I think I can speak for everyone British when I say I cannot wait for this damn summer heat to be over! I’ll spare everyone the usual rants about British humidity as it’s boring, but I hope everyone is having a good day!
Things are business as usual over here. I am slowly catching up on my projects and gaming. In a rare change this year, I had to hold off on covering all demos. Next Fest is amazing for covering all these upcoming titles, but my plate is stacked to the point I can barely justify playing the demos. Sad faces all round, but I have to make some priorities. Between writing for Sassygamers, SteamDeckHQ, Grimdark Magazine, TheStrategyInformer and TurnBasedGames, I am wearing lots of hats. Enough about my usual intro rambles however, the main question is this: what video games am I covering today!
These indie double bills are much easier to write I’m noticing, so let us keep that going! Today I’m offering impression reviews of Sultan’s Game and Project Silverfish, two excellent games that deserve all the success they can.
Sultan’s Game
Huge thanks and apologies to the wonderful folks at 2P Games for this one! They have been incredibly supportive of the work I do here at SG, and my apologies to them for taking so long to get to Sultan’s Game. It launched all the way back in March, and it is one of those games that requires all your attention to delve deep into its contents.
At its heart, Sultan’s Game is all about survival as you are part of the court of a cruel ruler. With the aid of a mysterious woman with a bunch of cards, the Sultan pulls the player into a game that’s like a mix of Hostel, Saw, and Yugioh. Every week, you are provided a random challenge and if you fail to carry it out, you die. No pressure then! Sultans Game oozes atmosphere with its visual design, and it is a lovely mix of visual novel, management and survival that really drew me in.
While the player juggles the sadistic whims of his master in order to survive, there are a ton of other things to manage. You have to be cautious of your allies and your spouse, manage your household and raise funds, and deal with the political knives of rivals at court while maintaining a position within the Sultan’s kingdom. There are a ton of things to do in the game and with its brutal difficulty curve, death is inevitable. Sultan’s Game has a bunch of modifiers and roguelike elements where you can unlock stuff to change your playthrough, and the amount of replayability on offer is staggering.
As you can imagine, Sultans Game is not for the faint hearted. Forget little games like playing hop scotch here, as the challenges the leader demands of the player delves into something a little darker than that. For example, one challenge might be to murder someone, while another is to engage in sex. The cards have different tiers too, and characters have their own matching tiers. A Silver card can only be used on characters of that same class for instance, while the Stone tier card can be used on lower tier.
Because of this, the player often has a bunch of difficult decisions to make, and all actions come with consequences. There was one instance where my character, on the final day of the ‘Kill someone’ deadline, had no choice but to kill his own wife to avoid being executed by the Sultan. That put a damper on my character’s mental state and he ended up dying soon after anyway. Supporters might get understandably pissed off with your actions over time and lose their trust in it. Once again, my character’s wife ended up leaving him after a few rampant sessions at the local brothels, so I would recommend avoiding those where possible.
Ever since its launch, Sultan’s Game has received a bunch of updates and a new content patch is in development that promises new storylines and characters, which is awesome. I’m also happy to report that it is a pleasant experience on the Steam Deck, and recent updates have greatly improved the interface on Valve’s most popular hardware to date. The text is still a bit small in places but leagues better than it was at launch.
Despite the early impression, Sultan’s Game is fantastic and might end up being the ultimate sleeper hit of 2025.
Project Silverfish
ADACA was one of my favorite games from 2022, and a hidden gem to this day. The mix of fast paced shooting with influences from Half Life and the separate Stalker extraction mode was an impressive one, and Project Silverfish is the developer’s second project. Siris Pendrake is the bright mind behind this one, and big thanks to them and Keymailer for providing me with a code!
Essentially, Project Silverfish takes on the original Stalker mode in ADACA and dials it up to ten. STALKER is the best way to describe this game, as it is a brutal open world exploration game where you must scavenge for supplies in a sea of monsters and rival factions, carrying out missions for the various commanders and so on. The graphical design is carried over from the first game, and I described it as ‘Playmobil Half Life’ back in the day. That has not changed with everything favoring models, and it reminds me of those Skyrim videos with all textures on ultra low. It might look rough, but like many games on the market, it is the gameplay and features where Project Silverfish really shines.
Despite the Early Access label, Project Silverfish brims with content and polish. The world is full of charm and craftsmanship, and while the game is brutally challenging, you get a ton of tools to help you out along the way.
Enemies hit hard, but they also go down quickly and the amount of world interaction allows for emergent gameplay. Too many modern games lack this, and the dynamic scenarios that flare up makes for some fun situations. Often I found myself getting wrecked by soldiers only to lure them into a pack of feral dogs. Another time, I was lost in an underground bunker and running low on resources, and you can only save your progress in a defined safe area such as an allied outpost.
I ran into another gang of marines but by some miracle, their gunfire following me running away as fast as possible attracted one of those radiation infused monsters to come investigating. Eventually I got out of the bunker with a ton of new loot, only to get killed by a random furry person armed with a shotgun.
While you get some nice survival things such as a carry limit that isn’t too punishing and hunger mechanics that aren’t too painful to deal with, death comes with a nasty price: you can only choose five items from your current loadout to bring forward, no matter how many things you have salvaged. This is the default difficulty setting, although the game comes with a few others including permadeath and easier modes. This makes every incursion into the wilderness a balance between risk and reward. You need to explore to survive, but messing up has consequences.
It is early days, but Project Silverfish is incredible for its early state. Already it is a deeply enjoyable and refreshing experience, and is more than worth the price tag.
