Games you missed out on in August 2023

While everyone played Baldur’s Gate 3, we had a few other games on our radars

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a big beefy boy, and I’m sure its parents are very, very proud. It is such a rotund cherub of a child that it has been swallowing up all of gamers’ free time this August, and that’s even before it’s released on consoles. If you’ve been on social media the past month, you’d think that Baldur’s Gate was the only thing that was released, but there were plenty of other bangers that we enjoyed this August.

Whether you want to build your own tarot deck, play Vampire Survivors with V-tubers, or simply have a nostalgic rush from revisiting the SNES era, August had a lot of amazing games for players of all tastes and sizes. Here’s seven games that aren’t Baldur’s Gate 3 that we played in August 2023.

Stray Gods – GY

Humble Games

This is an extremely difficult game to review for me. The first thing you’ll notice is that the art style is gorgeous, and something that will instantly make you fall in love. The story is also amazing. A murder mystery based around the Greek gods, very character-driven, and with touching relationships between the cast. The voice acting is also incredible, bringing you closer to each person. But two glaring issues unfortunately overshadow all the good.

The first is the music. Stray Gods sells itself as a musical. There are musical numbers throughout, and you can affect the song that is played via your choices of where the song should go. This is a fantastic idea, however, the music itself is not well written. The beats and melodies are serviceable and the instrumental work is great. However, the lyrics feel more like dialogue than lyrics with rare hooks that keep you replaying them in your mind. The voice actors do all the singing, and while they’re are notably good at their trades, their voices are often serviceable but not at the standard of a musical. Hiring singers to do the songs would have elevated it so much, and it seems like a huge misstep.

The other issue is the performance. It is extremely hard to navigate with menus working against you. It crashed twice while I was playing, and once erased my save data. Text is often not centered and blurred over the edge. I believe the crashes were due to memory leak, which also made the game stutter. Achievements also don’t work as intended. There are some issues with the technical options that have nothing to do with performance. You can replay chapters if you have a save file, but if your save file is deleted, there is no chapter select. You can also not skip cutscenes, so if you want to replay and make different selections, that is a huge ask. Even with my completed save file intact, the navigation is so bad I couldn’t access it until I restarted the game around ten times.

There is something amazing at the center of Stray Gods, but with the glaring technical issues, it’s hard to recommend it if you want to play a game without yeeting your PC out the window. It is incredibly unoptimized, draining the battery on my Steam Deck in less than two hours, and making the system almost too hot to handle. Even with the great art and the amazing characters and story, the musical aspect isn’t strong enough which is a major distraction when this is the game’s main selling point. I hope that someone tries this style of game again, it could truly be something incredible.

Score: 6/10

Version tested: PC (Steam Deck and Windows PC)

Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood – GY

Devolver Digital

The idea of a character-focused narrative game where you build your own tarot deck is right up my alley, and I was excited to dive in. You play an exiled witch living on an asteroid, who in her desperation summons a demon to help her build a new tarot deck. Her speciality is divination, and without a deck she can’t use her powers. However, the tides start to turn as soon as she has a deck back in her hands.

There are a lot of decisions to make here, and it feels as if there are a lot of different endings you can get depending on the choices you make. I’m definitely interested to see how many ways the ending can play out, depending on what you do. These choices are a little lessened by the fact that you can literally tell the future, meaning that at many points you know the outcome no matter what you do, but it’s still interesting to try your options no matter what.

You design your own tarot deck, which helps you bond with your deck, and this is based on the energy you accrue through your readings. It is important to note here that at one point I was soft-locked; I didn’t have enough energy, but I was forced to make a card. The team told me they were working to fix this, but in the meantime, I was given a code to give myself more energy. Now I tried to use this as seldom as possible, but my experience with energy management won’t be the same as others.

There seemed to be an issue with the tarot system, though. Aside from the fact that I wanted more options for designs, what you are mostly attempting is to get cards with as many options as possible, so when you read the future you have more options. There is no incentive to build up a deck. Instead, you are encouraged to have just a few good cards, reducing your chances of pulling cards with few options.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what it could be. Some tweaks to the formula would lead to a much stronger game, though the game at its core is a fantastic and innovative idea, and gave plenty of new concepts to excite me.

