I’m a little late to the party, but great games still need love…

Hungary-based Zen Studios, known for years worldwide for its solid Pinball FX series, is taking a little detour and it really looks as if you need to come along. The place they’re going may be temporarily sun-less, but it’s still quite stunning.  Operencia: The Stolen Sun is out now on the Epic Games Store and Xbox One family of consoles and is coming on March 31, 2020 for Steam, GOG, PS4, and Switch and I’m betting it’ll be a welcome surprise to those who think the developer is all about recreating and enhancing some excellent classic to their own newer modern digital pinball tables.

There’s an excellent series of developer diaries and game trailers here to watch here, so please do so, as the Unreal Engine-powered game looks pretty outstanding. The last time I played a game set in a world with a missing sun was Arkane Studios’ real-time first-person game Arx Fatalis, which was pretty spectacular. I’m also a big Wizardry and Dungeon Master fan, so Operencia fits very nicely indeed in that set of classics.

You can’t stop me from talking about this game, spider…

I’ll admit to being a tiny bit upset it was exclusive to both the Epic Games Store and the Xbox, as I’m a PS4 or Switch person, but I figured out quickly that Zen had to make this available to both platforms as well as other PC stores at some point, and the wait time means I can just knock more games off of my backlog, so that’s a good thing. Anyway, this looks absolutely lovely, it’s got that classic gameplay that’s perfect for my tastes, and it’s coming in at a great price ($29.99), so it’s a great game at a great price, I say.

-GW