Late Thoughts about Realms Deep 2023

Realms Deep 2023 Key Art.

Another year, another rare Events "article" about some silly gaming event. This time I encouraged by scuffed sleeping schedule by watching Realms Deep 2023 from start to finish. Similarly to the previous one, I was tuning in with moderate curiosity. After all, it's best to avoid rising up your own expectations to a point where they just can't be fully met and instead get pleasantly surprised when or once you start getting some surprises. Thankfully, the latter is excited what happened this time around.

Each Realms Deep took different approach and this year was no exception. We had a very packed 3,5 hour livestream full of announcements and reveals with occasional "storyline" breaks, so sometimes things were getting a bit weird. To be fair, what else you can expect from a bromance drama starring Ty Brannan & Mike J? Let's just hope that Jared CatMilk would be able to help these two overcome their conflict and embrace their true feelings.

3D Reveals!

Long have I waited. Long have I watch 3D Realms delay one projects after another, again and again. It's always best to see a game delayed than pushed to the deadline in less than favorable state, but you just can't help and think that the company just couldn't get rid of that Duke Nukem Forever curse. So going in, I hoped for some news about existing projects and maybe one new game announcement since Slipgate Ironworks' website has "Upcoming Title" on their Games page. But then, my approach to the Realms Deep has paid off.

Not only 3D Realms announced three new titles they're publishing, but next four months (October 2023-February 2024) will be packed with game releases from the company. Of all truly new announcements, Bloodless is the one that really caught my interest. I admire the art style, emphasis on disarming is rather curious and probably use some of this Asian aesthetic in my daily routine. General update on Core Decay is nice to see. I think I might also be getting more interested in Combustion nowadays. Demo of Tempest Rising is still collecting dust in my Steam library for a long time and I might actually just end up deleting it from my laptop because there's too much gaming action going on.

As I'm writing this part of the post, Ion Fury: Aftershock is already out and the game now has twice the amount of achievements! So I have to get back to 100% there... Both GRAVEN & WRATH: Aeon of Ruin are releasing at the end of January and February respectively. And, to top it all off, that Gamescon demo of Phantom Fury is available to play... Even though it's reportedly very rough overall. No matter, I'll check it out myself and see what all the fuss is about on my own. Kingpin: Reloaded is also right around the corner, but not quite sure if I'm interested in Life of Crime. I'm cautiosly optimistic as far as 3D Realms goes (at least, for now).

Side Note: I'm very happy with now latest Steam and website changes make it clear what classic games are still published by 3D Realms and what was sold off to Apogee Entertainment similarly to Rise of the Triad many years ago (at least that's what this Polygon article says).

Friendly Mentions.

This time, I would like to walk away from my usual practice of highlighting a few games in a simple list. Realms Deep 2023 showcased a lot of titles, and I've already kind of experienced the well-known "library backlog" problem where most of the game you obtained (whenever physically or digitally through Steam/GOG/Itch/Microsoft Store) simply remain untouched as you're either too much dedicated to a select few favorite or your attention get sidetracked by newer releases. Since I want to have more focus and put at least some effort into clearing out my backlog of games, I decided to be more deliberate.

When it comes to new discoveries, Iron Meat, No Sun to Worship, Necrofugitive, Quasimorph and Undead West picked my curiousity. I believe I've already seen Shardpunk: Verminfall somewhere and Islands of the Caliph getting full release is pretty neat. There're probably still a few games I could've mention, but I just want to keep things short. No offense to other developers. However, I will talk again about the Wizordum since it getting a new demo was basically an open secret for a while now. While it's kind of sad to see it now being published by nu-Apogee (as I think it's great when there're more "independent players" on board existing on their own), but I suppose that's a natural order of things considering their ongoing collaboration with Emberheart Games. Either way, I'm rooting for Wizordum's success, hope everything works out well for them and need to launch that new demo! There was also a teaser of DUSK's HD textures, but I honestly can't really say much about them. Need to see more because so far my mind is empty.

In conclusion, I would say that this year's Realms Deep was pretty solid. Lots of trailers, nice cat milk breaks and a few surprises here and there resulted in a 3,5 hours well spent. I was entertained (more or less), blessed with long-awaited news and even caught off guard a few times. Kind of interested to see how they're going to experiment with the format next year (unless they decide to stick with 2023 one as "the one") as they always do.