[Yes, this is what Hylics 2 really looks like. Any more questions?]

It’s Friday, and it’s definitely time for  video game Deep Cuts on Substack, folks. It’s interesting - I can feel the newsletter morphing beneath my feet, as it moves more towards ‘things of interest’ than longform writing.

Though it has both, now! Has it attained its final form? Only time will tell.

- Simon, curator

The Current: New Games To Consider

• Death Come True (Switch, iOS, Android) is a demise-heavy FMV adventure and the newest title from Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka. 📰

• The deranged but amazing-looking Hylics 2 (PC) feels like a long-lost RPG from the 1970s. 📰

• SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom – Rehydrated (Switch, PC, PS4, Xbox) is selling remarkably well, but is a pretty slavish update of the 2003 original. 📰

• Ninjala (Switch) is a Splatoon-ish looking free to play multiplayer brawler with cosmetics and a modicum of charm. 📰

• The Almost Gone (PC, Switch, iOS, Android) is a puzzle-box game which has you poking and prodding at beautiful miniature dioramas of homes. 📰

The Culture: Game Culture & Deep Dives

• Why The Last Of Us II is a “narrative experiment depicting what would actually happen if a real human being behaved like a video game character.” 📰

• This 10-year journey of an indie game dev from the Philippines is personal, interesting, & has twists and turns. 📰

• Bot mafias have been wreaking havoc in World Of Warcraft, leading to 75,000 player (well, bot!) bans in the last month. 📰

• How Magic: The Gathering’s biggest fan landed the role of a lifetime as its head designer. 📰

• What famous game logos look like in Arabic (extremely good, actually). 📰

The Past: Game History

• Deus Ex at 20: The oral history of a pivotal PC game. 📰

• A great Shinji Mikami interview about 1999’s Dino Crisis, “about horror game design, difficulty, and how to engage players on a deeper level”. 📰

• The real story of the people who legally changed their name to Turok. 📰

• A new prototype of (the Western-developed) Mario Artist: Paint Studio for the Nintendo 64 DD has surfaced. 📽

• Topdown GTA-a-like Shakedown Hawaii is coming to the Wii U and Wii later this year, because the dev really converting to odd, defunct platforms! 📰

The Other Goodness

• A great video essay on the strange reality of Rollercoaster Tycoon. 📽

• Robert Yang’s new game Hard Lads is typically outrageous and thought-provoking. 📰

• Don’t generally link to previews, but found this piece on what it’s like to actually play Cyberpunk 2077 very useful. (It’s as expansive a game as billed.) 📰

• On LGBT+ video game streamers and the importance of communities. 📰

• Huh, Island Saver (a Top 20 free game in both Europe and the U.S. on Switch) is an educational game commissioned by a UK bank and has a 'tax bot' in it. 📰

Thanks for reading, and see you next week!
Simon.