Hidden Gems of Game Design Vol 39
Plenty of amazing games go unnoticed and are not played widely for various reasons. Maybe it’s a diamond in the rough, or the marketing wasn’t there, or it could be a game ahead of its time. For this monthly series, I’ve asked my fellow writers on SUPERJUMP to pick a game they think is deserving of a chance in the spotlight. Let us know your favorite hidden gems in the comments.
Josh Bycer
The Mummy Demastered 2017
WayForward is a company that has specialized in modern retro design for over a decade, and the studio has had a varied mix of hits and misses. With the push to turn everything into a cinematic universe, they had a chance to work on a game based on the remake of The Mummy starring Tom Cruise, and was supposed to be Universal’s attempt at mimicking the success of Marvel.
What we got was a game that played nothing at all like the movie, had little to no references from it, but still stood out as a fantastic and difficult Metroidvania. The story is that the mummy has made its return, and we play as soldiers from the organization from the movie (sans Tom Cruise) who must stop her from taking over the world. Instead of a globe-trotting adventure, we are limited to a few areas full of secrets, upgrades, and enemies.
Combat plays out much like the Metroid games, as you acquire a variety of guns and ranged-based weapons. along with numerous upgrades that add new ways of moving around. The game looks really nice and features great pixel art, especially for the larger boss enemies.
While all this is the perfect formula for a successful Metroidvania, there was one glaring issue that hurt it. The back half of the 2010s was a period where everyone was trying to copy the Soulslike formula and capitalize on the success of Dark Souls. To wit, The Mummy Demastered features a Soulslike death and punishment mechanic that hasn’t been seen since.
When you die, your character becomes a zombie that hunts around the area where they died. You then take control of another soldier who gets sent in, but they are sent in without any of the upgrades and weapons that the previous character had found. Not only does this make it harder to regain your gear, but it often means having to take a longer route because you don't have the same upgrades available. It is better to just Alt-F4 and close the game than take a death, as reloading from a save point is faster and easier than dying.
This created a situation where the difficulty curve was kind of inverted – for the people who never died, they found the game to be on the easier side. Die once, and you're in for a world of hurt. If you're a fan of Metroidvania design and looking for a challenging one, I would at least check it out once, but make sure you are always ready to quit at a moment's notice.
Ben Cantrell
Warbits Plus (2024)
I played heaps of Advance Wars on the Game Boy Advance back in the day. It was by far my most played game; in fact, for long stretches, it was my only played game. So I’m always on the lookout for something that can capture that magic, which is why my Hidden Gem this month is Warbits Plus. It’s been sitting on my phone for ages, and every time I jump back in, I’m reminded just how good it is.
Developed by the two-person indie team Risky Lab, the original Warbits came out in 2016 and earned rave reviews, even snagging Apple’s Editor’s Choice designation. The game built a small cult following and even popped up in an episode of Succession. Back in those days, it was one of the standout indie strategy games on iOS alongside Battle for Polytopia.
That surprise TV cameo helped inspire the developers to bring it back in a modernised form in 2024. But rather than just release a quick update, Warbits Plus has been given a loving remake, rebuilt from scratch with updated code, a slicker interface, and cross-platform support on iOS and Android. With a Steam release on the horizon, Warbits Plus is about to reach a wider audience, which is exciting to see.
At its core, Warbits Plus is a turn-based strategy game that wears its Advance Wars influence proudly, with grid-based maps, bases to capture, and a wide mix of land, sea, and air units. The 20-mission campaign covers five biomes and slowly introduces new mechanics, while a 30-mission Challenge Mode adds skirmishes and puzzle-style battles. You also get a map editor to share custom battlefields, and online turn-based multiplayer. Not bad for $7.99 AUD! And no IAPs or gacha shenanigans here either.
The difficulty curve in the campaign feels fair, giving you time to learn the ropes while the AI gradually ramps up its aggression. Veterans will find it easier to get to grips, but newcomers will need to study unit strengths and weaknesses carefully, with the ability to tap any unit or terrain tile for a quick breakdown of strengths and vulnerabilities. This feature is a godsend for learning how to deploy troops effectively.
The quality-of-life updates in the Plus version make a real difference, with the Undo button a lifesaver when I inevitably send a unit blundering into the wrong square. Warbits Plus may not have the charming combat animations of Advance Wars (and I do miss those), but it delivers is smart, pick-up-and-play gameplay that offers something magical: that Advance Wars experience in your pocket.
Antony Terence
Might and Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer (2000)
With 4 million copies sold by 1999, Might and Magic carved a niche amidst role-playing franchises like Ultima and Wizardry. Despite being an RPG, creating your character in Might and Magic VIII (MM8) shouldn’t take ages. That’s because recruiting party members lets you make up for any skill deficiency you’ll run into on your adventure. You don’t have to catch ‘em skills. MM8 treats race as a class, letting you pick from human Knights, Clerics, Necromancers, Dark Elf Archers, Vampires, Paladin-like Minotaurs, and the mace-wielding Troll. You’ll even get to recruit Dragons later.
