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.

StormEdge is, therefore, refreshingly original in many respects, while familiar in its constituent parts. It’s also just a really good time. Failure doesn’t feel awful at all, especially given you return to the village with progress either way. It’s a lovely game for chipping away at improvements, and learning new approaches and finding preferred methods. That’s a pleasure, which is a good term to describe the entire game.

I’m assuming this is free because it’s so short, but I would very gladly have paid a few pounds for it. I can find nothing about the two developers, other than guessing that they’re Icelandic from their names. (Get in touch!) But clearly this could be developed into a longer game that people would be delighted to pay for. As it is, this freebie is a proper treat.

Linkito elevates the form, with stunning art, a daft and interesting story, characters who talk to you betwixt levels, hidden extras, and a sense of fairness. It’s really rather excellent. And for this I only slightly resent it.

I cannot fathom why this is free. I even asked the developer, Daniel Carr, and he sort of shrugged and said he wants as many people as possible to be able to play it. So, take him up on this!

Leap Year describes itself as a “clumsy platformer”, but don’t be fooled. Nor indeed put off. Developer Daniel Linssen is being mischievously modest, because beneath its clumsy presentation and opening gambits, this is anything but. It’s actually rather brilliant.

I’m so pleased games like this are still being created. They certainly deserve to be supported. An English Haunting is a surprisingly long, enormously detailed creation, with stunning artwork and immaculate prose. And features a bunch of lovely in-era cameos and references for those who are already fans of the genre. For those who aren’t, there’s a fair chance they will be by the end.

Mimic Search definitely feels like something that could become a very engaging longer game. There’s a lot of unrealised potential in the whole idea of the Mimic possibly being one of the few people in these woods, and that’s certainly not helped by the game’s one rather enormous flaw: it uses character models that don’t blink. Oops. I really like the idea of a game like this, with a larger forest to explore, more buildings, and a different NPC as the Mimic each time you play. Someone make me that, pronto.

I wish I could better communicate just how incredibly ingenius this game is, and without ever being all “LOOK AT ME I’M SO CLEVER!” coughjonathanblowcough. Instead it’s smart, modest and charming, like I’m not. The best thing is you just play it.

It’s ridiculously cheap for a game of this size and complexity, and it’ll absorb you for many, many hours. If you, like me, wish Nintendo would just make another Link To The Past, then this is a must-buy. It completely understands the remit, and then delivers and delivers and delivers.

But it’s also a really fun thing to just pick away at while listening to a podcast, or browsing YouTube – second-screen entertainment stuff. And as much as I tried, I just kept playing it instead of getting around to writing about it. I mean, it’s literally sitting behind this browser window, peeking out the sides, trying to lure me back in right now.

I’m so, so impressed by Neoproxima. I desperately wish it had been properly script edited in English (hey, indies, hit me up – my rates are very reasonable!), because it’s a constant issue. But it’s testament to the quality of every other aspect that I still loved this game so very much. Especially the way it begins to mess with its own UI, to force you to ask questions about your experience as you play. Just excellent. This is a brilliant idea, brilliantly executed, and absolutely shouldn’t be overlooked.

It’s so pretty, and so happy, and somehow non-verbal spaceships are able to have meaningful relationships. More importantly, Minishoot is also exquisitely well designed, with splendid dungeons to puzzle and fight through, and a vast overworld that’s so smothered in secrets that I’m still revelling in finding every part of the game long after I’ve rolled credits. This is utterly stunning.

There are far too few investigative games, and almost none where the solutions aren’t made inevitable by the process. For that, I found Between Horizons refreshing, if somewhat unsettling. But more importantly, this is a hefty, involving, and characterful game, with a novel setting, deep mystery, and a whole heap of interesting characters. And, unlike so many that boast of multiple endings, here the results can be light-years apart. The core beats of the story play out the same, but the results of your actions mightily effect the experience, and can dramatically alter how it concludes.

This gobbled up a couple of hours of my life in a really enjoyable way.

This is very deliberately not a true point-and-click adventure, so don’t go in expecting one. And be warned, this is a grim tale with unpleasant themes. It is, after all, a horror game. As you might expect, if you’ve played any of Navarro’s games before, the pixel art is impeccable. The writing is fantastic, too, and the hour-long experience – as ever – makes me crave a longer, more involved game from the creative team. However, these episodic bite-size games allow entirely different approaches, art styles, and themes, which is very welcome too.

This is a dark story, and it’s one that has allusions toward historical acts of rape, cruelty and death. It’s a game very much for adults, and its melancholia is very affecting. It’s also astoundingly well written (this is from a Portuguese team, and the English is perfect), beautifully delivered, and the all-too rare treat of a solidly well-made adventure game. That this is developer Whalestork’s first project is mindblowing. I am fascinated to see where they go next.

