Games coming out in November that aren’t Grand Theft Auto VI

Grand Theft Auto VI has, predictably, sucked most of the oxygen out of the room when it comes to November releases. But while Rockstar’s market-stopping latest is restricted to consoles, there’s still a chance for plucky PC devs to get a look in. And actually, there’s some lovely stuff coming up…

What’s better than sending a canary into the mine? Yes, that’s right: sending a squad of heavily armed, talking dogs into the mine. Canarines, if you will. Except in this scenario the mines are alien planets, the dogs are doing their own mining, there’s also some base building, and it’s possible to bend gravity in order to help shift resources and fight back the swarm. I’ve crafted a perfect comparative example, I think we can all agree. If you need any more clarification, think Deep Mutt Galactic. You can read Phil’s full Gravhounds review shortly.

MMORPG ArcheAge had a lot going for it, but its sparkling ideas were crushed under the weight of excessive microtransactions. Chronicles seeks to redress that by taking the revolutionary approach of just letting you buy the game up front and then not being a dick about it once you do. Within that framework, the game’s fluid combat, expansive exploration, and what have been described as “soulslike” dungeons, promise much.

Offer up a combination of base management and tower defence, and I immediately turn into hopeful putty. Building on FTL’s template, Hull Rupture casts you as a despotic AI in control of a human-made ship careening across space. There are people onboard, but they’re simply a resource to be put to work, used as cannon fodder against hostile boarding parties, or perhaps even turned into fuel. As if that wasn’t appealing enough, there’s something of SNK’s Metal Slug in the charismatic 2D visuals.

I played the first Escape Academy with my partner and found myself surprisingly smitten. The puzzles were challenging, the setting pleasantly surreal, and who doesn’t love escape rooms? The sequel promises the expected escalation of complexity and ambition, alongside a much bigger campus hub – itself one big puzzle to unravel.

Dreadmoor gives off immediate Dredge vibes (it contains almost all of the same letters, some of which are even in the same order, for goodness sake), but pulls you down into the action via its first-person perspective. You’ll be expected to fish, scavenge, and craft upgrades for your boat as you try not to get dragged into the depths by the soggy monsters that lurk below.

A missing persons mystery in which you investigate the disappearance of your parents, Hope in the City twists its noir setup by casting you as an artist who uses her sketching ability to spot the details that others miss. From the trailer the voice acting and writing seem impressively naturalistic – with any luck, not a single person will utter the word ‘hella’ at any point during the game.

One of those mash-ups that seems obvious after it has been suggested to you, Auroch Digital has teamed up with Vampire Survivors dev Poncle to blast Warhammer 40,000 and Age of Sigmar into the Survivors template. The art style is an immediate fit, and here you can recruit allies to help against more extreme bosses. Wonderfully, progression is via the collection of paint pots.

Hope is too busy in the city trying to find her parents to hang out at the spooky hot-springs-retreat setting of Fullbright’s latest. Perhaps that’s just as well, given that the Gone Home devs’ latest project is a focused, short-form story about loss in which you interact with other wandering patrons and reckon with your past. But those lovely dithered ‘90s-style graphics are enough on their own to make me want to play it.

Another project that looks like a forgotten Sega Saturn release (although the devs are specifically going for PS1-era visuals here), Derelikt is more forthright. A retro-horror FPS that evokes aspects of Doom 3, System Shock, and Probe’s brilliant Alien Trilogy, Derelikt pops you aboard a failing space station and tasks you with figuring out what is unnervingly wrong.

Set aside, if you can, the fact that the game’s title sounds like something an exasperated English tourist in the ‘70s might bellow while trying to tell a local shop keeper what fruit they want to buy, and there’s plenty to get excited about. Appulse blends pinball with top-down shooter and roguelike mechanics to create something that can’t easily be compared to anything that’s come before. The closest parallel that comes to mind is the lamentably underappreciated Flipnic: Ultimate Pinball. So yes, more of this kind of thing, please.

On its Steam page, GrimKeep is described as a “roguelite dice-builder in a nightmare fairytale”. The gorgeous-yet-gnarly visuals support that claim, and in combination with the setup make it very tempting to describe this as Slay the Spire with dice… A lofty bar to clear, but early signs are positive.