This week in PC games: Marathon, Slay The Spire 2, a promising Disco-like RPG and a monastic garden mystery

Happy this week all! Some weeks, I do a couple of paragraphs of preamble before listing the new PC releases, but this week, there is no time, for the videogames are many, curious and capacious. Bungie’s latest shooter and the return of Spire are among the larger drops in a deluge that makes me yearn for the quieter, pre-broadband period when the global economy could only support one videogame a month, and they were all delivered to your PC by horse and cart. Without further ado, FEED THE MAW.

Monday 2nd March

• Finally, a life sim that understands the medicinal properties of marigold. In The Abbess’ Garden, you’re a 17th century peasant restoring an old botanical sanctuary. It’s not just a chillout game – there are secrets among the weeds.

Tuesday 3rd March

• Descend a shaft of threats and obstacles in Sad God. Touch an orb. Then, return to the surface before the lava claims you.
• The Legend of Khiimori is an open world courier game in which you plan gruelling horseback expeditions across 13th century Mongolia, releasing this day in early access.
• Esoteric Ebb (pictured) is a single-player CRPG in the Disco Elysium tradition of addled detectives and character stats that talk to you. It casts you as a cleric investigating a mysterious teashop explosion in the run-up to an election.
• Only when you have felt the full gravity of choice should you dare question the release of another Legacy Of Kain remaster – in this case, Legacy of Kain: Defiance Remastered.
• “The landscape is editable, and consists of large square squares. If you suddenly dreamed about it, you will be able to dig out a mountain, or on the contrary build it!” Humanica, this sentence from your Steam blurb gave me a pleasing headache. I also like the organic hilliness of your prehistoric city-building terrain.
• Luxman Moonlit Market is Balatro but you’re running a night market, with Fleischer-style rubber hose art direction.
• Scott Pilgrim EX is another side-scrolling brawler adaptation of the Canadian comicbook series.

Wednesday 4th March

Thursday 5th March

• The early access launch of Slay the Spire 2 has really crept up on me. This is the sequel to the roguelite deckbuilder that launched a billion roguelite deckbuilders.
• Card Cultivation is kind of Cultist Simulator but set in a world of Chinese myth.
• The soul of a painterly cyborg world must be saved in Planet of Lana II, a thoughtful kid-and-pet puzzle-platformer.
• Less painterly, and more Schwarzeneggerly: the bare-chested 80s sword-spaffing of Age of Barbarians Chronicles.
• Here Comes The Swarm is an early access survival RTS in which you send out troops to level up, build up an outpost, and then watch it all disappear under a tide of gigabeetles. The devs stress that it has a pause button.
• At long last, it’s time for Bungie’s Marathon reboot – an extraction FPS set in the same lore-drenched universe as the singleplayer 90s shooters.
• Originally released for the Playdate, Ratcheter DX is a Game Boy-esque Zeldalike in which you are trying to escape/reactivate a sunken ice base.

Friday 6th March

• It’s the 19th century, and you are escorting a carriage full of pilgrims through an enchanted wood. Food supplies are low. Here’s a bow and rucksack. Try to get home before sundown, Mr Peregrino. Some of those rocks look a bit… tentacular.
• It’s the early 20th century, and you are one of 200 poor souls on the frontlines of Over The Top: WW1. To the ladders, men! The special effects are starting. Here is a large shovel and a freshly starched mustache. Get out there and flatten a building, for King and Country and unlockable equipment.
• It’s Star Trek O’ Clock, and you are a miner on a desert world investigating a lost science expedition while probing the secrets of the Astral Resource Corporation. Go forth, heroine of Aethus! There are layers of mystery to this world, also layers of lava.
• It’s the Post-Apocalypse, and you are the underground technician in charge of repairing Stroggs, basically. Do your surgery in a timely manner or your patients might wake up. Keep the Angel Engine operational at all cost.
• It’s whatever time period is most abundant in frogs.

RPS staff plans this week include: trying to work out which of the above deserves an individual article. Ollie has a hankering for Marathon, James isn’t averse to some Planet of Lana, and Mark is… oh I don’t know, I think it involves cars. We may successfully have manouevred Julian into writing about Spire 2’s early access, but he could yet take the coward’s way out and enlist a freelancer. Jeremy, Dion and Callum are still sticking it to Resident Evil: Requiem, amongst other things. How about you?