Heavy rotation:
Getting the second platinum on Dead Cells UK reminded me that it wasn't all vanilla cake and roses. The lower difficulties were first made easier, then harder, and it was a struggle for a while there. Then, on the highest difficulty, I hit the perfect Prisoner's Quarters (first level) run and everything fell into place! I went back to my original copy and finally visited the Cavern and beat the extra boss that was added 6ish months ago.
This season of ranked Mortal Kombat 11 has costumes for characters I don't play, so I've kinda put the game on back burner.
I've mostly been playing Apex Legends since I bought the $10 battle pass. The deal here is that if you play enough, you earn back the currency to buy the next battle pass, so you only have to empty your pockets once.
New:
I originally bought Trulon: The Shadow Engine for my wife to play, but she was bored. This is a really cheap RPG with bare-bones mechanics, graphics and soundtrack. One trophy is to beat the game in less than 5 hours, so it's mercifully a minimal commitment.
Dandara is a game I've been looking forward to playing for almost a year. At first, I was sucked in for the Afro-Brazilian female lead and the dope trailer. The game is much more than that. You could call it a rogue-like adventure, meaning you explore a giant map room-by-room, collecting resources (Salt) and spending them on upgrades until you die, keeping the upgrades but losing the resources. However, you don't walk. Instead, Dandara has the unexplained power to harness gravity and hop between surfaces. This feature is completely integrated into the game, and the screen shifts perspective in meaningful, and not-overused ways.
Dandara, the last hope, is trying to save Creation and Intent, which merged together and were corrupted by Idea (Oppression). The areas of the map are named after different metaphysical aspects of humanity (faith, memories, guilt), and you can engage with the setting or ignore it and focus on the Super Metroid-esque gameplay. There is a lot of meaning there that will go over the heads of players who don't want to think about philosophic principles, and that is totally fine. When I was near completion, I stumbled across the perfect fan of this game, who wrote out a detailed description of the game's themes and if you're up for a 15-minute philosophic analysis. Regardless, I am glad there's so much nuance to this title. The soundtrack is amazingly alien at times, there's a very-1960s track, and the boss music is fantastic (which you heard in the trailer if you saw it). For half of the bosses, I beat them the first time I met them, and that was purely driven by the music, which tells you what's at stake. Brazilian developer Long Hat House made Dandara and you should play it!
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