This is 2020’s Pony Island, only it dwarfs that extraordinary game in terms of scope and scale. It’s hilarious, inventive, and like nothing else you’ve ever played. This is GOTY material – I find it hard to imagine I’ll play anything else this year that matches it. And yet no one’s heard of it! This has to change. Buy it, play it, and then you won’t be able to help tell everyone you know to do the same. I’ve held back on spoiling so, so much here, and I desperately want to talk about the events in the second half of the game, but I won’t. Just buy this.

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.

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’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.

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.

I’m just so impressed! So no, as tempting as it is to call this “the missing Nintendo Zelda game” it does of course fall short of the bizarre perfection of A Link to the Past or what have you. But damn, it’s still tempting. This is a spectacular achievement, and a hugely fun and enormous game, packed with original ideas among the appropriately borrowed conceit. It’s a game the whole games press should be – I think the young people say – popping off over. Especially given it’s out for Nintendo Switch, along with other consoles. So let’s sing its praises until it can’t be ignored.

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.

Embracelet is a truly wonderful game, with truthful loveliness at its core. It’s a game about being 17, about those first steps toward adulthood, finding out who you are, and dealing with loss, love and mystical bracelets with magic powers.

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.

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!

So, yes, it makes absolutely no sense. And yet within its own doolally world, it makes all the sense. It’s a lovely, daft, interesting, deep and complex game, with no combat, no death, just choices and consequences. Ethical dilemmas and questions of morality. And, perhaps most importantly, a head-banging puffer fish and a breakdancing crab.

This is joyful and smart and stupid and hilarious. Yes, my hand still hurts from getting so cross with one platforming bit, but it’s as nothing compared to how funny it is. I so desperately want to give examples, reveal some of the game’s most elaborate gags to prove to you how impressive this is, but I shall resist. You trust me? Trust me on this one. Lair Of The Clockwork God is incredibly funny, impressively big, meticulously detailed, and so very smart about how dumb it’s being.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 am so deeply in love with Batbarian. Not because it’s a brilliant Metroid-ish platform game, which it is. Not because it has excellent art and animations, which it does. But because it’s a game that wants to be played.

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.

If you’ve got the chops, grab hold of this. And there’s a good way to find out, since the game has a demo. I shall sadly bow out, which I realise doesn’t make this the most helpful of reviews. But you know, sometimes things are hard.

I really hope this becomes one of those reviews on Buried Treasure that’s looked back on as redundant, after the rest of the industry notices this and reviews it. I kept hearing the word “masterpiece” go through my brain as I was playing it. Not a word I like to use, but still, it kept whispering itself to me.

This is a series of stories that creates a game about telling stories, and indeed portrays the act of being a game about telling stories. Its ending is something I’ve never seen any game do before, and yet feels so perfectly in keeping with everything that comes before it. This is a fantastic achievement.

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.

As the complexity increases, the time you’ll spend with puzzles grows, as you start out on multi-part endeavours within one screen, trying to wire up circuits to open barriers to be able to restart the puzzle over with more freedom to rearrange the pieces, in order to wire up circuits to open bar… You get the idea. And yet it never feels obtuse, nor perhaps most importantly, smug. Instead there’s a cheery demeanour throughout, even when the puzzling has teeth.

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.

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.

Grab this with both hands. It’s really solid stuff, a fun story, and a lovely entry-level tactical combat game, and indeed infinitely more accessible visual novel.

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.

For under £4 you’re getting a solid couple of hours, especially if you’ve the sense to take your time and challenge yourself to evaporate as much as possible in every level. Plus it’s incredibly hard not to just start over again the moment you’ve finished, the mechanic never growing tired no matter how much it repeats.

This is a really strong yet extremely approachable deck-building game, and after eight months in Early Access it’s fully released now. And really deserves a lot of attention.

I was really, really impressed by so much of this. As a piece of visual art, I haven’t seen anything so pretty in forever. As an idea, it’s fascinating. In its execution, it occasionally lets itself down. But I’m still so glad I spent time with this.

