Welcome back to This Week In Games Australia, a look at all the games you’ll be playing in the next seven days.
I don’t think 2023 will have a more loaded launch week than this one. And by ‘loaded’ I don’t mean that there’s a ton of games coming out in the next few days. There really aren’t. The week ahead is so bare that I struggled to pull together a full list of titles for this week’s TWIGA column. The reason is Hogwarts Legacy, which launches on Friday. No other major publisher seems to want to go near it.
Hogwarts letters are in the post, whether you want one or not. People are preparing their Howlers to release onto social media as the Discourse goes into overdrive. Anti-transgender fuckwits and JK Rowling supporters are rubbing their hands together with glee, transgender advocates are planning not to play it all, and a generation of people that grew up reading Harry Potter (and don’t live their lives online) are stranded in middle.
It’s going to be a long week.
Update: 8:28am 6/2/23: We found more games! Scorchlands, Weird and Unfortunate Things Are Happening, Daily Dadish, Betty & Earl, Nadir, Perseverance, and Legion of Doom, welcome to the list.– David
February 7
Weird And Unfortunate Things Are Happening (PC)
What a great title. Weird and Unfortunate Things are Happening is perhaps best described as an Earthbound-like. Not enough of those in the world, if you ask me. To the rest of the world, it seems like the city of Daybreak has simply vanished off the face of the Earth. In reality, the city is trapped, overrun by strange creatures that bend its inhabitants to their will. This is a turn-based RPG that throws survival mechanics into the mix in some really interesting ways. I’m very keen to play this, but Ruby is in a full-blown froth about it. Expect more words from us on this game when it launches tomorrow. Everything you see in the trailer above is from quite a while ago, so bear that in mind.
February 8
Daily Dadish (PC)
Daily Dadish is a puzzle platformer somewhere between Celeste and Super Mario Bros. 3, and it comes with a year’s worth of content. The game’s 365 levels make it the perfect play-everyday title. What appeals to me about Daily Dadish is that all of its many levels are hand-crafted. It would have been very easy to implement a proc-gen level system, but developer Thomas K. Young has gone the extra mile. I appreciate the dedication, and I like that it’s designed for short-and-sweet daily play. Putting it on the list.
Nadir: A Grimdark Deckbuilder (NS)
I believe we’ve written about Nadir in previous TWIG columns, but it’s out on Switch this week and well worth a look. If you loved Darkest Dungeon and have been enjoying that since it dropped on Game Pass, Nadir will absolutely be worth your time. Grimy horrorcore meets crunchy card tactics. Great gear.
Scorchlands (PC)
Ok, hear me out.
What if: Bird War? That’s the central narrative pitch behind Scorchlands, a strategic city builder/colony sim about carving out a home on a hostile moon. I really like the look of this one. It’s doing a lot with its aesthetic, but I’ve been chasing something to fill the Anno 1800-shaped hole in my heart (nothing happened to Anno, I’ve just played a lot of it). Scorchlands looks like it will do very nicely. It’s been in early access for a while now but enters full release in Aus on Wednesday.
February 9
Perseverance: Complete Edition (NS)
Perseverance is a long-running and decidedly dark visual novel about a town called Grey Falls. Players are charged with uncovering the mysteries of the town, presented through the perspectives of two wildly different protagonists. If you love your creeping dread, this will be one to pick up.
Re:|THM – once upon a time (PC)
RE:thm is a rhythm-based RPG about going backwards through time. Everything runs backwards — every new person you meet is a permanent farewell, every rain drop is pulled from the ground and hurled into the sky, and the story begins at the conclusion and moves backwards to its opening. It’s a game with some big ideas, and I really like the slightly weird vibe it gives off. Going on my list this week for sure.
February 10
Barkhan (PC)
I think everyone that has written about Barkhan, or made content about it, since it was announced around seven months ago, has compared it to Dune II. It’s a fair comparison — Barkhan is a science fiction RTS set on a desert world where three clans war endlessly over rare minerals. It wears its inspirations pretty loudly on its sleeve. But, as RTS fans know, these days, a win is a win. Anyone making anything in the beautiful and complex RTS genre is to be celebrated.
Betty & Earl (PC)
Betty & Earl is a top-down puzzle game where you control everything at the same time, with the goal of reuniting its two protagonists. When you move, so does the world around you. You’ll need to pay close attention to where and how if you want to bring Betty and Earl back together. Simple, smart, effective design.
Five Nights At Freddy’s: Security Breach (XSX)
Five Nights At Freddy’s: Security Breach gets a retail launch on Xbox this week. If you were looking to add it to your collection, you’ll be able to do so on Friday.
Legion of Doom (NS)
Legion of Doom is a Vampire Survivors like all about survivng wave after wave of incoming enemies, but with a twist. Where Vampire Survivors replicates the bullet hell experience of dodging incoming fire to stay alive, in Legion of Doom, it’s up to your enemies to get out of your way. The goal is to put yourself in their path and make a nuisance of yourself, which is honestly very appealing.
