Aug 9, 2019
It’s not always easy to find games that adults and children want to play together. But today we have a selection of cute, affordable games coming out on Switch in August. Each one is rated either E or E10+ and look like tons of fun no matter your age.
The original Ittle Dew
First up is Ittle Dew, due out in a week, on August 15th. The Switch library already boasts Ittle Dew 2+, so bringing the original Ittle Dew to the same console seems like a smart choice. Ittle Dew is a puzzle-solving action adventure game that doesn’t take itself too seriously. There is no grand plot to save the world in this one! Rather, Ittle Dew and her magical fox friend, Tippsie, crash onto a weird island filled with loot, and simply cannot resist the call of adventure. Oh, and loot. Loot’s okay, too. This game is just as silly and fun as it was when first released in July of 2013!
AER Memories of Old
Second on our list of August Switch releases is AER Memories of Old. AER is a beautiful game about a world in fragments, about to lose itself to the darkness. You are one of the last shapeshifters, and so one of the few who can take to the sky to soar from floating island to floating island in an open world with a vibrant yet simple beauty. Explore the islands and ruins and temples to uncover what you may do to save your dying world. AER will release on August 28th.
Bubsy: Paws on Fire!
The final contestant on our list of August Nintendo Switch releases is Bubsy: Paws on Fire! Releasing just a day after AER, on August 29th, it, too, is a visually striking game. Just as cute as Ittle Dew, but with the smooth graphics of an animated cartoon; it reminded us a little of Bonkers. (“Totally nuts!” Anyone else remember that blast from the past?)
This action-adventure platformer game will let you choose from four different characters, each with different skill sets. You can even customize them! Different costumes are available for each character. Can you get through all 100 levels?
If these family-friendly games appealed to you, especially AER, check out Kumo: A Boy in the Clouds.
- Aug 9, 2019
Quench is a story-driven puzzle game set in a colorful world. Help an adorable elephant to guide herds of animals while using the weather to your advantage. Quench is developed by Axon Interactive Inc., an indie studio based in Ontario, Canada. As of August 7th, 2019, you can purchase the game at the following locations: Nintendo Switch (North America), Nintendo Switch (Europe), Steam, and itch.io. Find out more about the game below and how you can help bring clean water to a community in need IRL.
Charity Initiative for the Month of August
Axon Interactive Inc. has announced on their Steam page the following: “We are proud to announce that $1 from all sales in the month of August will be donated to charity: water, an international non-for-profit organization whose mission is to bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing countries. Up to $10,000 will be raised to fund a water project for a community in need, with real-time progress reported back to all players. We’re super excited to see what we can all make happen together.”
About Quench
Become Shepherd, an avatar of nature, and guide herds of animals on a perilous journey. Each generation, the Elephant Tribe makes a grand pilgrimage. But this time, something is different… Help Shaman, the young Elephant leader, convince the other animal tribes to join her. Protect your herds as they are beset by flood, fire, drought, and the dark smokebeasts that have spread across the land. Control the environment to guide herds of animals and restore their home in this colourful narrative puzzle game!
Key Features
- Change the environment around the animals with the powers of the Elder Tree: grow grass and trees, start forest fires, shift sand dunes, or create new rivers and lakes.
- Overcome treacherous encounters with creatures and obstacles while carefully guiding your animals to safety.
- Fall in love with a papercraft-inspired landscape set to a joyful original score by Adam Sakiyama.
- Through gorgeous illustrated cinematics and in-game dialogue, explore how kindness, compassion, and forgiveness are powers unto themselves in this fable about overcoming differences to restore the world.
For another great game with a great real-life cause, check out our article here: To The Rescue: A Little Help For Our Friends. Moreover, you can still make a pledge on their Kickstarter, which has officially been a success and now aiming for their stretch goals. Know that 20% of the profits of the game will go toward actual dog shelters!
- Aug 9, 2019
Weaving Tides is an adventure game about riding dragons and stitching up a beautiful textile world!
