There’s a theme to our recommendations this week: Games that feel old but are new (and a bonus older game that’s new to us). Take a trip down memory lane, or figure out what all the buzz is about with our official recommendations. Check out the full list below for details.

Pyre

I’m happy to announce that we have the Supergiant games catalog here on itch.io! Relive the early days of indie with Bastion, hack and slash in the future of Transistor, or check out my favorite NBA Jam/ X-Com mashup, Pyre.

Taking place in two distinct halves, Pyre is at once a heartrending tale of exile and companionship, and an action packed battle between two teams playing fantasy-basketball one character at a time. The mechanics of Pyre are interesting, but I kept coming back to the game’s stellar character writing. Each character has an interesting and distinct arc that culminates in the game’s unique choice to free them or keep them on your team.

Pyre is excellent and I’m happy to say it’s on our site.

Memoirs of Magic

I’m interested in retro-style FPS, but I keep getting put off by the genre’s commonly used dark aesthetics. Memoirs of Magic has come to save me from this fate by taking classic controls (strafing, jumping, and shooting all to the MAX) and applying them to a goofy universe of magic. Instead of sick machine guns, you’re doing anime spells or using hilariously drawn blunderbusses. Every time I used a weapon for the first time I found myself smiling as I discovered its weird properties.

Best of all: Memoirs of Magic is free and ready for you now.

Micro Mages

Continuing our “retro but new” theme is Micro Mages. Developed for the NES, Micro Mages is a vertically scrolling Mega-man-alike that can be played with up to 4 players. The fact that you can play it on Nintendo’s first console is a fun trick, but it’s only a distraction from how good the game itself is. Yes the core jumping and shooting loop is familiar, but the game makes itself unique through how small the player character is, and the fact that all of the levels are designed vertically. These are subtle changes but it makes the world feel that much more dangerous and exciting.