Humble Choice August: Pick’n’Mix Rundown

Vampyr is – shock horror – a vampire game. Vampire RPG more accurately. There’s a decent story and 1918 London is beautifully realised. Add in some lovely voice acting – it’s very polished in the bits I managed to play through. While there are some niggly issues with combat and travel, it’s an enjoyable take on the genre for fans.

Vampyr is more often on sale than not at the moment, across the various digital stores. It’s quite often on sale around £13-ish, sometimes a little lower. It’s not quite in the under £10 bargain bin territory yet though – it’s probably a bit too recent for that. One of the higher value picks.

Hello Neighbor’s big selling point is an intelligent AI that learns how you play. Tasked with sneaking into your neighbour’s house, when you get caught, the titular enemy will plant traps to try and block your previously taken route. It’s a bit janky, but it’s fun survival-horror. And this pick includes a second game – the prequel, Hide and Seek!

The first game has previously been free on the Epic Games Store, if you’ve been collecting the weekly free games. Both of these titles have been available for less than a fiver on sale too – even though Hide and Seek has only been out since last December. The original is also in Game Pass for PC at the moment. So plenty of options – I’d wishlist the prequel if you like the original on Game Pass/Epic and save your Choice.

Wargroove is pretty much Advance Wars on PC. It really wears its inspiration on it’s sleeve and I am all for it. There’s a cutesy story set in a fantasy world – rather than the futurism of Advance Wars – and it’s generally a lot of fun. Great turn-based strategy.

Wargroove is rarely available below half price. Half price still brings it below £10, but this is still not that common. I’d pick this one up if you like tactical/strategy games – unless you’ve got Game Pass for PC, which currently has Wargroove on the service.

More Lovecraftian horror after June’s Stygian. This is a lot more visually impressive – and plays like a lot of survival horror games, just set in Lovecraft. It’s a relatively short game, with branching dialogue keeping the story fresh for a play or two. A decent look for Lovecraft and horror fans alike.

Often available for more than two-thirds off, it’s dipped below a tenner only once or twice. Not that often yet – but it’s one of the larger discounts available (down from £35).

This felt a bit like Gamers First Factory Game. There’s a fair deal of depth there if you want it, but it’s also fairly easy to understand and play even if you haven’t explored it in great detail and picked it apart. A great intro to management/sim-type games.

A fairly new release, there haven’t been huge discounts on this yet. It’s only £18 anyway, and has only gone below half-price since release in October. I’d imagine it’ll be discounted more soon – but this Choice will save you more money than most of the other games here, at sale prices.

This is an interesting prospect – part resource-management, part ship-building and part roguelike space-FPS. You fly around star systems, harvesting resources, building up your ship more to find a “Genesis” system where you can settle down to ensure humanity’s survival. It’s an interesting loop, albeit as hard as you’d expect from a roguelike.

Only release in February this year, it’s recently started dropping below £10 on sale. Normally £24, this means picking this isn’t necessarily the best way to save this month. I imagine it’ll be available closer to a fiver in the coming months, if you wishlist this.

Automachef plays quite similarly to some of the Zachtronics games that have been available in previous months. You have to arrange your automatic kitchen to produce various different dishes – programming some machines to pick up certain items in certain orders etc. It’s for those with a programmer mindset more than an efficiency mindset like Little Big Workshop requires. Challenging, but I find it really rewarding when you eventually get it right after much tinkering!

One of the cheaper games this month anyway at £11, Automachef can be found for around a fiver too – perfect impulse buy territory. I’d wait for a sale if you’re on a Choice limited plan. There’s also a demo for this one on Steam, so definitely try before you buy!

If you picked up Warsaw in May, the premise of this will be very familiar. Set in Berlin during the rise of Hitler, you send out members of your underground faction to disrupt the rise of the Nazis. You recruit a few members and send them out on daily tasks to earn money, influence or supporters. There’s some strategy to it – matching characteristics to jobs – and it’s tough. Will seem quite familiar to regulars to strategy games like This Is The Police, and worth the look if you’re a fan of games like this.

The discounts on this haven’t been great yet – although it’s only been out since January. So this pick would save you a tenner over the sale price. I’d get it as it might be a while before discounts take it into impulse-buy territory of a fiver.

If you told me this isn’t heavily inspired by the old, top-down Grand Theft Auto games, I’d call you a liar. Heat levels, spray shops, wanton destruction – all present and correct. There’s a bit of a grind too – lots and lots of similar missions might encourage you to take some breaks and just mash up the place. But American Fugitive is precisely for that!

Available on some storefronts for under a fiver, this is a hard one to advise using a Choice on. If you’re curious and want to save yourself £5-7 vs the sale price, then sure. But it’s cheap enough on sale to impulse-buy. If you’re on limited Choices, I’d get something else unless nothing is grabbing your attention.

Creep-fest crammed with jump-scary enemies. I don’t think horror aficionado’s will find this that bad, but for a non-horror gamer like me it was intense. The jumpscares weren’t the worst part for me though – the slightly cringe-y high school dialogue was a lot to stomach for me. But for the target audience – K-horror fans – this is nicely put together.

The Coma 2 is only £12 regular price – so it’ll likely hit near a fiver in the future. As another fairly new game (January release), you might be waiting another few months for that price to set in. I don’t think this is the best value Choice, but fans of the genre might want to grab it if nothing else catches the eye.

We Were Here Together is really fun – with two people. The sequel to We Were Here (now free on Steam), this is a co-op game where two people are required to play. No single-player option here. It’s a shame – it’s a lovely game, and Humble missed a trick by not offering this as a two-pack I think. The walkie-talkie mechanic is really fun to use too, to get the most from the game… But… Buyer beware!

If you did pick this and need a copy for a friend, it’s lowest price is around £8. So not necessarily cheap for what is a pretty short game, too. Hard to judge, then, whether to pick this up in Humble. I’d possibly wishlist for you and a friend and buy two at half-price, when it eventually comes down in price.

Artsy, story-driven point-and-click. Very pretty picture-book graphics, full of blocky colour and a noir-esque storyline. Plenty to enjoy here for those willing to sit and read for a few hours. I really enjoyed the puzzle element of gathering clues and observations and trying them out on the various characters to see what sorts of extra information you could get out of them. Thoroughly worth the time.

A Case of Distrust is a rare game that doesn’t seem to be on sale that often. When it does, it’s steeply discounted – down to £3.50. Best value might be to wishlist this one, if you want it cheaply.

This months’ extras are DRM-free copies of Booth and Zodiac XX (only available here and in Humble Trove). There’s also a demo for Wildfire on offer.

Booth (pictured) draws heavily from the dystopic Papers, Please – adding and expanding it in the setting of a food-inspection booth. You uncover the story as the days past, with the slow, methodical inspection routine tiding you over between the drips of story. Interesting, and Papers, Please fans will probably like this too.

Zodiac XX is anime-esque submarine combat. It plays rather like space/aerial combat games and looks like a blocky, classic arcade game. Nice to bomb around underwater blowing up stuff!

Finally, the Wildfire sneak peek is an odd one – most months, this is a demo for an upcoming game. However this month, Wildfire is a game that’s been on Steam for a few weeks already. Still, worth playing the demo for this puzzle-platformer to check if you like it. Some minor controller gripes apart, it looks like a decent game.