The summer is winding down, the days are starting to grow shorter, and there’s a new chill in the air at night. It’s the perfect time to catch up on some older games ahead of the September onslaught that kicks off with Star Wars Outlaws’ launch next week. It’s also a good time to make room for lesser-known releases that deserve more looks but aren’t always getting them in the glut of high-quality releases that are the monthly norm now.
One of those is Dustborn, a gorgeous road-trip game about bandmates. Another is Arco, a pixel-art tactics RPG that’s easy to overlook but unlike anything else out there. “This game is a masterpiece,” wrote Reddit user QubitsAndCheezits.
“More important and impressive is that I’ve never played anything like it in ~40 years of gaming.” But even as a bunch of indie devs hit on the importance of venturing outside the same three genres that hit big on Steam, Arco co-creator Franek shared a brutal discovery. Alex makes a lot of good points really fast 10 years ago, indies were exploring new grounds and AAA was making the same 3 genres over and over.
Now it feels like indies are making the same 3 genres, and AAA are just remastering the same 3 games over and over. Make. New.
Stuff. https://t.co/dXa9ND547H — Sos 🔜Gamescom (@Sosowski) August 19, 2024 “‘Make.
New. Stuff.’ is fun advice until you have to sell your game without a target audience and you got rent to pay,” the developer tweeted .
“We made something new. O.