Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week – our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! Three weeks! Three weeks is all it took before Booked For The Week patron saint Gene Wolfe got mentioned again. Welcome back Gene. It’s like you never left.
Who doesn’t love a pirate game, especially a pirate game that involves racing your ships around an archipelago of islands? And, extra-especially, a pirate game that’s currently on sale? Glory Islands, from Rio Grande Games, typically retails for $45, but Amazon has it on sale right now for the oddly-specific price of $32.17. To save you a calculation, that’s a 28% discount. Not bad.
In Glory Islands, you’ll be dropping off your scurvy crew onto the spaces in the hope of winning treasure and scoring points via a fun mishmash of different mechanics that adds up to a shipshape whole. Ship movement is governed by playing numeric cards from your hand that also have special powers, such as the five allowing you to pause and drop a second pirate. But be careful, as using too many high-value cards will cost you points at game end. Occupying an island space wins you small bonuses but, once an island is full, it bags a bunch of points for the player with the most crew members there.
Glory Islands is a fast, fun, family-friendly board game that doesn’t have the depth to sustain itself over repeat plays or for hardcore hobbyists, but it’s plenty enjoyable if you pick it up at sale price. Getting the balance right between doing well in the race, while still hitting the spaces you need to score with your crew and not incurring a penalty for sailing too recklessly is surprisingly hard. And there’s real tension in watching where other players drop their sailors, as islands you think are in the bag can swing away from you with surprising speed.
The game also comes with neat wooden ships and sailor pieces, plus miniature barrels of rum you can stockpile to really feel like a miniature pirate king.
Matt Thrower is a contributing freelance writer for IGN, specializing in tabletop games. You can reach him on BlueSky at @mattthr.bsky.social.
A tail of mystery.
In this charming indie, an aspiring writer gets lost in a scenic coastal destination while searching for inspiration. Diana Caproni wanders Borga Marina, making friends and solving mysteries in this low-intensity detective story.
Italian developer Memorable Games has crafted a gorgeous setting that serves as an ode to Ligurian communities and Mediterranean vistas. The location and sleuthing format also recall seminal adventure titles of yesteryear – particularly the sun-soaked vibrancy of the Broken Sword series.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Ticking a lot of boxes.
We are back with another edition of Box Art Brawl and things are about to get puzzley.
Before we dive into this week’s match-up, however, let’s take a look at what went down last time when we put the NES’ Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom under the microscope. Despite what we thought were two pretty sweet covers, it was the Western design that took a commanding win, snatching up 82% of the vote and leaving Japan in the dust with the remaining 18%. Yikes.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
New Mobile Suits and more.
Bandai Namco is still showing support for last year’s release Gundam Breaker 4 and to get the new year underway it’s released a “free March update”.
This allows you to acquire the ‘GQuuuuuux’ and ‘Gundam EX’ from the shop with in-game currency. In addition to these new mobile suits, there are also additional builder parts, paint patterns, diorama objects and photo poses as well as “new Master Skill settings” and various other game improvements.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
Update: Here’s a look at the Definitive Edition.
There hasn’t been a new Banjo-Kazooie game for many years now, but there are still plenty of fans out there eager for more.
Although it’s not a game, First 4 Figures has shared a sneak peek of its new statue – Banjo’s sister Tooty, who is captured by Gruntilda in Rare’s original Nintendo 64 adventure. Pre-orders open on 18th March 2025, with a $10 discount included if you sign up to the email. No price or release date has been revealed just yet.
Read the full article on nintendolife.com
I get that in-world the whole appeal of Dune’s Arrakis is all of that spice it harbours, but to be honest the giant sandworms are a bit of a dealbreaker for me. Even still, I have to admit that Dune: Awakening looks pretty neat even with that ever present threat, and a new trailer all about exploring the desert planet that dropped this week has helped pique my interest a little further. For starters, that desert bike looks pretty nifty, my time in Sable taught me that I love a good zoom through beautiful, sandy vistas, and this looks to be similar, even if Dune: Awakening’s world is a bit more hostile.
Remember when Nvidia announced that Half-Life 2 RTX mod way back in, crikey, 2023? Yeah, I didn’t realise how long it had been either. To be perfectly honest I thought it had already come out, but apparently not, because just this week Nvidia shared that Half-Life 2 RTX is getting a demo next week on March 18th. No, the full mod still doesn’t have a release date, but when do any game projects ever release quickly after they were announced?
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A new week, a new Avowed update, and a pretty hefty one has arrived at that. Before we get on to some of the more notable changes, over on Obsidian’s forum pages where you can read the full patch notes, the developer shared that in the coming weeks it plans to release a roadmap that will “go over some of the plans we have that will be coming to the game over the upcoming year.” Whether that be DLC, free content, or just some planned gameplay changes, I couldn’t tell you, your guess is as good as mine.
People love to go on and on about how good Titanfall 2’s campaign mode is, and they’d be right to do so, but really we all know there’s one specific level we have in mind when it comes to the sidelined shooter: the time travel one. I don’t care for shooters all that much, online or offline ones, yet I still gave a go because the time travel level really appealed to me mechanically. Dishonored 2’s similarly structured time travel section wooed me similarly, so I was very pleased to discover the newest trailer for Tenet of the Spark this week, an action-adventure game that is basically Titanfall 2 and Dishonored 2’s time travel levels made into an entire game.
