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.
Key Giveaway For Premium Subscribers: Sphere - Flying Cities
Sphere – Flying Cities is a city-builder survival hybrid where you manage a floating metropolis drifting through a post-apocalyptic Earth, keeping thousands of colonists alive while navigating geomagnetic storms, asteroid strikes, and the constant threat of simply falling out of the sky. Everything runs through your anti-gravity device — let the power slip and the whole city goes down with it, which keeps even routine resource management feeling genuinely tense. You'll expand through drone scouting, technology research, and careful infrastructure planning, all while balancing the uncomfortable reality that saving the many sometimes means sacrificing the few. It's a city-builder that actually makes you feel the weight of every decision.
Hotel Architect: Key Giveaway For Free Subscribers
Hotel Architect is a construction and management tycoon game where you design, build, and run hotels across multiple global locations, juggling guest satisfaction, staff logistics, and five-star ambitions all at once. You can climb through a structured Career Mode or go full creative in Sandbox, with enough décor options and layout freedom to build anything from a sleek luxury resort to something considerably more questionable. Every hire, room arrangement, and amenity choice feeds into a review system that determines the caliber of guests you attract — and how quickly things spiral when you get it wrong. It's the kind of game that starts with "just one more floor" and ends three hours later with a staff crisis and a mysteriously one-star breakfast rating.
If you would like to be in the running for a key, hit reply and just put 'architect'. We will pick a winner and send over the key in 48 hours
MIO: Memories in Orbit: Key Giveaway For Free Subscribers
MIO: Memories in Orbit is a metroidvania set aboard a decaying space ark, overgrown with vegetation and haunted by rogue machines. You play as MIO, a nimble robot unraveling the mystery behind the Vessel's catastrophic blackout — repairing allies, uncovering secrets, and mastering an evolving set of traversal abilities along the way. Combat is flexible and builds around a modifier system that lets you reshape your playstyle on the fly, while over 15 boss encounters keep the stakes consistently high. Visually inspired by comics and anime, with a lo-fi-meets-choral soundtrack to match, it's a world that's as absorbing to look at as it is to move through.
If you would like to be in the running for a key, hit reply and just put 'mio'. We will pick a winner and send over the key in 48 hours
Historically Low Prices
This section of Loot Happens currently tracks historical discounts 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!
Animal Well [Nintendo Switch]
Explore the intricate labyrinth and uncover its many secrets.$24.99 $14.99
Hello Neighbor [Nintendo Switch]
Hello Neighbor is a stealth horror game about sneaking into your neighbor's house.$39.99 $9.99
Featured Game Review: Forza Horizon 6
Forza Horizon 6 feels like something the series has been building towards for fourteen years, and Japan was always going to be the destination worth waiting for. It's a focused open-world racer built around the most credible and car-friendly map Playground Games has ever crafted, then layered with enough new systems to keep you exploring long after the credits roll. Not everything is reinvented, but what works, works brilliantly.
Japan was worth the wait
Forza Horizon 6 lives and dies by its map, and thankfully, it delivers. Every corner of the world blends Tokyo's dense urban sprawl with mountain passes, rice fields, snowy highlands and winding touge roads, forcing you to constantly shift gears — literally and mentally — between very different kinds of driving. Nail a tight hairpin in the Japan Alps, then drop down into a multi-level freeway overpass above the docks. It creates a constant sense of discovery where no two drives ever feel quite the same.
What really sells it is the detail beneath the surface. Parking lots are entirely bespoke to their locations. Road surfaces change texture between tunnels, backroads and mountain passes. Exhaust vapor floats in frosty air. The car audio is the best in the series — downshifting through a tunnel is an experience unto itself. Boss fights of a different kind come in the form of Showcase events, including what may be the most unhinged set-piece the franchise has ever produced. It's demanding to take in, sometimes overwhelming, but rarely dull.
A tourist who never quite arrives
Step outside the driving, though, and the cracks start to show. The campaign's framing has genuine charm on paper, but doesn't explore its own premise in meaningful ways. You're immediately handed a garage full of cars, and the interesting possibility of gradually embedding yourself in Japanese car culture gets quietly abandoned. The wristband progression structure is a welcome return from the original game, and the parallel exploration strand with touge races and barn find rumors adds real texture, but the "tourist" identity never quite earns its weight. Important atmosphere is often tucked away in environmental details rather than being part of any cohesive narrative thread, which makes the whole thing feel a little disconnected.
There are also minor frustrations — two Showcase events feels lean, and the opening hours don't fully capitalise on the new aftermarket car system's potential for more immersive world integration. They rarely derail the experience for long.
Bottom line
Forza Horizon 6 knows exactly what it wants to be and sticks to it. Japan is the map the series always deserved: credible, dense, endlessly rewarding to move through, and it carries the entire experience on its back. Even with a promising premise left underexplored and a few rough edges, the sheer quality of the world and the driving make it hard to stop, and even harder not to finish.
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!
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