A big welcome back to all Loot Happens subscribers. Loot Happens is a weekly newsletter that is emailed and posted on LootHappens.com.
It's important to note that for premium subscribers, game offerings and in-game content, every week is different. Sometimes it's in-game codes, Steam keys, and giveaways, but premium members will always get something special every mailing. We also occasionally get mind-blowing early access or premium games that pay for an entire year's subscription.
Each newsletter is generally structured as Premium Loot > Free Sub Giveaways > Game Feature > Game discounts.
Gift certificates are now available for the holiday season! You can select how much time you would like the gift certificate to be for and the gift certificate itself will be emailed to you after purchase. You can purchase the gift card here.
Key Giveaway For Premium Subscribers - Choose Your Game!
Slime Dungeon
Slime Dungeon puts you in the role of Gubby, a spirited duck-like warrior fighting back against an invasion of wicked slugs and their summoners. The dungeon is a twisting maze of traps, secrets, and tight corridors that reward quick reactions and steady exploration. Your goal is to uncover ancient artifacts hidden throughout its depths, each tied to the mystery behind the slug uprising. Combat jumps between fast skirmishes and big boss fights that push you to read patterns and adapt on the fly. Bright, expressive environments keep every area feeling distinct, while the energetic soundtrack adds momentum to the journey. It’s a compact, playful adventure with a heroic edge.
-———OR---------
Acanthoceras
Acanthoceras drops you into a looping nightmare where an abandoned hospital becomes your entire world, filled with silent corridors, scattered puppet limbs, and the constant sense that something is closing in. Each attempt turns into a cycle of searching for clues, feeling the tension rise, and sprinting for safety once “they” finally appear. Your only real defense is movement, with quick parkour that lets you run, slide, and jump through the darkness as the threat grows louder behind you. The notes left on the floor offer the only hints about why you return to this place night after night. It’s a tight mix of horror and momentum that makes every corner feel dangerous. In this dream, stopping is the one thing you cannot afford.
Kingdoms Dump: Key Giveaway For Free Subscribers
Kingdoms of the Dump invites you into the Lands of Fill, a quirky SNES-style RPG created by two janitors with a big imagination for a world made of trash. As Dustin Binsley, the Trash Can Knight, you’ll trek through five-and-a-half garbage kingdoms, battling filthy foes and a toxic gremlin army in grid-based, timed-hit combat with no random encounters. Exploration mixes platforming, elevation tricks, and character swapping, letting you solve puzzles and traverse areas without old-school roadblocks. A Mode 7 world map ties together its creative biomes and oddball bosses. It’s a strange, charming adventure built with clear affection for classic RPGs, and plenty of garbage-themed personality.
If you would like to be in the running for a key, hit reply and just put 'kingdoms'. We will pick a winner and send over the key in 48 hours
Dynasty Warriors: Origins: Key Giveaway For Free Subscribers
Dynasty Warriors: Origins throws you into the chaos of the Three Kingdoms as a nameless fighter battling through armies that stretch to the horizon. Each encounter erupts into classic Musou mayhem — sweeping strikes, huge combos, and constant pressure as waves of soldiers crash toward you. Seeing the familiar saga from ground level gives it a fresh, more personal angle, especially as legendary figures clash around you. Momentum swings fast, forcing quick decisions as formations break and enemies overwhelm. On PC, 4K visuals, ultrawide support, and high-refresh action make those massive battles hit even harder.
If you would like to be in the running for a key, hit reply and just put 'warriors'. We will pick a winner and send over the key in 48 hours
Historically Low Prices
This section of Loot Happens tracks historical discounts right now on games and throughout the industry! Our tireless web crawlers scour the web daily, sniffing out the best deals across the gaming landscape.
These aren't just any games – they're titles we adore and highly respect. And right now, you can grab them at prices we've never seen before!