Score: 7/10

Version tested: PC (Steam Deck and Windows PC)

WrestleQuest – RW

Skybound Games

It was a bit of a shame when WrestleQuest had to be hurriedly pushed back a few weeks at the start of the month, but it’s here now and it was worth the wait.

What will immediately strike you about WrestleQuest is how it was made by wrestling fans for wrestling fans, and in some part, by wrestlers too. If you’re someone who likes to follow the dirt sheets and eat up every insider detail about the pro-wrestling industry that you can, then WrestleQuest serves you wonderfully, as that inside knowledge of how the business works can serve you well in understanding the mechanics.

It’s a turn-based JRPG that mixes in quick-time events to keep matches feeling active, but everything centers around the interest in the crowd watching the match. Keep them hyped and interested to get buffs and bonuses at the end of the battle, or bore them to suffer debuffs and give your enemies the edge. You’ve got entrances and pre-match promos, as well as different wrestling styles that act almost like classes.

Plus, the story and world are so wonderfully inviting. The stars of the ’80s and ’90s are treated like gods, with visages of Macho Man Randy Savage, Jake “The Snake” Roberts, and Jeff Jarrett being worshipped by the citizens of this world. It can be very self-aware and comedic, though, like how one of the main characters, Muchacho Man, is a meat-head who doesn’t realize wrestling’s all scripted, so he treats it like a real fight at all times.

It has a few pitfalls, though, mainly that as fun as the combat is, when you start getting into the late game, it can start to feel tiresome. It’s not the worst case I’ve ever seen, but combined with the story dragging on a bit, I feel as if it could’ve done with being a touch shorter to tighten everything up.

Still, it’s well worth a look for any wrestling or JRPG fan. With WWE and AEW mostly focusing on making simulation and sports-based titles, WrestleQuest has the kind of creativity and innovation that makes the wrestling world so special, and we desperately need more of it.

Score: 8/10

Version tested: PC (Steam)

HoloCure: Save the Fans! – RW

KayAnimate

Is it worth outing myself as a Hololive fan to all my colleagues to praise my latest addiction? I sure hope so.

This is a free fan-made game that is far more polished and focused than you usually expect from the fan game space. The sole developer works full-time as a developer in the games industry, and while this is made in their spare time, that studio-level of quality control is still injected into every inch of this game that is 100% free.

Gameplay-wise, it’s a Vampire Survivors clone, but there is a nice dose of innovation on top of that. Every weapon, every item, every skill, and every enemy is a Hololive reference of some description, with each character getting a handful of unique ones to choose from that all affect the game in wildly different ways. Each run feels unique, and you’ll behave differently with each character; plus, you can go in with zero knowledge of who they are and come away understanding all the weird in-jokes the community has created around it.

Plus, there’s a slowly expanding Holo House area where you can fish, farm, and design a home between the intense and flashy gameplay. Everything that makes Vampire Survivors so great is translated perfectly into HoloCure, just with an extra dose of color and high energy thrown in to match Hololive’s vibes – plus some excellent 16-bit remixes of Hololive songs.

HoloCure is made with genuine passion for both Hololive and game design as a whole, and it shines through with detailed combat, an in-joke around every corner, I just can’t stop playing it. With 38 playable characters from all three branches of Hololive and more on the way as the game develops, it’s a delicious rabbit hole that you’ll never want to leave.

Say what you want about my tastes, but I’m giving it an eight out of ten and none of you can stop me. If you want to cry about it, please send any complaints to @BaldBreens on Twitter.

Score: 8/10

Version tested: PC (Steam)

Cantata – MW

Modern Wolf

It may not be a scion of modern graphics or very easily approachable, but Cantata is a welcome and fresh addition to the strategy games market. It sets out to combine grand strategy and turn-based tactics – and manages to succeed in a big way. Beginning from a humble base, your territory expands as you conquer additional provinces and begin to exploit their resources, which in turn can be turned into units. However, this isn’t where Cantata ends strategically – for its developers have clearly heard of the old saying that “amateurs study tactics, while professionals study logistics.”

