Stadia announces five new games, including three timed exclusives

Google has promised that Stadia will be bulking up its somewhat slim offering this year with an additional 120 games, and the company has revealed five of them today – three of which are timed exclusives.

Turning to the three exclusives first, the most exciting of them looks to be Lost Words: Beyond the Page. This is a “narrative-driven, atmospheric puzzle platformer set inside the pages of a young girl’s diary.” Written by Rhianna Pratchett, it’s a game where “words wield immense power,” and players “interact with the words themselves to solve challenging puzzles.” The trailer below gives you an idea of what to expect.

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Next up is Stacks On Stacks which, as the name suggests, is all about building precarious towers out of the various blocks that fall around you. Sounds simple enough, but judging by the trailer below, it’ll be anything but, with all kinds of ghosts, dragons and other assorted jerks trying to knock down your afternoon’s work.

Finally in the exclusive selection, there’s Spitlings and… to be honest, it’s not really clear what’s going on in the trailer below. But as Google says in the description: “Make no sense? Who cares, it’s FUN!” The company adds that it’s the “perfect game to blame your friends for the incapability,” which sounds okay in our book.

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Then there are two non-exclusive titles, and these both come firmly in the ‘remakes’ camp, but they’re pretty decent ones. Firstly there’s the HD remake of Panzer Dragoon, a title that first debuted on the Sega Saturn. No big loss if you don’t have Stadia here: it looks like it’s also getting a Switch and PC release.

Finally there’s the Serious Sam Collection, which comes with HD remakes of the first two games and Serious Sam 3: BFE. If you’ve never played a Serious Sam title before, it’s a fast-paced and hugely over-the-top shooter which owes more than a little to 90s classics like Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. The trailer below will give you a taste.

Google hasn’t furnished us with release dates for any of them, but it says they’re all coming “this spring and summer” and will be available “in the coming months”, so you shouldn’t be waiting too long.