This is in fact the impossibly sublime mix of a twin-stick shooter with a mining game, and it’s compellingly fun.

It’s a bunch of lovely ideas, each used just once, despite many being strong enough to be the basis of a game of their own. (The Snake puzzle especially.) I can’t wait to see what FLEB does next.

Absolutely excellent.

I’ve shouted out loud so many times while playing, sometimes in mad frustration at myself, other times in absolute delight at my success. I have even proclaimed, “I AM SO GOOD AT THIS!” immediately before leaping straight into the teeth of a spinning cog. It’s just an absolute pleasure to play, no matter how bad you might be at it.

Oh, and it has a very brilliant, and extremely reachable ending (something I think too many post-Papers Please games make unrealistic for most to ever see), followed by a new game+ that will address any lingering questions you may have. I know this has received more coverage than some other games featured on Buried Treasure (including some pretty huge YouTube attention I wasn’t aware of until after reviewing–it’s fair to say our audiences don’t overlap much), but for some bizarre reason this hasn’t extended to reviews, and all-important review scores, so here we are. Home Safety Hotline is certainly too repetitive, lacking that one extra twist that would have propelled players to the ending, but its imagination, writing, and performances ensure it succeeds.

Oh, and the whole thing is beautifully rendered, every scene looking stunning, and the voice acting is AAA-standard. I’m so very taken with how it subtitles conversations in floating text around scenes, with shimmering outlines of half-remembered people. The Gap is pretty special, handling its tough topics without histrionics, and is splendidly constructed.

This is simply tremendous, has kept me busy for countless hours while watching YouTube nonsense on the other screen, and I love it.

And yeah, part of me craves the mind-melting tricksy puzzle game this could also have been, where I’m juggling times of day, weather conditions, who’s in an area, and innovatively using stickers for non-conventional puzzle-solving purposes. But that’s someone else’s game to make. A Tiny Sticker Tale has its own motivations, and they’re fantastic. It’s a sweet, warm and gentle game with a novel mechanic, and we can use as many of those as we can get.

This is tremendous fun, and for a fiver, there’s so much of it. There are 12 different classes, each with three variants, which offers an enormous amount of replayability. Plus, its more bite-sized approach to the format, accompanied by a 3D view and vast array of enemies, makes it different enough from the crowds to stand on its own merits.

That Matt and Mike Chapman are still making new Homestar content brings me so much happiness. It’s sporadic now, the two brothers having gone on to work on many other TV animations since, including a bunch of Disney projects. That they’re making entire games, albeit pretty short ones, is mindblowing.

This is really decent. Strong puzzle design, such that when you find one that seems too easy, it means there is going to be one that follows that looks almost identical, but is much more fiendish. And I’m delighted that, in the end, it doesn’t even make sense to compare it to Flow Free – this is a wholly different approach.

It’s lovely, it’s cheap, and it’s longer than you might expect.

It’s worth adding that it’s all presented in a tiny, two-colour rectangle in the middle of your screen, and looks lovely. The art is incredibly simple, but this belies the detail in the animations, the movements, and the perfect sound effects. This could have been much more throw-away, and still worked, and I love that it’s not. It is definitely a shame that the text is so incomprehensible, because it’d have been the cherry on top to have a great little story told as you played. As it is, however, you can just click through it.

I’m not entirely sure what earns it the grandiose name! I feel like a completely unnecessary storyline might have been wisely cut at some point, leaving just the mystical title behind, and rather love that. You can imagine your own overly-grand reason for pointing light in specific directions as you play. And play it you should.

Overwhelmed‘s presentation is great, feeling very slick and modern, yet with ingenious nods to the genre’s history through its colour choices and ship designs. (And yes, I mean the real history, the one preceding a hidden bonus game in 2003’s Project Gotham Racing.) This absolutely doesn’t have the life-changing profundity of Geometry Wars, but not is it trying to. Instead, this is six brilliant little arcade vignettes, each compelling and compulsive, that form an excellent cohesive hole. And all the work of one guy – Paul Giovannini – but for the music by Mathieu “Richie” Dubois. My magical powers remain unchallenged.

This is utterly splendid. GOTY stuff for me, certainly one of my favourite games of 2023 so far. It’s already looking like it’s proving popular on Steam, yet has had no reviews anywhere I can find. I do suspect this is partly because it was in Early Access for a few years, which seems to confuse most publications as to when to review something, so they opt for never. But it also means you’re less likely to have been pointed toward it, so let me have done that for you today.

This is something really special, the work of solo Finnish developer Antti Tiihonen (one of the creators of the mighty Legend Of Grimrock), and for $10, you’d be a loony not to get this. Stuffo captures that perfect sweet spot of puzzle difficulty, where you’ll sit and stare bemused at the screen for minutes at a time, but always with a solution within your reach.