See, your units in Cantata only have a certain amount of ammunition on them, which gets depleted pretty quickly once a battle begins. You won’t only require factories in your heartlands to produce ammunition, but will actually have to transport it to the frontlines through a logistics chain. Even the resources needed for those factories need to be sent over from the provinces you’re exploiting, creating a supply chain that is an attractive military target. Place your depots and outposts strategically to steer this flow of goods, and make sure to have a supply point near any battlefield so that your units can replenish their arsenal when they need to. These points can then feed back new resources into your supply chain once you’ve secured the area – “the war feeds itself,” as Wallenstein would say.

This system neatly combines with the tactical turn-based combat to create a truly unique experience that has both the thrill of intense fights where every maneuver and shot counts as well as the power fantasy of being the maestro of a whole orchestra of war. Inspired by Dune, Cantata doesn’t only feature three unique factions to play as, but has the planet Shoal itself interfere with the battles on its surface. Thanks to a single-player campaign, full multiplayer support, and a map editor, there is more than enough content for players here to explore. A grandiose debut for the grand tactics genre.

Score: 8/10

Version tested: PC (Steam)

Strategic Mind: Spirit of Liberty – MW

Hyperstrange

Any fan of World War 2 strategy games will be familiar with the Strategic Mind series, of which Spirit of Liberty is another example. Set during the Winter War, in which Finland defended itself from the Soviet Union’s invasion, this title shares its mechanics and looks with previous entries into the series – they’re chugging these out like the US put Liberty ships out to sea during the war. You’re playing as the Finns and are tasked to defend your homeland against the Soviets in a series of very challenging missions with a variety of tasks – holding positions, counterattacking, and so on. Sometimes, side missions will pop up that grant you additional resources or units, like capturing enemy tanks.

The better you do during these missions, the more resources you gain for upgrading your core troops – a certain amount of units you carry over from campaign to campaign. You can equip these with additional weapons and gear to upgrade their capabilities. While a great concept by itself, it makes the missions feel a little gimmicky – you really want these core units to get all the kills during battles, since only the XP they get will help you out in the following missions, which get harder and harder. If you fail to complete enough side quests or collect enough XP on your core troops, it’ll be very hard to actually get far. As such, the actual strategy part and immersion fall by the wayside a bit in favor of playing the game mechanics.

I’m also not a big fan of the presentation. While the visuals are alright, the voice acting during the briefings and the missions sounds quite amateurish – both in terms of sound quality (they sound a bit like a new YouTuber with their first microphone) and performance. While an effort (and one that’s appreciated) was made to pronounce Finnish place names in a natural way, these collide hilariously with the rest of the dialog the obviously non-Finnish speakers deliver. If you like previous Strategic Mind games, this one delivers the exact same experience, which in turn means that if you didn’t like any of its predecessors, there is nothing interesting for you here.

Score: 6/10

Version tested: PC (Steam)

Sea of Stars – GY

Sabotage Studio

Sea of Stars hopes to evoke that dreamy nostalgia of old-school JRPGs like Chrono Trigger and Golden Sun, with timing-heavy turn-based combat á la Paper Mario, with a sweeping story similar to something like Romancing Saga. And in this, it very much succeeds. You’ll see homages to all your favorite old-school games. Whether it’s the kooky companions like in Chrono or a complex battle system like Secret of Mana’s, you’ll see hints of all the games you know and love.

What impressed me most about Sea of Stars, beyond the incredible world-building and awesome soundtrack, was just how deep the world is. The open world will feel fairly limited at first, but the more you explore the more you’ll realize you haven’t yet explored. There are collectibles, post-game bosses to really challenge your prowess, and extra side stories to uncover. You’ll get lost in it all, but that is part of the point.

It also offers great approachability options for those not used to such a punishing genre. You can purchase relics that offer in-game buffs such as damage reduction or extra healing, and even help with things like the fishing mini-game. As you have to find these relics, it still feels like you’ve earned them, much like upgraded armor or weapons, but you still are able to disable them if you want more of a challenge.

It was the little things that prevented me from claiming Sea of Stars as perfection. Without spoilers, one character does something VERY naughty, that ends in some very bad things happening, and everyone seems just okie dokie with it after the fact. No one brings up it was their fault, just because they’re good in battle, I guess. However, it is hard to criticize Sea of Stars, as it does what it intends exceptionally well, and it delivers something we’re all familiar with, in a very refreshing way.

Score: 9/10

Version tested: Nintendo Switch