While its biggest hitters have been Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2, XDefiant, and Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, May has also seen indie games thrive. While some of these games, including Animal Well and Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, have clearly gotten the respect they deserve, in the past week alone, three standout games flew under the radar among all the AAA releases.
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is a remake of one of the most influential video game RPGs ever made, and it just exited early access on Steam and launched for consoles on May 23. Zet Zillions is a quirky roguelike card game with an enthralling gameplay loop and character designs that I won’t be forgetting anytime soon. Finally, there’s Starstruck Vagabond, a chill sci-fi shipping game created by Second Wind’s Yahtzee Croshaw. These three games are all quite different from each other, but that also makes it more likely that one of the games will speak to your specific tastes.
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord
There’s a good chance that many gamers under 30 have never heard of Wizardry before. That’s a shame, as it’s actually a very influential RPG series of games. It was one of the earliest titles that adapted the formula of tabletop games like Dungeons & Dragons for digital screens and went on to influence the creators of now-beloved video game RPG series like Final Fantasy. Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was the first game in the series, and The Making of Karateka developer Digital Eclipse created a 3D remake of the game.
It’s similar to the treatment Colossal Cave got in 2023, and hopefully, just like Colossal Cave, it gives a whole new generation a chance to learn about and experience what makes a classic so special. In typical Digital Eclipse fashion, a lot of respect was shown for the original. Players can toggle between the old and new gameplay settings, and with a single button press, players can bring up the original version of Wizardry while playing. PC gamers, those with a reverence for the classics, and RPG fans should definitely check this one out.
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is available now for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch.
Zet Zillions
Mechanically, Zet Zillions is reminiscent of games like Slay the Spire. It’s a card-battler with a roguelike structure, which means players build decks and then have to fight their way through a series of card battles with a limited amount of health, slowly improving over each run. What makes Zet Zillions stand out is the funkiness of its presentation and the ideas it brings to the table for its cards. The pitch is that players are exploring space on a planet-ship named Baby Violence and work with a crew of characters with quirky names like Foam Gun in order to overpopulate and ultimately destroy the planets that get in their way.
Zet Zillions’ art design is instantly striking, and the game constantly weirded me out as I did things like combine humanoid trash with a junk pile to create a “meatball” that you can then throw at a plant to damage it. That weirdness makes it a truly enthralling space oddity. I couldn’t stop playing, partially because its roguelike loop was engaging and partially because I couldn’t wait to see what idea encounter, card, or character Zet Zillions would throw at me next. Fans of collectible card games, roguelikes, and games that aren’t bashful about being a bit odd will love this game from OTA IMON Studios and Raw Fury.
For now, Zet Zillions is only available on PC via Steam.
Starstruck Vagabond
If you’ve been a longtime follower of Yahtzee Croshaw, the game critic and developer behind YouTube series like Zero Punctuation on The Escapist and Fully Ramblomatic on Second Wind, you may have heard of Starstruck Vagabond. If you’re not, then know that this is a pixel-art space delivery game where the players must deliver packages between planets and whole solar systems while making their way through the game’s story.
It’s a sci-fi take on the busy work-life sim, as players keep their ship clean, micromanage a small crew of characters, and deliver materials. The readability of Starstruck Vagabond’s UI is a bit clunky, but its systems can still make for some fun emergent moments, especially at times when your ship is damaged mid-delivery. If you’ve followed Yahtzee’s content for years but never actually played one of his games (he’s made a few), then Starstruck Vagabond is definitely worth your time.
Starstruck Vagabond is available now on PC.
