It’s that maturity that has stuck with me. That this is a cozy-game rug-pull is a treat, but despite only being two or three hours long, it’s the characters who have really stuck with me long after finishing. One frog called Liv especially, who in most other games would be played as a cranky old lady to patronise, but here is a force. I once knew a Liv – Jean her name was, she died at around 90, and I only met her when she was in her 80s, and she was the most splendid curmudgeon I ever spent so much time with.

So temper exaggerative notions based on such comparisons, because this is after all a solo indie project. And a brilliant one, that manages to combine its crafting loops with a fun, surprising story and a constant sense of satisfying progress. It also delivers a great ending, with a tense climactic finish, and then the good nature to allow you to return to before that moment to continue on surviving in your base should that be your jam.

Station to Station is often hilarious, often mortifying, and perpetually honest. As Perfect Tides so wonderfully depicted incredible specifics of adolescence, this sequel speaks as truthfully and intricately about the emerging of adulthood. It captures those moments of profound bliss and shattering devastation, alongside the beauty in the mundanity between. And it makes me miss those times with that magical girl from university, and so unbelievable grateful it’s so long in the past and never to be repeated.

The Amateur Deity Society is a splendid thing, combining interactive fiction with point-n-click in such an inventive and successful way. I don’t know developer Robert Carlson’s plans, but if there were a way to make this Godot-based game an engine others could use to script their own adventures, it could lead to something extraordinary. In the meantime, I really do recommend grabbing this for a fun short story told in an intriguing way.

CHDC is a very peculiar game, in both senses of the word, and I mean them both positively. While it definitely reminds me of Dreadrock, it’s certainly a unique little creation. It’s also packed with bonkers details, asides, letters sent between NPCs hinting at deeper stories, incredibly silly jokes, and a constant sense of variety. I wish to god that there were more opportunities to sell crap from your inventory. I wish the magic storage chest and cooking stations appeared a bit more often in the first half of the game. And I really wish there were a way to save mid-level, given you have to start each over no matter how far through. But I’m really enamoured with it despite all my wishing. It’s daft and breezy and very cleverly put together...I’ve not even mentioned that there are three different weapon styles to choose from, or if you’re mad you could pick from all three. Or how you need to manage food and water, but it’s never onerous. Or just how much it delights me every time I light a torch and the word “Fwoosh” appears on screen. I just love the word “fwoosh”. And the art! The drawings between levels are so splendid. It’s all a good time.

MotionRec is utterly amazing. It’s brilliantly clever, rewardingly challenging, and the aesthetic is completely delightful. It’s far more instinctive than you might worry, but then offers a challenge that rises to meet your skill. It’s one of those games you’ll want to call someone else in to see. I’m calling you now! Come in! See this!

It’s a fascinatingly disturbing game, but – yes – in that Lynchian/Cronenbergian way where if someone asked you to pin down exactly what it was that was making you feel so squirly you’d have trouble beyond, “HE RIPPED OUT HIS OWN HEART!” And, you know, fair play, that’s possibly a good reason too.

I adore the art, the retro sound effects and music, and its presentation throughout. But the standout feature by miles is the ingenuity of the puzzles. There’s no combat here, no call for reflexes or timing – just super-solid puzzles that’ll make you gasp when you eventually figure them out. Chronoquartz is a proper all-time treat.

This is a fantastic piece of work, and a satisfying experience in its own right. There’s a solid couple of hours of game here, that I’d have been happy to have paid for (although perhaps then more annoyed by the lack of resolution), that honestly should be all any indie publisher needs to throw money. And for us, it’s a fascinating experience, unlike anything else I’ve played.

This sense of dreadfulness is taken further by how absolutely nothing else in the game is OK, either. Stewie doesn’t exactly stand out in this company, the motel’s guests barely any better, while the local area is broken, falling apart, and riddled with abandoned horrors. It’s all so bleak, so hopeless. The chief cop is corrupt running a protection racket, there’s a dead body in the local diner’s freezer, the rivers are all filthy and poisoned… But you’re using the vinegar on the rusty lever to release the potatoes! It’s an adventure game! Sure, the falling potatoes were meant to be the means of killing a prisoner, but everyone involved seems to have died before anyone got around to it, the prisoner included. But it’s a fun game with puzzles!

It makes me so happy that games this smart and unique get made. Which other Lovecraft-meets-70s horror game set in betwixt-war Italy have you played recently? And Beyond Booleans has more to come, with The Tragic Loss of M. Slazak due some time soon.

I’m so impressed with Cipher Zero, and how much extra work has gone into every tiny element of its presentation, let alone the brilliance of the puzzle design. It’s so rewarding to figure out what a new symbol means, and then to solve ever more complex puzzles as it re-introduces old rules into the new. There are an extraordinary 373 levels in total, and I’m just a fraction through that right now. And, honestly, I’d just gotten completely stuck–I’m so pleased I can scrub that video and figure out progression now.

I’m thrilled with Nurikabe World, and I’m so delighted I went back through my Wishlist to rediscover it. It introduces all the complexity of this logic puzzle with smart design, alerting you to specific rules or useful techniques across its first few dozen levels, but reaching a difficulty that is rewarding for long-time aficionados. And it’s so pretty! I really can’t stress enough how pretty it is.