This is a massive undertaking, and seemingly the work of just two people, which is mindblowing. The story didn’t hit at all for me, but I’ve found myself absorbed in that hypnotic ARPG space where I am delighted to just keep attacking and looting, while the other half of my brain listens to podcasts. And as much as I might wish for a world where indie developers are pushing the Diablo-like into entirely new directions, that world doesn’t exist, and I’m just so grateful that there’s anything else at all in the space that’s soon to be filled by the entirely standard arrangements of Diablo IV.

This comes from Adamvision, who not only has a back-catalogue of similarly hooky arcade games, but has reimagined a bunch of licensed Atari games. (Oh, and he made Lewdle.) Poosh is his triumphant return after a couple of years of doing the latter. And for the rest of this week you can pick up this latest title for almost half price, and his previous arcade games for just 50c each.

Shiner is primarily this concept, the surrounding story rather slim (although kudos for the ranch dressing-based religion), and it would be lovely to see such a mechanic built into a larger, more established RPG. Of course, this is a student thesis project, and as such is an excellent proof-of-concept for an idea that merits further realisation. Also, it’s free, so if it sounds interesting you’d be a right berk not to check it out.

This is a wisp of a game, but I just had fun playing it, and that’s the real criteria for inclusion.

More than anything else, Loop is a dollar. In fact, it’s 90 cents this week, during the sale, just in case you needed 8p for something more important. That’s completely daft, and I’d have been delighted to have spent a fiver on this. This is very smart, very nicely designed, and gorgeously presented. The only negatives are the boring name, and the peculiar developer name of “Lofi Robot”, the trademarked name of a popular Polish robot construction kit.

Melon Journey is also the very essence of “wholesome gaming”, without feeling puritanical or pallid. It’s entirely family-friendly, extremely cute, but not saccharine. It has an edge, even if that edge is entirely about melons.

What makes this work for me is a light narrative that doesn’t overly get in the way, alongside its willingness to step outside of the immediate meme’s boundaries to provide entertainment. And that it scared the bejesus out of me over and over.

Well worth grabbing! It’s tremendous fun, is a dramatically different game the second time you play it (in a way that really shows off Benard’s talent), and looks and sounds wonderful.

Most of all, Lumencraft makes busywork feel fun, the core drilling always satisfying, especially as it speeds up with more powerful drills, and it’s sweet to sit back and watch as your constructed defences take care of a wave of enemies. Or even, watch as your base just survives until the final wave is complete, and you scrape that success. I love an RTS for the rest of us, stripped down and then given more life with twin-stick combat and mining.

A twin-stick action game that crams in everything I want from the genre, into a few-hour vignette.

Oh, and it’s FREE. Presumably a requirement of being a student project, but damn, these devs need to be making money from this fantastic game. It’s so great, so smartly put together, and also the St Peter pigeon has a moustache.

As ever, the art is exceptional, and it makes great use of music. The sound effects, however, are perhaps a little cartoonish in places, somewhat tempering the tension. Overall, it maintains an excellent level of spookiness, and even managed to make someone as jump-resistant as me feel startled at one point. For its tiny price, it’s a definite pick for fans of creepy tales.

There’s so much love and detail poured into Lucy Dreaming. That this was written and drawn and developed by one guy, Tom Hardwidge, is mindblowing. This is an enormous game, both in terms of length and sheer detail. I thoroughly recommend you give it a look.

It's mystifying that something so free, so open, is the work of two people, total. I have managed to break it a couple of times, through some outlandish actions, but the majority of the time I've just been delighted to find out my cockamamy plan has worked out. It also offers that most crucial of immersive sim elements: the bit where a great plan goes to crap, and you're flailing to survive. It's a joy that Ctrl Alt Ego rarely has me wanting to reload in such moments, but instead to scramble, to try to improvise my way out of a sudden and overwhelming jam.

This is tremendous stuff, a game that could absolutely have been released alongside Raven Software’s mid-90s fantasy shooters and held up. (Although people would have been mystified by the lighting tech.) Hands Of Necromancy is a welcome addition to that fold, and HON Team have become a team to follow.

It’s been done! After thousands of years and countless deaths trying, someone has finally made Chess 2! Shotgun King: The Final Chronicles, winner of Ludum Dare 50, is the vastly improved version of the dated, low-violence game of Chess. It removes most of the pieces from the board, and gives one side a shotgun.

The game, essentially, plays like the first chapter from a larger project. This hour-and-a-half of levels ends in a satisfying boss fight, and then runs its entertaining final sequence. Which left me with an odd combination of feeling delighted at such a neat morsel of a game, and saddened that I wasn’t going to carry on playing something so fun and well made.