MM8 starts like most fantasy tales, with a cataclysm that conveniently locks up four elemental Lords across the continent of Jadame. While that isn’t the greatest premise, it does involve convincing three factions to form an alliance (Dragon Hunters vs Dragons, rescuing flooded Minotaurs, Temple of the Sun vs Necromancers’ Guild). Their fetch quests and anticlimactic final villain’s riddles are backed up by dungeons and biomes that make Jadame a joy to explore. The cherry on top is Arcomage, a minigame at taverns built by a separate dev team that gives Gwent a run for its money.
You begin your adventure on Dagger Wound Island, run by Lizardmen who suffer from pirate raids. The main task of crossing a trap-riddled, claustrophobia-inducing temple with winged snakes terrified me as a kid. I ended up distributing medicine, hiring new party members, and shooting arrows at a pirate ship until its captain fell dead. In one playthrough, I found boots that let me walk on water. As you progress into Ravenshore and other areas, you’ll run into metal cows, laser unicorns, wasps with swords, and mushroom monstrosities named fear and terror.
In the usual RPG fashion, leveling up involves clearing quests and killing enemies. But instead of getting better right away, you have to visit training halls to spend skill points on weapon proficiency, magic potential, and disarming traps. Achieving mastery over a skill needs the right teacher or promotion quest to turn your party into overpowered demigods. This is where the party system shines, as it lets you recruit characters devoted to tanking hits, casting elemental spells, or identifying/repairing items.
Combat in MM8 is done in real time or via a turn-based mode. The latter is handy while dodging projectiles in dimly lit corridors and picking enemies off before they get too close. While the combat gets easier over time (especially with a Dragon ally), it made me feel like my misfits could take on the continent’s big bad villain. This also made exploration enjoyable despite MM8’s terrible graphics and stretched textures, even by 2000 standards. The game makes up for it with enchanting skyboxes, eerie dungeons, and buildings with janky but memorable NPC animations.
MM8 is a dated RPG worth exploring thanks to its engaging atmosphere and deep class system. And with its turn-based sister franchise returning to Jadame in Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era this year, there’s no better time to dive in. If that doesn’t sell it, try PurpleXVI’s fascinating diary entries at the Let’s Play Archive.
Philip Adrian
Phantasy Star Online 2: New Genesis (2020)
Sega’s futuristic sci-fi RPG series was the edgy competitor to Final Fantasy in the 90s. A significant pivot occurred during the Dreamcast era, with the release of Phantasy Star Online as a major online multiplayer console game. The free-to-play sequel to the sequel, New Genesis (NGS), was released in 2020 on PC and later on PS4 as basically a brand new game. NGS gives players highly customizable characters to engage in combat within multiple open-world environments against gigantic, bizarre space monsters.
The combat opens up dramatically, allowing players to leap and fly through the air, scale up walls, run on narrow tactile pathways, and more. You can mix and match classes, abilities, and weapons to perform flashy combos with multiple players, all while using a human, newman, deuman, android, demon, bird person, or what have you, that is ludicrously fashioned out. And you can visually customize your future/fantasy RPG without spending a dime; players can be quite expressive in NGS, which is one of the biggest draws to games of that genre.
So why is this MMORPG - from a classic RPG series by one of the most well-known publishers - a hidden gem? Well, NGS had a rough landing with its initial release. The amazing combat couldn’t make up for the lack of content; for a period of time, players only had the one “Sonic Green Hill-inspired” zone to play through. This put the game in hot water, pushing Sega to beef up the amount of content NGS contained. It now features your ice, desert, and fire-themed environments to explore. Modern fanatical MMO fans can still blaze through the main campaign and character levels quite fast. (I’d argue they do this with any MMO these days, but I digress.) NGS has had “mixed” reviews on Steam for quite a while, as your typical MMORPG player demands quite a bit from their experience.
PSO2: NGS is an amazing choice for players who are fine with making two or three bite-sized sprints throughout the week, or one big grind to progress a fancy weapon. It also probably has the best combat of any MMORPG, which is an area where the genre has grown quite stagnant.
Priya Sridhar
Contract Rush DX
In Contract Rush, you play a bounty hunter who takes out monsters, demons, and devils for money. Cynthia has a home base in a coffee shop, where more money means she can buy necessary healing items while upgrading her ammunition. An easy mode helps newbies like me navigate various urban landscapes that have turned literally hellish.
Hand-drawn animation seals the deal for the fun. While Cynthia takes no nonsense, she has graceful movements as demons destroy various cities. A cartoony devil poses a serious threat as a starter boss, and the game is a beauty to watch.
I had a lot of fun with this game once I figured out how to beat the tutorial level. With that said, I think the save points need a little more work so that you can pause during a mission rather than abandon one. I plan to do a detailed review once I put in a few more hours, with a code sent by the developer.