Top 10 New Games of April 2024

If you’re the kind of person who plays video games to relax and unwind, then Botany Manor might be the new game for you to pick up this month of April. This poignant point-and-click puzzle adventure game brings you back to the countryside in Somerset, England in the year 1890. Taking on the role of role of Arabella Greene, the player explores a manor that Greene inherited, getting familiar with and learning about the magical flora found within it.

Greene came to the manor to research the flora found in the manor, with the research supplementing her book Forgotten Flora. Throughout the game, players will learn how to make the plants bloom, from phototropism to thermotropism – sometimes requiring different tools and conditions to do the job.

As Greene learns more about the plants found inside the manor, making them bloom unlocks new locations and rooms, which also hold their own plants and secrets. Letters and articles scattered around the manor present world-building and tell the story of a successful botanist who had to overcome prejudice in a time that looked down on women in the scientific community.

Europa

Release Date: April 16, 2024
Publisher: Future Friends Games
Developer: Novadust Entertainment
Platform: PC

If exploring Earth is starting to feel too familiar to you, then you would turn to the stars. However, recent space-faring games have leaned more into the sci-fi elements and less on the exploration aspect of going to outer space. More often than not, the worlds we get to discover are also barren, rocky, and devoid of life.

Europa offers a refreshing take to this formula, as players get to explore one of Jupiter’s moons, which, in this game, turns out to be a lush and vibrant world that appears to have been the home of a now-lost civilization. Controlling an android, players get to explore this world, learn about the civilization that was here before, and discover the secrets of the last human ever.

Another relaxing game, this time leaning towards exploration and meditation. We don’t get a lot of peaceful games that allow you to explore worlds nowadays, so Europa is a welcome respite.

SaGa: Emerald Beyond

Release Date: April 25, 2024
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Square Enix
Platform: Android, iOS, PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5

The SaGa series continues with its most recent entry, a game that has been a long time in the making. Having been postponed because of the pandemic, Akitoshi Kawazu’s team has been working on this project since 2016. Meant to be a more fleshed-out follow-up to the PS Vita’s SaGa: Scarlet Grace, fans of the franchise will be delighted to get to play a brand-new game for this famed role-playing series.

Following a recent trend in JRPGs, SaGa: Emerald Beyond follows six different protagonists across seventeen different worlds that are connected to a realm called Beyond. SaGa is played like a traditional JRPG except for one key detail: characters don’t earn experience points but learn new skills randomly through Glimmers.

Explore completely dissimilar worlds and follow the stories of characters with completely opposite personalities, see how their relationships grow and where their adventures take them and enjoy the latest SaGa game from Square Enix.

Another Crab’s Treasure

Release Date: April 25, 2024
Publisher: Aggro Crab
Developer: Aggro Crab
Platform: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch

Another Crab’s Treasure might go under the radar for many gamers, but those who pick this up will likely have a wholesome blast. Many people describe the game as a Soulslike but with a vibrant and kid-friendly aesthetic, and it’s hard to argue against that. Another Crab’s Treasure is a story about finding your way back home – playing as a hermit crab who lost its shell.

As a hermit crab, players can pick up various junk that become makeshift armor, like real-life hermit crabs are wont to do. Meanwhile, the hermit crab’s habit of picking up items with its claws allows players to pick up pointy things to use as weapons. It’s very whimsical and it’s a mood that we haven’t seen before in a roguelike game.

On top of these, Another Crab’s Treasure’s more lighthearted tone allows it to explore action-platforming elements, making the exploration part of the Soulslike experience much more pronounced. It’s a great experiment on whether or not the Soulslike gameplay experience would translate well enough in a game with completely opposite undertones, and we’re all for seeing the results.

Manor Lords

Release Date: April 26, 2024 (Early Access)
Publisher: Hooded Horse
Developer: Slavic Games
Platform: PC

The most wishlisted city-building game on Steam right now will be entering early access this month. Manor Lords is in the running for becoming the most realistic-looking and most believable strategy game of the year, all thanks to its very detailed mechanics.

The game will offer large-scale tactical battles in which every participating combatant is accounted for in the population of your manor. Outside of combat, it will have in-depth city-building mechanics with realistic animations that show individual craftsmen working their tools and building blocks one at a time. From felling a tree to sawing it down into pieces of lumber, and finally putting them together into a building – each step is realistically presented.

All of this was made by a solo developer, by the way, and everything has been handcrafted from the ground up. It’s a passion project on the same scale as previous indie breakthroughs like Undertale and Stardew Valley, so this game is definitely a must-watch.