Weaving Tides is developed by Follow the Feathers, a small independent studio from Vienna, Austria. This unique puzzle and adventure game will be available on PC and Mac sometime in 2020. Furthermore, you can Wishlist Weaving Tides on Steam right here and check out their official website here. We here at myPotatoGames are in love with dragons so we can’t wait to use their beautiful ribbon tails to weave our way through this enchanting world!
About Weaving Tides
Weaving Tides is a charming single-player adventure game for PC and Mac set in a vibrant woven world. Ride carpet dragons and use their ribbon tail to overcome torn areas, solve textile puzzles and challenge quirky creatures. Travel through the lands of the silken desert, spun forests and the moth kingdom to investigate the whereabouts of your parents and eventually unveil long forgotten secrets of the woven world.
Key Features
- Unique weaving gameplay: Stitch and cut your way through the textile landscape. Use the weavers abilities to wrap up your foes and conquer tricky Zelda-like dungeons and puzzles. Choose the weaver which fits your playstyle and outfit them with mystic embroideries to further enhance their abilities.
- Explore a vibrant woven world: Dive into an enchanting, textile landscape and be swept away by the colorful cast of characters with fully hand painted portraits, and the captivating musical score.
- Uncover hidden mysteries packed in a charming story: Gather eccentric allies on Tass’ quest to find his parents, assemble fragments of the past and eventually unveil the long forgotten secrets of the woven world.
- Creative Playground Mode: Unlock new, colorful ribbons for your Weavers during the campaign and use them in the playground feature to freely stitch and create your own digital embroidery.
If you’re also interested in games with dragons, you can check out our articles here: Medium Rare – A Party Game with Cute Dragons and Adorable Dragon + Cozy Cafe = Little Dragons Cafe. For other unique puzzle games, check out these articles here: Etherborn: A Fantastically Brilliant Puzzler and Cutesy Puzzle Action with Puyo Puyo Champions.
- Aug 9, 2019
We here at myPotatoGames have been keeping a close eye on Pile Up since early development. We immediately fell in love with the colorful and cardboad-style environments which included boxy animal characters such as frogs and hedgehogs. Now we’re one step closer to being able to play this adorable 3D cooperative platformer with their new Steam page here! Let’s all help these indie developers out, Seed by Seed, by Wishlisting their game today and checking out their new trailer below. You can also get caught up with us here if you missed Pile Up’s previous update.
Pile Up! Official First Trailer
About Pile Up!
Pile Up is a 1-to-4 player co-op 3D platformer for friends and families!
Jump joyfully, play together and use items you find along the way to build the wackiest piles! Coordination and creativity are required to progress through the joyful levels of the cardboard world and encounter the most friendly creatures! Experiment everything you’re in the mood for in the welcoming handcrafted world of Pile Up!Key Features
- A very simple yet deep mechanic: piling on each other!
- An adventure you can play from 1 to 4 players!
- A drop in/drop out feature allowing players to join and leave at any time!
- Crazy cardboard worlds to explore!
- Mini-games for endless cooperative fun with your friends!
- Cute box-animals to meet and help throughout your journey!
- Multiple box-items to try out, easy to learn but hard to master!
- Even more toys to unlock and have fun with!
- Skins to customize your Boxlings!
- An art direction entirely revolving around cardboard, from textures to sound design!
- A strong focus on accessibility and usability!
A soccer mini-game There’s no specific release date as of now but you can follow Pile Up’s progress with their YouTube devlogs here. You can also go to their official website to sign-up for their Newsletter or follow their links to their social media.
- Aug 8, 2019
Mineko’s Night Market is an adorable cat themed indie game.
Mineko’s Night Market is an upcoming cat-themed crafting adventure game that celebrates Japanese culture and is essentially about friendship, choices, and of course, cats. The indie game is being developed by Meowza Games, and being published by Humble Bundle, who will also publish upcoming games Forager and Ikenfell.