There’s a co-op mode, even, so you can be trapped in these escape rooms with a chum, which sounds absolutely fantastic. But on my own, Escape Simulator offers a far more tangible sense of the feeling of playing a real-world escape room, one spaceship aside, keeping things within the realms of possibility. Ooh I can’t wait for that DLC.

I’m a fair way into its puzzles, but have an awfully long way to go. As the complexity increases, the need for calm, careful exploration of each new section’s possibilities becomes more pronounced. It can look overwhelming at first, until I methodically break it down, start pulling at threads. And then when it all works, I feel frankly magnificent.

This really is one of the best Metroid-likes I’ve played, and its lower-than-usual difficulty is something I have found incredibly welcome. And I feel certain I’ll be playing it all over again when it comes out on Switch. There’s a lot here, and it entirely justifies its $20 tag.

I’ve had a great time with this, and am currently somewhere in the mid-60s of floors. The farther I’ve progressed, the more lovely details have slipped in, bits of storytelling either through prophetic dreams at campfires, or from overhearing conversations among the enemies. And the puzzles keep getting smarter too. There are lovely twists, sections where returning to the previous floor becomes necessary to progress further down, or moments to recognise how you can amend the next floor before you get there.

Nightmare Reaper is a procedurally generated retro FPS, with fresh levels every time you play. Levels that are of such high quality they often feel deliberately composed, only every now and then giving themselves away with an errant dead end. For the majority of the time, these chunk-based designs are fantastic, and then surrounded by so many clever ideas.

My unfair complaint is I want so much more of this. I think it really gets going around puzzle 19, and then you’re just six from the end! However, this is £2, and a really lovely collection of puzzles, so at this point I’m just being greedy. Yet, by puzzle 25’s fantastic sprawl, I really felt like it had found its groove. Perhaps if everyone just buys this, it’ll incentivise developer Molter to make some more! I thoroughly recommend you do.

This is a fascinating creation, brilliantly unsettling and uncanny, that plays its cards with enormous subtlety. It’s so interesting to see Southern Gothic depicted so effectively in a video game, and leaves just the right amount of mystery by the end.

I wept for Mara here. The precision with which creator Meredith Gran recreates that time, both the millennial world and the coming-of-age within it, is astonishing. It’s an incredible feat of storytelling, of recalling the deep truth of being 15-turning-16, without ever patronising. Of clinging to the security of childhood, yet desperately fighting to escape into the possibility of adulthood. It’s also lovely, very funny, beautifully written, and let’s not forget, a really decent point-and-click adventure. This is breathtakingly good.

This is one of the most compelling, consuming games I’ve played in so long. I just cannot recommend this enough.

This is all just such a great idea, so well executed, and the best digital jigsaw game I’ve played by a long stretch. That you can play a significant amount of it for free is almost silly.

This was a risky project, given the automatic assumptions someone might make about a game where dating and invading are conflated. Cast aside all those concerns, because this is a game where consent is primary, yet nonsense is overwhelmingly more important. It’s so funny that this is so lovely, and it’s lovely that this is so funny.

In the end, if you’re after solid, satisfying puzzles, it really doesn’t much matter the layout of the puzzle book. And here you get exactly that, which is why I am enthused to share it with you.

There’s no depth here, no sense of ambition to do anything novel with the genre. But it’s just a good time, and picking out super-long-distance headshots is never not satisfying. Don’t expect to have your life changed, but do expect some 90s-ish FPS entertainment.

It is, in many ways, an exercise in frustration. But it’s a far more controlled one than QWOP or Getting Over It. Those games leave me feeling useless, unable to achieve, always thwarted. But Heavenly Bodies makes its goals possible, and a sense of progress always available. It is, ultimately, a chapter-based puzzle game, intended for you to win. That’s crucial.

This is a brilliant little puzzle game, at a very decent price, and despite its seemingly simple beginnings it really has its claws in me.

There’s nothing innovative here. It’s just a really adorable execution of the current trend for monochrome hidden object-me-dos, that made me smile a whole bunch while I played.

This is a fascinating game, with more than one ending, but no matter how you play forcing you into some ugly situations. It’s so interesting to play this familiar setting from the side of the “infected” one on board, and to be confronted by the realities of your actions.

I’m adoring it, just as I did the first game a few years ago. It’s so zippy, bonkers, rapidly advancing, funny, colourful and challenging. The combat is far rarer and less of a faff this time too, and sometimes delivered as another puzzle rather than an obstacle.

It would be silly to directly compare this to Returnal, given the enormous difference in scale, but I can’t help but be reminded of it. That sense of enjoying failing at the earliest stages, with a constant sense of improving as I do.

I found two really satisfactory endings. One that bloody scared the bejesus out of me, and another that I’d consider a “good” ending. All extremely worthwhile. And yes, because people always ask, it does have jumpscares.