Clearly it’s your call if you want to spend a tenner on a game that I’ve enjoyed with all manner of qualifications. But I genuinely believe the game is getting better as players feed back the issues, and despite the narrative bumpiness, I love these sorts of entry-level WYSIWYG hacking sims. I also love that Dunke put so much work into this, even if some more is needed.

Keep things in perspective: this obviously isn’t No Man’s Sky. It’s a small indie game with a far more limited scope, and a far greater desire to tell you an interesting tale. (There’s a very generous demo, too.) But it’s such a massive achievement, the aesthetic is wonderful (including excellent music), and it entirely entwined me in its compelling loops. Loved it.

If you’re reading and you work on a gaming site, trust me, this is great, you’re going to love it. And everyone else, you’re going to love it too!

This game is such a total delight. It’s warm, meaningful, and packed with whimsy. (Toby III, Holmes’ new pet dog, can talk, although of course no humans can understand him. A stuffed bear in the background of one small scene can be talked to, too, for a lovely little extra.) Exploring the love between Holmes and Watson could have been so clumsy, but not a foot is put wrong, the result so heartwarming and truthful...I don’t know how this game came to exist, nor how it has gone so completely under the radar. This is, improbably, primarily the work of one person–Helen Greetham. She has written, programmed and drawn the entire game, and I think legitimately added to the Holmesian canon in a way so much of the post-copyright contributions fail to achieve. This is my perfect ending to the tales of Holmes and Watson, and I’m so delighted to have played it.

But gosh, there’s so much effort. On top of the 40 levels, there’s a daily challenge level, plus Steam Workshop support so you can create new challenges for other players, or download those others have made. And the levels offer so much variety, adding new twists deep into the game to keep it always interesting. It’s a really fantastic game, and it’s so far gone completely under the radar. Given it’s under $15, it’s well worth a try, and then yell at everyone else to do the same.

This is really brilliant! This is a game deserving of widespread attention of the sorts Draknek & Friends receive for theirs. It deserves to be in their midst, rubbing shoulders with Hempuli Oy and Stephen Lavelle. I think you, a person who is good at this sort of game, are going to properly love this.

If you’re not into city builders, play this. It’s nothing like them. Like I say, it was unhelpful you even mentioned Sim City at the start of this. If you do love city builders, then you should play this too, because it distils the most pure concepts into a gorgeous, chunky, meaningful game. Which is to say, if you exist, I really do recommend playing Dawnfolk.

The result is a game that’s silly and macabre, and wants you to wonder why. It’s perhaps ironic that something that’s so smartly a piece of Brechtian estrangement also falls foul of some of the genre’s most typical issues–flaky player direction, predictable puzzles–but in some peculiar way these (undeliberate) shortcomings lean in to the meta-commentary in their own way. Oh, and be sure to stick around through the credits, because there’s a whole bunch more game to come after.

The puzzles are great, there are hidden switches all over the walls, and it feels so comfortable to play. Yes, I miss ranged combat being a bigger feature (you get magic weapons, but in the first four levels there’s nary a sign of a bow or arrow). Health potions are perfectly distributed, forcing you to worry and skirt around on low health, but find one just in time, but I do miss being able to make my own. But this is so brilliant, such a solid, excellent example of the genre with its own sensibilities, ideas, and such brilliant movement, that I’m far more delighted that it exists at all than I’m bothered by anything missing.

With a bit of tweaking to difficulty, it’d be hard to fault Dungeon Clawler. It absolutely mimics a million games that came before it, but the combination of a unique mechanic and so many interesting innovations of its own within the format, means a game I figured would be just “that but with a claw machine” (which sounded good to me!) is actually something far more rounded, involving, and interesting in its own right. I just need to figure out how to stop playing.

It’s so very gratifying to spend a good long while learning about EMF scams and what a truly dreadful person is Russell Brand, then mousewheel scroll back out from the small section of the puzzle you’re working on to see the enormous painting coming to life. It’s also very fun that after completing certain sections, a pop-up appears referencing the proverb alluded to in the section.

It’s pretty, it all works very simply, and yet there’s a good amount of depth to the tactics. Sure, if you’re used to playing elaborately complicated turn-based RPG/strategy games, it’ll perhaps seem a little twee. But it’s not for you, so there.

Daemonologie achieves so much more thanks to its brevity and its lack of an attempt to preach or proselytise. The horror is the horror, and it’s not a scary witch. That you have to be a part of that horror to experience it only makes it far more powerful.

I am now absolutely fascinated to see what R_Games does next, to see if the scope can be expanded, and the ambition raised even further.

No, this doesn’t compare to something as extraordinary as what Supergiant are making now, and that’s OK. Honestly, I find Hades overwhelming, and a game like Ravenswatch is a far more approachable. There’s no doubt that this game is a broad, shallow pool, with wonderful details on its surface. This isn’t Diablo, disguising plunge-pool depths beneath its glossy sheen–it’s the glossy sheen. Sometimes, that’s exactly what I want. It’s also testament to the peculiarly mercurial nature of the gaming press that after Curse of the Dead God was scoring 9s from the likes of IGN, the follow-up game just gets completely missed, even with a year-long early access run-up...Plus, the idea of Little Red Riding Hood being a werewolf is just brilliant.