The exact date for the games release is yet to be determined, though the creators recently announced that more news are coming and the game is currently in full time development again. If you are just as excited about this cat-tastic game take a look below for everything we know so far about the game!
What is the game about?
Playing as Mineko, a girl who has moved to a superstitious fishing town inundated with cats, you will uncover secrets whilst assiting Mineko in becoming a successful young entrepreneur. This can be done by completing tasks, undertaking quests and gathering resources in preparation for the weekly night market.
Players can craft a variety of odd items, toys, and trinkets, which can then be sold to townsfolk (who are now your customers) at Mineko’s night market stall. After you’ve finished selling your items, you can explore the Night Market yourself, where you can play mini-games, eat unusual foods, and purchase collectibles.
The game allows you to explore distant lands by unlocking different types of transport (which include buses, bullet trains and cat carts). Each land offers new people to meet and unique things to do, dependent on the time of day and season.
There are 16 uniquely themed markets every year which all feature a stage event that you can partake in. Examples of events include Taiko drumming, karaoke competitions, sumo suit wrestling, and more!
The better you perform at the market, the bigger and better the market will become, which may well attract new townsfolk and even celebrity guests!
What sort of stuff can I do in the game?
Some features of the game include:
- Explore the village and surrounding areas to find rare resources and make new friends
- Craft peculiar items with the resources you find around the world
- Barter with townsfolk at the weekly Night Market to sell your creations
- Explore the night Market to discover unusual culinary dlights and collectibles
- Play and compete in a variety of Night Market games like cat racing,
pachinko, and whack-a-tako - Uncover the mysteries of the Sun-Cat Abe and Mount Fugu Island!
How much will it cost?
The price of the game is still TBA.
What platforms will it be released on?
- PC
- Mac
- Nintendo Switch
When will it be released?
The Nintendo website claims that the game is ‘coming soon’ to the Switch console. As the PC and Mac versions were in the works first, based on recent news it’s likely that a release on all three platforms is happening sometime in 2020 or 2021 – this.
Is there any game merchandise available to buy?
Yes! The following items can be purchased whilst you (im)patiently await the game’s release:
- Mineko and the cats T shirt from theyetee.com
- Abe the Sun-Cat pin from theyetee.com
- Mineko pin from theyetee.com
- Mineko’s Night Market poster from theyetee.com
- Mineko’s Night Market Cutaway Cats and Rice Art Print (limited stock)
I also had a chance to wit down with Brent, developer behind the game for an exclusive interview last year. For some more sneaky details on Mineko’s Night Market, make sure you check out the interview here.
- Aug 8, 2019
Gamescom is the world’s largest event for tech and video games held in Cologne, Germany. Unlike E3, there typically aren’t that many press announcements with release dates but rather you’re given the opportunity to play game demos and possibly get the chance to speak with the developers. This year, Gamescom opens its doors to trade visitors on Tuesday, August 20, 2019, and to members of the public on Wednesday, August 21, 2019. Events and the show floor will be scheduled until Saturday, August 24th, 2019.
Opening Night Live
Anyone who is anyone in the industry has confirmed that they will be there including: Xbox, Nintendo, Square Enix, Google Stadia, Epic Games and many more. Geoff Keighley, host and producer of ‘The Game Awards’, will be producing and live streaming Opening Night Live. Check out his Twitter account below for the game publishers that are making announcements. Opening Night Live will also include Hideo Kojima, as confirmed by the man himself, to premiere an exclusive new look of his game Death Stranding. Opening Night Live will be streaming on all major streaming services when it begins on Monday, August 19th at 11 AM PT/2 PM PT/8 PM CEST. With this new addition of a pre-show, we here at myPotatoGames are looking forward to some amazing new reveals!
The Indie Village and Indie Arena Booth
Another new addition to Gamescom 2019 is that developers of indie games will now have considerably more space in the entertainment area. Indie Village (in hall 10.2) will be showcasing more than 140 independent developers. The central element of Indie Village is the Indie Arena Booth, which has been taking applications from indie developers for a few years now and supplying them with booths. More than 100 games can be seen in the Indie Arena Booth alone. In addition, you can look forward to a stage program coordinated especially for indie fans, the MIX.