EA SPORTS FC 26 [Steam]
Play your way with an overhauled gameplay experience powered by community feedback.$̶̶80.591 $71.02
Arma Reforger [PS5]
Arma Reforger isn’t just a shooter, it’s a true military sandbox.$39.99 $27.99
Diablo II: Resurrected [PS5]
Diablo II: Resurrected is the definitive remastering of Diablo II.$39.99 $13.19
Sonic Origins [PS5]
Relive the classic collected adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.$29.99 $10.49
Mortal Kombat 11 [Nintendo Switch]
Mortal Kombat 11 is the latest installment in the critically acclaimed franchise.$49.99 $9.99
THE GAME OF LIFE 2 [Nintendo Switch]
Customise your peg, spin the spinner and build your best life!.$29.99 $5.99
Moving Out [Nintendo Switch]
Are you ready for an exciting career in furniture?$24.99 $2.49
Featured Game Review: Kirby Air Riders
There’s a certain joy that only Nintendo’s strangest ideas can conjure: that moment when you pick up a controller, expect something familiar, and instead tumble into a design that feels like it escaped from an alternate timeline. Kirby Air Riders lives in that space. This unexpected revival of a single-button cult racer shouldn’t work as well as it does, yet a few minutes behind the handlebars and the game’s peculiar charm starts to make sense. It’s messy, bold, occasionally unwieldy, and absolutely packed to the brim with things to unlock, test, and master. The more time you spend with it, the clearer it becomes: no one else makes games like this anymore, and even with its rough edges, there’s something magnetic in that chaos.
A control scheme held together by sheer personality
Air Riders inherits the same minimalist DNA that defined the GameCube original, a constant forward surge, a single brake-and-boost button, and a physics model that often feels like a balloon being pushed through a wind tunnel. That should be a problem, and sometimes it is, but it’s also the beating heart of the whole experience. Machines accelerate on their own, glide off ramps with unruly grace, and drift with a looseness that’s almost slapstick until you learn how to bend it to your will. At first, it feels like the game is playing you. Then, slowly, it clicks.
Once you’re in the flow, that simplicity becomes a genuine strength. Each of the 20+ machines has its own weird rhythm — the Swerve Star that only turns while braking, the Jet Star that rockets forward the moment it catches air, the Chariot class that seems born to dominate tight corners. And layered on top of that is an equally eclectic roster of riders, each with special abilities that feel almost like Smash Bros. supers jammed into a racing game. It’s an approach that can overwhelm newcomers, and teaching friends the basics sometimes feels closer to teaching a board game than handing someone a controller. But the moment the game stops feeling alien, it becomes unusually addictive.
Where Air Riders stumbles is in the places where its simplicity meets its ambition. Combat-heavy challenges don’t always mesh with the slippery physics. Some machines toe the line between “quirky” and “broken.” And the game occasionally pushes its one-button identity past the point of comfort. Yet even at its messiest, the sheer inventiveness of the mechanics keeps you coming back for another run.
A toy box overflowing with ideas
If the controls are Air Riders’ wild experiment, its content is the payoff. The traditional racing mode finally feels like a full realization of the original concept — faster, sharper, and layered with enough micro-systems to keep veterans fully engaged. Star trails left by rivals, precision landing boosts, buffed copy abilities, perfectly timed spins for extra speed… the cumulative effect is a racing model that asks you to pay attention to every tiny movement.
Track design helps enormously. New courses feel like carnival rides with branching paths built around different machine strengths, while returning tracks add nostalgia without feeling like filler. The highlight, though, is still City Trial — a 16-player playground of chaos, stat hunting, ambushes, seasonal map shifts, rare legendary machines, and the constant hum of “just one more run.” It’s still overwhelming at times, especially when powerups snowball so hard you lose finesse entirely, but the mode remains a brilliant sandbox of improvised strategy and friendly sabotage.
That generosity extends everywhere. A massive set of achievements reshapes how you approach the game — from beating specific enemies in specific ways to replaying courses with strange self-imposed challenges. Meaningful unlockables stack up quickly: riders, machines, music, cosmetics, paint jobs, even community-made vehicles through an online marketplace that works shockingly well for a Nintendo title. And if you want a guided experience, Road Trip’s campaign strings everything together with a breezy, almost theatrical sense of adventure, even if some combat-focused missions show the limits of these physics.
Bottom line
Kirby Air Riders is the kind of sequel that feels both impossible and inevitable: a modern reimagining of a cult idea that refuses to sand down its eccentricities. It’s overflowing with content, vibrantly strange, and packed with enough mechanical depth to keep dedicated players hooked for dozens of hours. Yet its greatest strengths tie directly into its biggest shortcomings. The floaty, frictionless handling is thrilling when it works and frustrating when it doesn’t. Combat challenges can push the controls past their limits. And despite its friendliness, it’s not as instantly approachable as Mario Kart or as strategically rich as a fighting game.
Next Week
Every newsletter has a lot to look forward to, and we are in active communication with several developers and studios. More to come next week!
The Eighth Inc. c/o LootHappens.com
46 Plains Road
Essex, CT 06426
©2024 Loot Happens | hi@loothappens.com | Privacy Policy | Terms
