As I noted at the end of last week’s post, we are now coming down to the last few titles that will determine the final scores for most of us.

Nobody is yet locked in on the final position.  Even Bhagpuss, at the top of the scoreboard, could face a challenger if the reviews favor Potshot.  But first, where we ended up last week.

Week 45 Scores

There was only one title slated for this week, Kirby Air Riders, which would be the last opportunity for Shawn to come out ahead in the scrum vying for third place.

Kirby Air Riders

A big score might have sealed the deal.  The reviewers, however, had other ideas.  Before launch day enough early reviews landed to put Kirby on the board.

• Fantasy Critic: Kirby Air Riders
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Now has a score of 79.8

Not a bad score, but probably not enough to secure third place.  And, as the game launched, it saw a stumbled, dropping the score a bit.

• Kirby Air Riders
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Score has gone DOWN from 80.2 to 77.9

Still, even sitting at a fraction below 78, that was enough to boost Shawn up into third place.

• Publisher Score Updates
  • Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)
    • Score has gone UP from 94.8 to 102.7
    • Moved from 5th place to 3rd place
  • Neutical Publishing (Cyanbane)
    • Moved from 3rd place to 4th place
  • Play Forever Mwahahaha (Shintar)
    • Moved from 4th place to 5th place

The reviews relented a bit the next day and Kirby buoyed up a bit.

• Fantasy Critic: Kirby Air Riders
  • [Picked by Crash and Burn Games (Shawn)]
  • Score has gone UP from 77.9 to 80.3

But Shawn’s hold on third place over Cyanbane and Shintar was less than 10 points, so to hold it would require that their last picks do somewhat worse that Kirby did.

Otherwise there were no score changes large enough to warrant an update from the league bot.  That said, some scores did change, if by less than a full point, leaving the scoreboard for the week looking like this.

Week 46 Scores

This week there was one new bid.  On Thursday evening the league announced that somebody had thrown down for Constance, a title set to launch next week. This seemed like a reasonable choice, as Saturday morning the league announced that it already had enough reviews for a score.

• Constance
  • [Available]
  • Now has a score of 85.2

Not bad.  Better than most of my picks, frankly speaking.

However, that introduced a problem.  You cannot bid on a game that already has a score, even if the score pops up between your bid and when bids are resolved.  So when the bids were resolved… no joy.

• Bids – Constance
  • Rodent Entertainment (Arhanta)’s bid of $70 did not succeed:
  • Game is no longer eligible: That game already has a score.

So there is a lesson about bidding on something that is close to release.  But there are more titles to bid on still… I mean, it looks like there are 18 left on the list with solid 2025 release dates.

With that, the titles coming up are:

Coming up for Week 47 & 48

That is just four titles left with solid release dates, plus whatever Arhanta bids on.  So call it five assuming the league doesn’t thwart that again.

And then there is Ultimate Sheep Raccoon, which does say Winter 2025… which would put it between December 21st and 31st, a pretty narrow window.  But, you know… it has a demo on Steam.  It was part of NextFest or whatever.  I live in hope.

Everything else on the list is involved with a counter pick.

Anyway, that is what is coming up.  Since there will be NO released this coming week, and because next Sunday is the last day of the month, the traditional “Month in Review” post day for me, there will be no week 47 update.  Week 48 will be the next post.

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