a great initiative, you can check it out here.

We got a new domain and a Bluesky

The name Pixels for Breakfast has been around for 12 years or so now. I have never truly loved it, the main reason being that the URL and handle is just too damn long. The community has always just referred to it/me as “Pixels”, but that is an impossible domain to grab. That was when renewing domains on GoDaddy they suggested to me that now I am living in Japan, pxls.jp was now available.

That’s a pretty nice domain, and it was reasonably priced. So now you can head to pxls.jp, with the .net domain sending you there by default. For now, my email will still be pixelsforbreakfast.net, but once I get things organized I guess I will change that over too!

We have been using Bluesky since before it was cool, back when you needed to beg for invite codes. No one was using Bluesky back then, but now it seems that a huge majority of cool people are. So you can follow the newsletter here, and my personal account over here. Bluesky is pretty nice, we hope to continue seeing it grow.

And that’s a wrap for this dispatch. As always, share the newsletter with a friend and help the numbers keep going up. If you can spare a few dollars, please consider dropping them in our Ko-Fi cup. I have a new article series in the works that I will be debuting on Ko-Fi before the site, or at least some behind-the-scenes stuff on I think, so if that’s enough to entice you, please go ahead and check it out. Updates are coming.

See you all next week, and jump in the comments and let me know what you are playing.