With a threadbare story and very low challenge threshold, Black Rainbow is a game that won’t appeal to any but the most novice of casual gamers.

A muddled adventure game with little inspiration, even though it pretends to be Hitchcock-inspired. Lacking any depth or real intelligence, The Final Cut deserves to be left on the cutting room floor.

At under an hour, Shiver is a budget horror title through and through, but even by casual standards it is bound to disappoint. While the suspenseful early build-up shows some promise, it soon becomes apparent that there was never much behind the misleading facade.

With its interesting rural Ukrainian setting, beautiful graphics and engaging Narrator, Highly Likely could have been an enjoyable interactive folk tale, if only the interaction wasn’t so painstakingly tedious and dull so as to make the entire thing feel like a frustrating waste of time.

Much like its shorter predecessor, the magnitude of negatives outweigh the positives in Red Comrades 3. It has its amusing moments, but eventually the gameplay just feels like a slog and the story doesn’t provide much reward for sticking with it to the end.

Like a vampire out in the midday sun, Dracula 4 is a short-lived and painfully weak episodic prelude that should be consigned back to its coffin until the series develops some real bite.

Monkeys & Dragons tries very hard to put players in mind of LucasArts classics, but its poorly designed puzzles, buggy gameplay and underdeveloped story demonstrate little understanding of what made those games work.

With myriad design and localization flaws, it’s best to let Undercover Missions: Operation Kursk-141 rest at the bottom of the ocean.

The Jolly Gang's Spooky Adventure focuses neither on the gang nor on the spooks, and offers at best a couple hours of lighthearted but linear, generic casual adventuring.

Despite a promising hook and a convincing immersion into 1940s Italy, Martha Is Dead caters to a tiny audience willing to put up with disturbing themes, game-crashing bugs, and little sense of adventure.

Kate Walker’s latest expedition to save the hapless Youkols is fraught with development missteps on multiple fronts, making Syberia 3 a mammoth disappointment.

If you’re a hardcore fan of the Gold Rush! original, there might be some value in picking up Anniversary on sale. If you’re not, don’t waste your hard-earned riches.

It raises some interesting questions, but short of whiling away an hour in a doctor’s waiting room somewhere, I see little reason to recommend Rituals for any actual fun.

Siblings aren’t the only thing missing in Lost Brothers, as this buggy trip through a hidden cave is bereft of either acceptable storytelling or anything to do.

There’s some interesting background teased here, but Rogue Quest is way too short, starts unexpectedly in the middle of the story, and doesn’t really maintain interest even throughout its extremely brief length.

All told, it took me a little under eight hours to finish Undercover: Dual Motives, which would have been an acceptable length in a better game. As it is, the meagre storyline, uninspired puzzles, and limited exploration already seem stretched at such a modest play time, and even fans of Operation Wintersun will find this handheld successor a shallow and unrewarding experience.

Perhaps best left locked in the past, The Silver Case is not worth looking into unless you REALLY like visual novels and Suda51 and have a lot of patience.

While the offbeat humor will likely hold a certain charm for select audiences, Ferris Mueller’s Day Off lacks a substantial gameplay experience to go with it.

If you have a strong masochistic urge to inflict a few hours of excruciating, pretentious sociopolitical ramblings interspersed with bouts of petty cruelty and vulgarity upon yourself, Désiré is the game for you.

Simply the second part of a game that should have shipped as one entity, Dracula 5 is a brief and unsatisfying adventure that won’t score the good vampire any new fans.

Beyond KURSK‘s virtual tour of the ill-fated titular submarine, this self-proclaimed “adventure documentary” works as neither a compelling adventure game nor a fact-based documentary of the mysterious disaster.

Heaven may be a beautiful place to visit, but there's not nearly enough to do here to fill its few hours, let alone an eternity.

The Inpatient sounds amazing on paper, but the terror is watered down so quickly and to such a large degree that it manages to make three hours feel easily twice as long, and not in a good way.

Generally a frustrating and unrewarding game, with the ultimate anti-payoff. I can't even sincerely recommend it to even the most ardent Ripper historian.

Of Bird and Cage is an experimental music album that pairs interactive elements with the songs to create a unique experience. However, the game is plagued by bad mechanics and a story that is uninteresting and devoid of nuance.

While the short, casual room puzzler The Tower of Beatrice has an intriguing premise and interesting recipe potion mechanic, they simply don’t make up for the nearly non-existent story, poor English translation and largely generic gameplay.

The highly unpolished Dream tries to straddle the line between a puzzle-solving and exploration game, but ultimately doesn’t succeed at either.

An attempt to right the wrongs of a terrible second game goes wayward, as Lucius III misses the mark in nearly every way.