As you know, we here at myPotatoGames are huge fans of wholesome indie games so we’ve written a list below, including their links to our previous articles for more information. You can also watch the trailer by Indie Arena Booth for the confirmed indie games for Gamescom 2019.
- A Juggler’s Tale by Dominik Schön, Enzio Probst, Steffen Oberle, Sven Bergmann
- Atomicrops by Bird Bath Games
- Coffee Talk by Toge Productions
- El Hijo by Honig Studios
- Flotsam by Pajama Llama Games
- LUNA The Shadow Dust by Lantern Studio
- Stranded Sails – Explorers of the Cursed Islands by Lemonbomb Entertainment
- TUNIC by Andrew Shouldice
- Röki by Polygon Treehouse
- HEAVE HO by Le Cartel Studio
- Ary and the Secret of Seasons by eXiin, Fishing Cactus and Modus Games
- Weaving Tides by Follow the Feathers
Other games like Cat Quest II by The Gentlebros Games are teasing that the announcement for their release date is coming soon and that they are “saving it for a special event.” We can only hope that they are talking about Gamescom 2019 as that is less than 2 weeks away! If you know of any other indie games or you yourself are an indie developer, please feel free to contact us to be added to our Gamescom 2019 list if you are attending! You can also click here to learn more about the event, the dates, the tickets and more.
- Aug 8, 2019
Pajama Llama Games, the developers behind Flotsam, along with the publishers Kongregate, have just announced that the game will be coming to Steam Early Access on September 26th, 2019! Wishlist this unique town-builder on Steam right here and be one of the first to attempt to survive on the ocean in a post-apocalyptic world! You can check out our previous article on Flotsam here in case you missed it.
The old world has flooded and the driftwood, flotsam or garbage can be recycled by your drifters then turned into boats and buildings. Explore ruins, other small islands, and submerged cities to find items to salvage or people that may want to join your town. You can do this via boats, by swimming, or even by unfurling your sails and moving your entire town (which is usually anchored). Help your drifters to collect rainwater, fish for food, have storage for those resources, by building various workshops and tools. Watch as your drifters construct step-by-step in detail but make sure they’re all taken care of by keeping an eye on their meters, just like the Sims! Continue to build more efficient structures, homes, and other fun stuff as your floating town grows. You can even control the layout of your town and therefore make it your own!
More Information
Follow the developers on Twitter here so you can
stay afloatbe apprised on the latest features with concept art and videos. You may also want to download these awesome wallpapers from the official website here, as seen below. Enjoy their colorful and quirky art style, including the most dashing of seagulls, right on your desktops!New Release Date Trailer
- Aug 8, 2019
Last Week Marvelous revealed the redesigns of four key characters in their reboot of Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town. The game is not due for Japanese release until October 17th, but they have unexpectedly revealed another two new characters in this short amount of time! This time we have Ann and Kai. Both are ‘candidate’ characters who can be romanced and married by the main character.
According to the Marvelous, Ann is a chipper girl who works at her father’s inn. She is a foodie and a skilled housekeeper. Kai is a friendly traveling merchant with a relaxed nature. He is from the city and only in town during summer.
Now that we have seen Ann and Kai, there are only two marriage-candidate characters left to be revealed. The two mysterious new characters that we got a glimpse of in Famitsu. Who could they be? Are they visiting characters from other Bokujou Monogatari games, or are they completely new?
Unknown characters who will appear in Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town In addition to revealing Ann and Kai, Marvelous has also shown us how Ann’s father, Doug, will look. Duke and Manna have also gotten their debuts. What do you think of these reboots?
Doug 
Duke 
Manna
Also, please note that because this will be a new localization, names are not final until XSEED confirms them. We are using the names these characters were known by in the original release. These images and more have also been added to the game’s recently updated official site.
