Originally published on Trevor Trove on March 8, 2016
Earlier today, the PlayStation Blog announced the lineup for their annual Spring Indie/Digital game sales event. Rebranding it “Launch Party” from “Spring Fever,” this year is focusing on six titles released at a discount on their PlayStation launch date. As previous year’s sales also highlighted new titles, I’m guessing the decision to rebrand is focusing more on the launch component. The sale has shifted slightly from years past. In previous years, a game was on sale for the entirety of it’s release week. This year’s sale seems to be encouraging pre-ordering for the discount instead.
After originally reading the blog post, I tweeted out something to the affect of increasing the sale from 4 weeks to 6 this year to milk more money out of me. Upon reviewing last year’s sale – which was eight weeks – I realized I had confused the Spring Fever and PLAY sales. Oops. Anyway…
The Lineup
The Preliminary Impressions
Salt and Sanctuary – Pitched as something of a 2D Dark Souls game, Salt and Sanctuary kicks off the event next week. Not quite sure that I’ll enjoy the gameplay (as I’m not a Souls kind of guy) but the art style caught my eye so I look forward to at least giving it a go. And while not Cross-Buy yet it will be once the Vita version is released. Hoping it of course doesn’t take as long as Axiom Verge from last year’s sale.
Day of the Tentacle Remaster – Originally announced at the first PlayStation Experience and then shown off at last year’s event, the second of the big Tim Schafer/LucasArts re-releases (between Grim Fandango and Full Throttle) arrives next, breathing new life into the nearly 23-year-old game. With this game coming out, maybe I’ll also revisit/finish Broken Age and Grim Fandango on my Vita during upcoming travels.
Enter the Gungeon – Another title originally shown off at the first PSX, Enter the Gungeon kicks off the April offerings of this promotion (I’m certainly curious as to why PlayStation is skipping March 29th; perhaps to give MLB The Show 16 a chance to shine on the PlayStation Store for a few days). Another in the long line of retro-designed Devolver Digital games, Enter the Gungeon looks to feature lots and lots and lots of shooting stuff. Should make for some good, mindless fun, like current PS Plust offering Broforce.
Stories: The Path of Destinies – Another instance of a visually-stunning art style that caught my eye, Stories: The Path of Destinies seems the most in line with my interests of the games so far: a choose-your-own-adventure action-RPG.
Invisible, Inc. – As someone who would love to put some time into XCOM 2 but doesn’t have a computer that can run it, Invisible, Inc. looks like it will scratch my turn-based strategy game itch. Plus it’s another beautiful-looking game. I think maybe I’m just really loving the kind of artwork indie-developers are putting into their games while the Triple-A space focuses on how big they can make theirs.
Alienation – Closing out the campaign, Housemarque delivers their follow-up to Resogun and spiritual successor to Dead Nation: Alienation. Having played it a bit at the PlayStation Experience in December, I walked away incredibly excited for their latest twin-stick shooter. I might even enjoy the online multiplayer in this one and play with some friends. Crazy!
So there’s my take on the titles in the sale: a couple of games I was definitely grabbing regardless of when they launched and a few more that I’d never heard about but have me intrigued. I plan on picking each of them up and writing up at least some cursory impressions of them as they launch, starting with Salt and Sanctuary next week.