This Week In Games: The Absolute State Of Friday March 25th

Welcome back to This Week In Games, where we take a look at what we’ll be playing in the week ahead.

Folks, it’s one of those weeks where it’s all very quiet until suddenly it isn’t. This coming Friday is one of the most densely packed single-day launch explosions I’ve seen in some time. Plan your weekends accordingly, everyone, because apparently, every publisher in the world decided to launch their game on the same day. Let’s pick it apart together.

22nd March

Five Nights At Freddy’s: Security Breach (PS5, PS4)

Fight Nights At Freddy’s, the survival horror series that only seems to go from strength to strength, arrives on console. Security Breach is already out on PC, so fans will almost certainly have played it already. This is the game’s official PlayStation launch, with PS5 and PS4 versions dropping digitally and at retail.

24th March

Grow: Song of the Evertree  (NS)

One of Ruby’s favourite games of the year to date, Grow: Song of the Evertree, arrives on Switch this week in a full retail release. A beautiful, relaxing little game by Brisbane studio Prideful Sloth (Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles), we definitely can’t recommend it enough.

Ok. Here comes Friday. Strap in, everyone.

25th March

Dodgeball Academia (NS, PS4)

This one actually released digitally last year but is only now getting a full retail launch in Aus. Dodgeball Academia is a sports RPG about a high school where dodgeball is a way of life. That sounds scarily close to my own Northern Rivers high school, but I’ll try to put that deeply-ingrained personal trauma aside. It’s a fun art style and has a spiky sense of humour. If you’re in the mood for an RPG with a difference, and the wait for Sports Story is wearing you down, this should hit the spot.

Ghostwire: Tokyo (PS5, PC)

We all got caught up in the hype around Deathloop last year, but Bethesda’s actual PlayStation swansong finally arrives this week. Ghostwire: Tokyo is a game perhaps best known for an E3 presentation that introduced the world to human ray of sunshine Ikumi Nakamura. It’s also a game about being a spooky wizard in Tokyo at night. I think? I haven’t played it yet, so I’m not entirely sure. Nevertheless, I do believe that reviews are dropping later this week, and I’ll be keen to read them! Bethesda is a bit like our estranged ex and doesn’t talk to us very much. It’s a bummer, but I understand. As a result, we don’t receive early preview or review codes for their games. We don’t mind: it means we get to pick it up on Friday with all of you!

Kirby and the Forgotten Land (NS)

The game that will cause Ruby to drop off the face of the planet for several days. Don’t text her. Don’t even perceive her while she is in Kirby Mode. Nintendo, if you’re reading this, I cannot overstate how excited she is to play this.

Monark (PS5, NS)

Monark has appeared in a previous TWIG piece but was shunted a few weeks down the line at the last minute. This is a JRPG that seems to share a lot of ideas with the Persona series. The track that plays over the trailer, Pleiades by harusaruhi, is also a bit of a banger.

Rune Factory 5 (NS)

Rune Factory 5 has been available in Japan for going on a year now, but will only arrive in the West this week. It’s a JRPG series that lacks the usual galaxy-spanning stakes the genre has come to prefer. It’s about a group of friends who come together to help build and tend to a little town. I’ll be honest, I’m not a big JRPG guy but that honestly sounds super appealing. It’s the first new game in the series since 2012.

Stranded Deep (NS)

Stranded Deep is a survival game about being stuck on a tiny desert island and having to make the best of it. The supplies you have on hand and your ability to craft ever-more-complex items is all that stands between you and the elements. Your goal is to escape the game’s widespread archipelago in a plane made entirely out of bamboo and the power of positive thinking. The game has proven popular with hardcore survival fans, and its launch on the Switch makes the experience portable.

Tentacular (VR)

We covered Tentacular on the site last week, and soon it will be in your, er, tentacled hands. Tentacular is a VR game in which you, a teenage sea monster, befriend a seaside town and use your phenomenal strength to throw things around for them. This is classic VR physics game nonsense with a pitch that is just so, so good. Can’t wait to check it out.

Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands (PS5, XSX, PC, PS4, XBO)

Gearbox’s Borderlands spin-off is finally here. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands is a fully-fledged spin-off of the Borderlands 2 DLC Assault on Dragon Keep. The game takes the traditional Borderlands looter shooter experience and wraps it around a high fantasy premise with TTRPGs like Dungeons & Dragons at its core. Putting Tiny Tina in charge of a D&D game that you are playing in real-time allows Gearbox to frame standard Borderlands mania as a product of her hyperactive mind. For those already a fan of the Borderlands loop, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands will be a no-brainer. I will be doing my usual move of turning the voice volume down and enjoying the deep ARPG hiding beneath the surface.

And that’s it for this week! What will you be playing? Let us know in the comments below.