If I can offer the developers a kernel of critique, however? Naming your game after a popular DC Comics brand with its own animated movie was perhaps not the best idea. I found it very hard to unearth your game on Google and YouTube.
Hogwarts Legacy (PS5, XSX, PC)
Alright. Let’s talk about it.
Hogwarts Legacy is your standard AAA multihyphenate — a 3D, open-world, action-adventure RPG stuffed full of mechanics and places to explore, with a lengthy campaign and a well-known IP attached to it. While there are some outlets that have received early code for review purposes, WB Games has declined to supply Kotaku Australia with a code for coverage. Fair enough. As the publisher, that is its right. The PlayStation 5 version of the game’s digital Deluxe Edition, however, grants a 72-hour early access window that starts tonight at midnight AEDT. I’ll be hopping in then so I can at least bring you some impressions by launch day. I’ve also made a donation for $120 — the same amount as my preorder — to Transcend Australia, because I believe in putting my money where my mouth is.
It’s hard to know what to say about Hogwarts Legacy, other than I really wish Jo Rowling hadn’t become the person that she is. A conversation I’ve had again and again in the lead-up to this game’s release is how fucking sad many fans feel that a game we have waited our entire adult lives to play has been marred by Rowling’s continued and noisy inability to deal with her own prejudices. If it had launched even five years ago, Hogwarts Legacy would be a huge moment. Today, it’s a huge moment for all the wrong reasons. There are a great many people that worked on it — from the developer and publisher side, right down to PR, social media managers, and even retail workers — who will be relieved to finally shove it out the door and out of their lives.
The game will be a huge success. It is simply too big to fail. But the pushback against anyone that has asked fans to think about who their purchase truly benefits has been enlightening. It’s a reminder that, while many are quick to dismiss the games industry’s corporate overlords as the worst and most craven creations of the capitalist system, uncritical consumption is still somehow king, and upsetting when disturbed.
To our transgender readers, look after yourselves this week. We’ll be thinking of you. To the developers at Avalanche and Portkey Games who just wanted to make a cool Harry Potter game, we know you worked hard, and we look forward to seeing what you’ve made. To the fans who feel conflicted about playing it, we understand.
To Joanne, go to hell.
Comments
18 responses to “This Week In Games Australia: Hogwarts Letters Begin To Arrive (Threatening)”
I don’t think people getting Hogwarts legacy are being “uncritical”, it’s possible to support this game without being anti-transgender. I think the broader discussion has still been a positive, because it brings these concerns to the forefront. Having said that, I recently had a conversation with a bunch of friends who are excited about the game and they had no idea about any of the JK Rowling tweets or the discussions around the game. And I get the feeling that’s a large percentage of casual gamers.
I think you’re wrong. I think the vast majority of Harry Potter fans don’t give a damn about JK Rowling’s thoughts, feelings and comments on transgender. They’re not stuck in the middle. They just want to go to Hogwarts.
I have no doubt that her comments are painful to transgender people, their friends, families and advocates, but I think the hand wringing over this game is largely limited to them and to a handful of vocal games journalists and streamers.
Personally I find Rowling’s comments objectionable. I recognise that she, like everyone else, is entitled to her opinion, but I wish she’d kept hers to herself. However that doesn’t in any way diminish my love for Harry Potter or the Wizarding World, and I’m very much looking forward to the game. The Steam numbers suggest that many other gamers feel the same way
That was a great take and possibly the best article so far on the matter. Identifying that the decision to support or not the support the game isn’t a binary decision, leaving many in the middle because there’s many factors to it. Though as Jimmy pointed out above, I strongly doubt most potential players know or care about JK Rowling and her ass-backwards ideology on transgender people. It’s easy to fall victim to a narrow mindset yourself when you live and breathe these topics of discussion daily in the workplace and online, when the truth is outside your social bubble people are living vastly different lives, with their own struggles.
I support transgender people and wish for the world to become a more accepting place for them, as equally so for any other good hearted person. There’s so much to consider when coming to this belief, but David and the like favour flogging everyone with the same stamp of either Approved or Cancelled. And this is sad. It makes them no different than their aggressor. Support for political or social ideals are never reached by flipping a coin, it’s more like rolling a fist full of D20s.
I’ll be buying the game for my daughter who’s absolutely obsessed with Harry Potter and knows nothing of the moron JK Rowling.
I’m firmly in the camp that doesn’t give a fuck about a stupid rich person on Twitter. I don’t know why Kotaku or anyone else gives her oxygen with the coverage. How it’s taken all of you five years to realise she’s always been a scumbag with bad takes 95% of the time I don’t know. It means the gaming press weren’t reading the regular newspapers ten plus years ago, because she’s been dragged over hot coals over it for years. She’s always been like this, nothing has changed. Becoming rich didn’t magically make her a nice person via association with a magical series.
