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Are you still stuck with an Nvidia 570 because the market has been overtaken by crypto miners? I feel you, but just because we're using yesterday's hardware doesn't mean that we can't play today's hottest games! In this article, I want to take a look at some more fantastic new software that's come out semi-recently that doesn't require a GPU scarcer than unobtanium.

Hired Sword II (C64)

Drawing inspiration from Al Lowe's classic Leisure Suit Larry series, Hired Sword II is a crpg in which you take the role of an alcoholic loser, waking up in a dumpster behind a pub after a late night bender. At first you're just trying to figure out what happened to the hot elf girl that you had visions of the night before, but very quickly you get sucked into a multi-dimension hopping quest to save the world.

Hired Sword II plays its juvenile humor well and carefully avoids the narrative pitfalls of Steam's bottomless pit of eroge gutter trash with briskly paced clever writing. Along the way, you'll get some nude scenes a la the cards in The Witcher, but thanks to the slow transfer speed of the C64 disk drive, you'll have plenty of time before they load to make sure no one is in the area to judge you. Combat is turn based and largely reliant on dice rolls, so at points you're going to need to do a bit of grinding, but it's extremely fast and the inventory management system is a breeze to navigate.

The entire quest takes about 8 hours to play through and much like the work of Zeboyd Games, emphasizes the nostalgic and fun components of the genre while bypassing many of the classic warts that makes the old games difficult to enjoy from a modern perspective. If you've been wanting an 8-bit successor to Knights of Xentar for the last 25+ years, this is the game for you.

Digital Download (€9): https://doublesidedgames.com/shop/commodore/commodore-64/hired-sword-2/
RGN Gameplay Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4deDt8UMtk0

Millie & Molly (C64)

Carleton Handley is a relapsed C64 programmer that was responsible for a number of ports to the system in the late 80s before embarking on a career to more "modern" platforms. He had been focused on mobile development in his free time, but it unfortunately just wasn't as fulfilling for him as he'd hoped.

Over the last year or two, he heard the siren's call and decided to try this hand at remaking Asmik's underappreciated gameboy game Catrap as a C64 title, featuring two playable characters that you have to manipulate through single screen levels and get to the exits. Since neither can jump or attack, it takes careful planning of your moves to figure out the correct path and thanks to an impressive bit of engineering, it's possible to rewind through every action in a level to before you screwed up. Catrap was notable for including the mechanic years before the likes of Sands of Time and Blinx brought it to the mainstream and it's even more impressive in action on a system released in 1982.

The initial difficulty level is quite low and the game spends the first two dozen or so levels easing you into it's array of mechanics, but with 100 levels available in addition to a level editor, there's more than enough content here to keep you entertained and occupied. A password system makes it possible to pick apart at it over time and at a price point of just $3, you can't go wrong.

Digital Download ($3): https://carletonhandley.itch.io/millie-and-molly
Digital Download (Windows)($3): https://carletonhandley.itch.io/millie-and-molly-windows
Physical Release (cart)(160PLN): https://bobr.games/index.php/our-little-shop/
Physical Release (tape)(£10): https://www.bitmapsoft.co.uk/product/millie-and-molly-tape/
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYjQUnIUd8E

Grid Pix (C64)

Another puzzle game from Carleton Handley, Grid Pix is his adaption of the popular nonogram puzzle format to the C64. With only 100 puzzles, there's not a huge amount of content compared to the likes of Konami Pixel Puzzle Collection or Picross S, but it provides a nice slice of modern entrainment on the classic breadbin.

During the holiday season last year, Carleton even released a free Advent Calendar version of the game featuring 24 brand new Christmas-themed puzzles to solve.