We haven’t talked much about GameClub since the service officially launched a little over a month ago, but they have been busy beavers in that time. They’ve added a handful of games to their initial launch lineup including Minigore, Hi, How Are You, Breach & Clear, and Don’t Run With a Plasma Sword bringing their full library to more than 50 games. They also sent out a survey to see which games their users would most like to see get full controller support in an update, and that survey revealed that Rocketcat’s classic action RPG Mage Gauntlet is the one players would want to play with physical controllers the most. That wish was granted rather quickly as this week Mage Gauntlet received that controller support update and is now playable using any compatible MFi, PS4, or Xbox One controller.
Boy I wish there was a more high resolution trailer, but at least you can see how awesome Mage Gauntlet is. For further proof, you can read our original 2011 review as well as Shaun’s exhaustive look back at the game in RPG Reload File 053 from 2015. And as is the case with all of GameClub’s offerings, if you previously owned Mage Gauntlet before it became a part of the service you can download the newly updated version complete with its new controller support for free even if you’re not a GameClub subscriber. If you have any sort of trouble doing that, you can check out this link here and their support team will help you out.
The next bit of big GameClub news is that this week’s new title is none other than Tiger Style’s atmospheric 2012 adventure Waking Mars. It’s a Metroidvania-style of game that has you exploring a vast system of Martian caves, but rather than blasting a bunch of aliens you’re actually helping to create life and balance a delicate ecosystem of flora. It plays a lot like a puzzle adventure more than an action game, and its decidedly different approach led us to choose Waking Mars as our Game of the Year in 2012, which was a polarizing choice to say the least. I still stand by it though, and even to this day there’s not really anything quite like Waking Mars on the App Store. You can read more about it in our original review, and again Shaun dives deep into this one too with a Classic Reload feature from 2016.
There’s a lot in store for the remainder of 2019 too, as GameClub has laid out their release lineup for December and it includes Flick Fishing, The Blocks Cometh, Pinball Breaker, Pixel Boat Rush and two more Tiger Style classics with Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor and Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon. There’s also more controller support coming to even more games including yet another TouchArcade Game of the Year pick with Space Miner. And finally, GameClub is teasing big things for 2020 which includes “some brand new GameClub exclusive games that have never been released before!" Now THAT is very intriguing indeed.
As I said before, if you previously owned any of the games that are part of GameClub you can now access their updated versions for free without having to actually subscribe to the service. If there are games in their library you didn’t previously own but want to check out, you can play all of their games in a limited fashion for free and for $4.99 a month you can have unlimited access to the full versions of all of them with new games being added every single week. The best place to get started is by downloading the official GameClub app below which acts as a hub of all their games and is absolutely stuffed with all sorts of excellent written content including reviews, tips and tricks, historical deep dives, and more, most of which has been written by our very own Shaun “Must Read" Musgrave. Get on it!