Cover the game and pretend the hag doesn’t exist, like the rest of us who couldn’t stand her inane, out of touch babbling over a decade ago.
This is a genuine question and responses will assist my learning.
Is it possible to support people who identify as transgender whilst also feeling that people who were born with female specific physiology have the right to privacy and protection in some specific circumstances?
Thank you.
Of course it is.
The idea these beliefs are contradictory is a strategic narrative.
Isn’t that Rowling’s position, given the totality of all her statements?
Based on all I’ve seen of what Rowling has said, yes.
Which is likely also why the articles that rage about her strangely never seem to have any quotes of the transphobia she’s supposedly running about spewing 24/7.
They basically just play a shell game of linking to previous articles, which link to previous articles, etc, as if its proof of anything but them echoing their own narrative endlessly.
I for one can’t wait to see reviews from certain corners coming out trashing the game in some petty last ditch effort, ever fueled by the utter fuckin’ delusion that they’re totally hurting Rowling by doing it.
In the end everyone will hate it cause it’s going to be broken, microtransaction filled, grindy and unfun to play. Cause honestly licensed IP games just turn out every single time.
Demos so far indicate the bugs aren’t anything major, there’s no MTX but paid DLC out the wazoo and levelling is linked only to gear while spells come from questing. There’s plenty of video summaries on Youtube if you want to see longer sections of gameplay and an explanation of game systems.
The first reviews are in, with embargo ending today, and they’re all pretty positive, with many of them positively glowing, so things are looking good.
So $120 is the price to throw away your ethics?
Here’s what I think about your little Hogwarts drama:
I don’t think it’s your place as a reviewer to try and enforce your worldview on your readers. I don’t give two shits about JK Rowlings positions on trans people; anymore than I give two shits about your opinion on performing open brain surgery.
I’m a writer myself and so I know personally for a fact that neither of you are especially qualified to lecture anyone about anything; aside from “What’s on in Gaming this Week” or the Harry Potter Universe, a young adult *fiction series about a young boy wizard who undergoes transformative changes during his rite of passage”;
The sad fact of the matter is this: Neither of opinions especially matter overmuch to me; or indeed, anyone.
What really gets to me here is you serving me a whole bunch of moral condemnation alongside the corporate shill you are paid to shill to me, from corporations that have and will continue to much more horrible things to the entire species than say whatever it is JK said on Twitter about trans not being women or whatever it was.
Like the blatant hypocrisy of you entering press releases into ChatGPT for months and then attaching yoiur political polemic is both unprofessional and deeply insulting.
Let me spell it out to you, I and I suspect if intelligence follows a bell curve, most of your other readers too, if they needed to get an opinion on trans people – they wouldn’t get it from you; or Kotaku in general. There’s no shortage of sociology papers out there; there’s no shortage of actual trans people to ask how they feel or indeed just already view them as human beings like you should already.
I already have access to the sum of human knowledge; if I am so direly pressed I can always ask a trans person what they think. In the age of the network, a video game … blogger seems a poor intermediary for trans rights; it’s kind of like sexual harassment and pandas – those things don’t really have anything to do with each other.
But God is it insulting to watch you advertise and give a platform to marketed skinner boxes that are often poorly diguised poker machines designed to part the deplorable incel with their cash.
Ah but don’t forget to serve this week’s listicle with a serving of what a bore it is to be given all t hese free games to review, and how you only get so few gaaaaames this particular week of the year.
You’re not helping, I don’t even get how you think this helps at all.
Thank you for your comment. Wish I’d read it before making mine (we’ll see if it survives moderation). Its worth mentioning the cynicism of the authors. They know they aren’t moving the needle. They know they may actually be doing the opposite. The question becomes – Who is this for? Who do you actually care about because it sure as heck isn’t trans people. Cue hello darkness.
They already deleted two of my posts for pointing out the above raised by many other commenters (no one buys that these articles are out of genuine concern) about the inappropriateness of their articles. Their interest lies in defending psychopaths on Twitter, not real trans people.
The shame of it all is that there were so many interesting conversations to be had around transgenerism and the wider discourse which was ceded and squandered by people who, in my humble opinion, don’t actually care about trans people. But who do so love the sound of their own voices and those sweet, sweet Twitter likes. You’re welcome to them. What a waste. Has been interesting to read the comments – thanks fam. If you were unable to finish my comment without concluding “obvious transphobe” then you are very much a part of the problem. Have a great day. Maybe even try and enjoy yourselves! Much love.
I think the pushback is more around the idiocy of labelling everyone as a transhobe for wanting to play a Harry Potter game rather than this dreamed up pro-capitalist narrative happening in the article.
I support JK Rowling.