5 Games Added For Prime Gaming January 2021

“This is the end, beautiful friend,” Have you ever looked at Jim Morrison and thought, why? Being clad in leather pants and shirtless isn’t a good look when you are calling someone a “beautiful friend.” Anyway, it looks to be the end of these weekly articles on Prime Gaming going forward, as Friday didn’t see a new addition for the “free games with Prime” weekly offers. Unless we’re going to now see them arrive on Mondays, I’d assume simply to screw with my life, which at that point I’d throw over the desk shouting expletives about doing it live anyway.

So one last time for the weeklies, let’s ride the merry go-’round of my disinterest until we get to the games. Starting with what is available for players of League of Legends, you can now pick up the first of a new weekly offer of several mystery skin shards. As of this past week, you can pick up the first, with the second appearing on the 15th, the third on the 25th, and so on. These offers are running until the 29th of March with the final offer. With every third offer, you can collect three of them and trade them in for one mystery skin permanent. This should give you a total of three skin permanents with all the coming offers.

Players of Black Desert Mobile can now pick up the 6th drop in the current run of offers, the Abyssal Crystal chest (x30) bundle. I would be more helpful if Prime would offer me more information that made sense to humans, but all I am offered is “[Abyssal] Crystal Chest” in my brief. This offer is available until the 19th of January.

RuneScape, the 7th of 8 total drops are available. I would be more specific as other offers had been with their Old School RuneScape notes, but I’d assume this one is the newer version exclusively. Currently, players can pick up five knowledge bombs. Here is hoping the 8th drop is something more substantial and enjoyable from a mythical beast with horns that I quite like, I believe that’s what Triss Merigold was. This offer ends on the 2nd of February.

It doesn’t take much for me to say Final Fantasy has awful titles for its games, but War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius clinches the championship for that one. It may get the championships for dreadful “loot” too, as this week you can pick up 50 story skip tickets. Correct me if I am wrong, but the point of Final Fantasy games are the story, so why would you want to skip these elements? This is while mobile gaming is a hive of scum and villiany. This offer will be disappearing on the 20th of January.

Legends of Runeterra players can pick up the latest Epic Wildcard for the strange card battling game that was released last year. It is the first of several offers that will run throughout the year. This one in particular will last until the 5th of February.

“Everyone can music!” No, I will not let this go. Magic Tiles 3 is an affront to everything that is teaching music, I know I’ve done it (poorly). The latest collection of songs and artists I’ve never heard of and will never want to hear of again following this is: “Counting Stars” by One Republic, “Bigger Love” by Substants, “Toxic Love” by Lvly feat. Christine Smit, “This is How it Feels” by [the] Mondays feat. Paulina Fröling, and “Perfectly Opposite” by Carla the Great. If I understood one word of what I’d just said, I’d bang my head against a wall. This offer ends on the 14th of January.

Risk: Global Domination, the game America has been playing so long it decided to invade itself last Wednesday, has once again updated. Currently, players can pick up the second Prime map pack, offering River Town and Boston. I have nothing funny to say about any of this. This offer ends on the 21st of January.

Onto the reason that we’re all here, and the only reason I do these: The Games. This month’s offers are… strangely dull. Starting with Headup Games’ Bridge Constructor Playground, an overly simplified bridge-building version of the already kid-friendly series. Presumably aimed at children of the toddler variety, it is big, blocky, and built specifically for touch screens.

Next up is Alt-Frequencies, another game from Accidental Queens, those behind A Normal Lost Phone. It is an audio mystery game from last year and seems to work on the same idea of holding information from the player, but dropping details of the mystery into the story well. I quite enjoyed A Normal Lost Phone, so I am interested to see what this one does with the same team behind it. It seems to have a story focusing on exposing radio hosts, conspiracy theorists, politicians, and… a dog.

Along the Edge is a visual novel with an almost watercolor-like visual style to several screenshots, while characters stick out with a penciled-in style (not shown in image above). It is visually interesting, but is one of those games that I have no opinion of and I’ve had no one around me speak of it either. It is a strange little anomaly on Steam with its 9 out of 10 rating from release in 2016. Though it seems that it never broke out of a niche it sits in.

Next we have When Ski Lifts Go Wrong, or as I would call it back in its pre-early access release, Carried Away. It is another one in the bridge builder-style of game, as you are creating little jumps and ways of traversing the snow-capped mountains. You also control the little people trying to make the jumps as well. It is a great addition instead of sitting there waiting for your creation to fall to pieces around your ears. Usually it ends with you swearing very loudly and creating an avalanche.

Finally, something I reviewed last summer, another one of those bloody Rogue-like/lites: Void Bastards. A spacey first-person shooter version of the typically isometric, 2D, or top-down Rogue-like variety. It is full of colorful, onomatopoeic bursts as bombs go off and feet click along the ship’s floor. Each ship acts like its own little dungeon. The downside (of course) is repetition; after some time with Void Bastards, you have seen it all and it hardly surprises you anymore.