Welcome to Digitally Downloaded’s regular catch-up news feature. With each issue we will bring you the best news that you may have missed. Grab the biggest mug you’ve got, fill it with your favourite brew, and catch up with us (and our favourite news anchor, Dee Dee)!
The Shapeshifting Detective prequel coming to consoles in May
With all honesty, the past year feels like a decade has actually gone by. The pandemic seems like it will never end. Winter lasted five years. Dark Nights With Poe and Munro was available for PC but not consoles. The list goes on, and continues to grow, but finally I can stop my massive FOMO regarding being unable to play Dark Nights With Poe and Munro. The Shapeshifting Detective‘s standalone prequel released via Steam last year, and I’ve been waiting as patiently as possible to get my hands on it for console. Really, though, any amount of time between a new D’Avekki game is beginning to feel like a lifetime; I love them so much that I’ve become greedy and just want more, more, more. That’s all a roundabout way of saying that the game will finally be launching for console: it will launch for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on May 4, with a Nintendo Switch version also in the works.
The Shapeshifting Detective, released late 2018, is a supernatural murder-mystery FMV game. It’s about, well, a shapeshifting detective who arrives in a small town to investigate a woman’s murder. Dark Nights With Poe and Munro does not require previous knowledge of The Shapeshifting Detective, and vice versa, but they fit together wonderfully in their own little world. Dark Nights With Poe and Munro follows two local radio hosts, John ‘Poe’ Pope and Ellis Munro. It contains six episodes, each with its own different story, and each with at least two endings based on the player’s decisions along the way. In addition to Poe and Munro’s actors, Klemens Koehring and Leah Cunard, keep an eye out for Aislinn De’Ath’s brief cameo as a certain familiar guesthouse owner. Guest voiceovers include Justin McElroy (The Adventure Zone, My Brother My Brother and Me), Jesse Cox (Monster Prom), and David Homb (1995’s Phantasmagoria).
D’Avekki Studios is a husband and wife team, basically the superhero duo of the FMV world. They started making murder mystery dinner party games in 2004 before launching their FMV game career with The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker in 2017. Dark Nights With Poe and Munro is the first title the developer is porting to consoles in-house. “Releasing on consoles ourselves is a huge step for us as developers but also an exciting moment for this game which was really designed to be played on a TV screen,” says D’Avekki Studios producer Lynda Cowles via a press release. It’s always exciting, even as a player, to see a developer blossom while also consistently pushing its previous limits.
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion launching later this month
Publishing any sort of serious news on April Fool’s Day is a risk, which is how I came this close to missing this news. Let’s be real: a game titled Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion would be a great gag game name – though apparently it is also a solid concept for a real game. Take on the role of a turnip who is… less than stellar. He gets evicted after not paying his taxes, and has to go on a quest to pay back that debt. Here’s a trailer:
The cast is made up of various food characters, so Turnip Boy isn’t the only veggie around. He’ll have to travel through dungeons to seek out rare treasure, encountering puzzles and enemies along the way. Gardening matters, as harvesting plants will help along the way. Turnip Boy will also have to erase his paper trail by ripping up tax documents. There are multiple endings, and which the player receives depends on how effective their fraud was.
Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion will be released on April 22 for PC/Mac/Linus (via Steam) and Nintendo Switch.
The Colonists optimised for console, releasing next month
There seem to be a lot of games coming to console for the first time these days, and I’m here for it. This next one is The Colonists, a settlement-building game where self-replicating robots build their dream town. The Colonists originally launched for PC via Steam in later 2018. The console version will be released for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on May 4.
After escaping Earth, the robots are searching the galaxy for their new home. Each robot has its own job, things like harvesting, fishing, transportation, and exploration. There are three Ages to progress through while building the settlement and advancing technology. The Campaign mode includes 14 missions split across two tracks, peaceful and military. There is also a sandbox mode and speed-run challenges.
This new console version has three differences to the original PC version. The controls have been redesigned to feel more natural. The user interface has been reimagined for use with controllers. Last, but clearly the most important: there are snazzy new robot hats!
Nekopara: Catboys Paradise is no longer a prank
Two years ago, Neko Works announced a joke game on April Fool’s Day – but it’s not a joke anymore. Nekopara: Catboys Paradise is now a real game, set to launch later this year for PC, iOS, and Android with English, Japanese, and Chinese (Traditional and Simplified) language support. Here’s the trailer:
The Nekopara titles traditionally follow cute girl-cats, but this one is all boys. The player takes over the coffee shop and home of their late grandfather but is at a loss for how to make the shop continue successfully. A school suggests taking in some knowledgable, in-house trainees. And that’s what they sent. There is one surprise though: they aren’t human trainees, they are humanoid cats!
Run the coffee shop with four boy-cats named Laurier, Fennel, Sage, and Dill. Luckily, cat clerks aren’t so uncommon anymore. I can’t imagine why, can you?