Sand Land

Release Date: April 26, 2024
Publisher: Bandai Namco
Developer: ILCA
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X

Based on the late great Akira Toriyama’s manga Sand Land, this upcoming action role-playing video game is the second of many new multimedia projects that Bandai Namco will make meant to adapt and expand on the Sand Land IP. Don’t worry, though, as the game does not require any familiarity with the source material for fans to enjoy it.

Sand Land as a game will put players on an adventure, taking control of the demonic prince Beelzebub. Accompanied by Thief and Rao, they are on a quest for the Legendary Spring, bringing them to a vast desert and later a lush green forest filled with dangerous monsters and an aggressive army controlled by a malevolent king.

Sand Land features an art style that many gamers would be familiar with at this point – similar to Dragon Ball anime and Dragon Quest games. The game will feature both comical hand-to-hand combat and vehicle-based firefighting featuring customizable vehicles, giving players a vast arsenal of tools and abilities to use in battles.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes

Release Date: April 23, 2024
Publisher: 505 Games
Developer: Rabbit and Bear Studios
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes has been a long time coming, following up on the prologue piece Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes aims to become the follow up to the lost classic JRPG series Suikoden, featuring hundreds of playable characters, each one with their own personality, story arcs, and abilities.

The game is a traditional JRPG that features turn-based combat. Three main characters and hundreds of other playable characters will be available in the game. In the story, two friends from different backgrounds are united by a war waged by the evil Galdean Empire in the land of Allraan. All sorts of conflicts arose from this war, and thus the stories of each of the hundred heroes get intertwined with the main story of our two heroes.

The game is the third most supported video game project on Kickstarter, collecting $4,541,481 in donations from fans. Hence, the expectations out of this game are astronomically high. Development started circa July 2020 when the game started garnering support on the platform. Originally meant to launch in 2023, the game was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but now it’s coming out for gamers to play.

TopSpin 2K25

Release Date: April 26, 2024
Publisher: 2K
Developer: Hangar 13
Platform: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X

2K heralds the return of the TopSpin franchise back to the gaming space! After over thirteen years since the release of the last Top Spin game, we’re finally getting a brand-new, current-generation tennis sports simulation video game.

TopSpin 2K25 features 24 athletes from both the past and the present in its roster, allowing players to partake in dream matchups like Serena Williams vs. Iga Świątek.

The game was developed by 2K subsidiary Hangar 13, known for Mafia III and Mafia: Definitive Edition, and has employees who formerly worked on Top Spin 4 through its merger with 2K Czech, it’s exciting to see how the developers will translate this game for the new generation and new audiences.

Sea of Thieves

Release Date: April 30, 2024
Publisher: Xbox Game Studios
Developer: Rare
Platform: PS5 (New), PC, Xbox One

Not really a new game, but we thought it’s worth noting that two previously Xbox-exclusive games in the form of Sea of Thieves and Grounded are headed to PS5 this month. Sea of Thieves, of course, is the bigger game between the two, both figuratively and symbolically.

The game is everything you’ve ever wanted from a pirate game, allowing you to search for loot and plunder with your mates, complete with many customization options for your character, your pets, and your ship.

With the awful launch of Skull and Bones on the PS5, this game comes just at the right time to sate the appetite and thirst of gamers for a rewarding pirate experience.

Stellar Blade

Release Date: April 26, 2024
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Developer: Shift Up
Platform: PS5

And finally, we have Stellar Blade, a surprise treat from Shift Up, creators of the mobile game NIKKE. Published by Sony Interactive Entertainment to keep it as a PS5 exclusive title, the game evokes NieR: Automata so much that even NieR director Yoko Taro says he’s looking forward to the game that’s been dubbed by the internet as “Korean NieR.”

Stellar Blade follows the story of Eve, a woman sent from an off-world colony to Earth to attempt to eradicate the alien invaders called Naytiba. She establishes contact with human survivors and finds herself seeking refuge in a human colony of survivors called Xion after her squad was decimated by a strong Naytiba, and from there continues her mission to reclaim Earth for humanity.

Stellar Blade also has many Soulslike elements, although they aren’t as prominent and the difficulty isn’t dialed up to an eleven. If you’ve played Lies of P, another Korean surprise treat from last year, this is even less Soulslike than that game. It features many unlockable skills and abilities that expand on the main character Eve’s fighting repertoire.

There are unlockable skins and costumes, too, so stay tuned here at ClutchPoints Gaming on where to find all of that.