After emerging from early access and launching on consoles in the fall, Bang-On Balls: Chronicles from Exit Plan Games was not done. It still had more balls to bang on. As promised a few weeks back, the game has now received Xbox Series S|X and PlayStation 5 upgrades, allowing for even higher resolutions of balls to bang. In seriousness, the game is pretty bangin', especially in 4-player online co-op.
Arcades might have dwindled in the United States, but they still exist. Companies like Raw Thrills even make new arcade games such as 2017's TMNT arcade game. Seven years later, Game Mill is releasing that game onto consoles and PC as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants. It will support 4-player local co-op, and it's due in late April.
After a surprisingly quiet January, our release calendar was once again filled with quite a bit of co-op fodder this month. Our team's favourite was by far the democracy-simulator, Helldivers 2. Despite the initial server-issues, we just keep coming back to it time and time again. Also of note, quite a few titles like Sons Of The Forest, Smalland: Survive the Wilds, and Timemelters finally left their Early Access state behind, which is always nice to see. Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Skull and Bones, on the other hand... well, although they also finally hit store shelves, it doesn't seem like the wait was really worth it. Always sad to see - especially for co-op titles.
Back in 2021, D3 Publisher and Yuke's unleashed a family-friendly spin-off of the EDF series called Earth Defense Force: World Brothers. We quite liked that game's colorful, voxel art style and humor. Fast-forwarding to 2024, it looks like we're in for another good time because Earth Defense Force: World Brothers 2 has been officially announced for a September release on PlayStation and Switch!
The highly anticipated Contra: Operation Galuga from WayForward and Konami is due out in March, and we finally know a little about the game's soundtrack as well. The album will be composed by and released by Yuko Komiyama and Norihiko Hibino and released on March 5, a week ahead of the game. To get gamers pumped, Konami has released an exciting soundtrack preview video.
Deathwish Enforcers Special Edition arrived on Steam this month, bringing some good, old fashioned arcade-style run-and-gun shooting to PC. While the game's reception has been quite good, developer Monster Bath Studios is already pumping out updates to fix the minor issues that players have discovered. It's great when a developer cares about their product!
G.I. Joe is a franchise that seems very well-suited to video games, but the games have been few and far between over the years. The upcoming G.I. Joe: Wrath of Cobra from Maple Powered Games and Freedom Games looks to rectify that scarcity. Wrath of Cobra will be the Joes' first beat 'em up. It's due out this year on Steam and Switch. To ease the wait, be sure to watch the new trailer.
It has been three years since indie developer Aftnareld announced Coridden, a co-op action RPG for Steam. The game missed its initial target release window of late 2022, but it's finally due to come out during Q3 of this year. To drive the point home, Aftnareld has released a fresh Steam demo that shows off Coridden's cool monster transformation mechanics and both local and online co-op!
It has been a while since we checked in on Bang-On Balls: Chronicles, the ball-themed 3D platformer from Exit Plan Games. Last fall, the game graduated from early access and fully launched on consoles. There's more yet to come, though, as the Xbox and PlayStation versions are due to receive current-gen enhancements on March 5. Console gamers will soon be able to bang their balls on in local or online co-op with graphics at 4K and 60 frames per second!
Last year, Monster Bath Games and Limited Run unleashed a bloody, ballsy run-and-gun shooter called Deathwish Enforcers onto PlayStation and Steam. This year, Monster Bath is self-publishing the new-and-improved Deathwish Enforcers Special Edition on Steam. The new version adds an additional playable character and other refinements, and features 4-player local co-op.
The demo for Co OPERATION: MultiTurn is now live on Steam. Indie studio Mind Feast Games have been developing their debut title for over two years, including a year of closed-testing on indie platform Itch. They've been active in our Discord as well looking for feedback from co-op gamers!
January 2024 was a... strange month. We've counted only 20 co-op releases across all platforms. Yes, this time of year is usually a bit more on the lighter side with all publishers and developers preparing the big spring push. But still: This is the lowest amount of new titles we've seen in a January in a long time. Perhaps everyone was just too afraid to launch in the same month as Palworld? A bit less Pokémon with guns and more traditional open-world-survival-crafting as it turns out but still a very huge success with players.