I call BS that this game is, as its marketing claims, a reaction to Covid-19 lockdowns. It has nothing at all to do with that, and I suspect was thought of beforehand. But it’s definitely about the crappy horror of anxiety and agoraphobia. And as I say, it’s actually about it, rather than some beacon of hope within it. Or it’s just a mean super-short horror game in which you’re repeatedly mocked, both by unfair deaths and a very horrid narrator.

Yes! This! I love it so much! It’s fun, cute, fast, with utterly perfect controls. And hang on both grapples at the same time and you can kwaping yourself upward as if on bungee cords! I can think of no higher recommendation.

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.

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.

The White Door is their most successful entry yet, a brilliantly imaginative, unsettling puzzle adventure that increasingly weaves its way into the ongoing Rusty Lake mythos, while operating independently of everything that’s come before.

It’s a game I want to play again and again, exploring all the possible variations, behaving in different ways, experimenting with deliberately antagonising particular characters by purposefully playing bad hands. I want to make friends with those I lost before, and infuriate those I previously befriended. I want to live inside it for as long as I can, in as many ways as I can.

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.

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

There’s a really smart use of melody here, in amongst some really beautiful drawings. It’s not quite Gris, but hey, at least it’s not Gris. There’s a real feeling of visual poetry here, made all the better by the complete lack of dialogue. It’s pretty short, coming in around one to two hours, which is just about perfect for the tone.

I’ve worried before when criticising such tales that I might be undermining the real-life experiences of a creator, who is trying to process through their creation. I feel reasonably secure that no one has ever gone through a situation as ridiculous as what’s eventually depicted here. It’s bothered me.

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.

No, it’s no great science fiction classic, but it’s a bright, silly tale with what were once one of the best ever Whovian enemies, managing to be scary once more. (I shall never forgive Moffatt for the Statue Of Liberty. Ever.) And at just a fiver on PC, or three quid on phones, it’s a good two or three hours of distracting fun.

So what price beauty? Patience. And how much you have with the game will determine your enjoyment. For me, an hour or so after finishing it, I’m already finding the memory of the irritations melting away, and the lovely art and story taking over. But the exasperation happened, and it’s my job to say so.

But overall, this was far from the rogueish resource management game I’d feared, and a far more rounded story adventure. Which made it exactly what I wanted, while I completely understand how the reverse happened for so many others.

I can’t over-emphasise how pretty it all is. The backgrounds are wonderful, the meticulously detailed character animations on par with the best I’ve seen. That the vast majority of this game, including not just the art and writing but also its fabulous music, is all by one guy, is astounding.

Tangle Tower is, without a doubt, one of my favourite games of 2019. It’s a joy, some of the finest writing I can remember, accompanied by fantastic performances, excellent puzzles, and a murder mystery that twists and turns throughout its lengthy run. This is completely magnificent.

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.

That aside, this is a very decent first-person puzzle game, albeit heavily weighed down by its derivative nature, that constant sense that you’re playing ideas from other games pasted together. However, when there doesn’t appear to be another Portal or Talos Principle coming along any time soon, this is a great scratch for anyone with that itch.

So yes, clearly this is a hefty tribute to Lovecraft’s world, and in that sense it’s why this game needed to be set in his creations. Although their writing chops are strong enough that they could have developed something creepy and funny from their own imaginations. Whether you care about this or not is up to you. I find that I can think Lovecraft a ghastly and pathetic man, and still enjoy a very well made game set in his stories. This is such a game, and I’m glad I played it. And replayed it.

But there’s so much that’s great here, so many inventive ideas and interesting exploring. For the longest time you don’t have any means of attacking at all, and when hours in it eventually does give you a way to fight back, it’s not with a conventional weapon. I love it for that.

There's so much ambition here, and it's delivered with such brave pacing, within a world that competes with Dunwall on looks, and some of the best voice acting I've ever encountered. While it occasionally frustrated me, if nothing else, Conway's soothing, mellifluous voice saw me through.

The timing of this is perfect. If you’re worried it’s insensitive to make a game about the deluded thinking of extremist far-right Americans just now, know that actual real-life America has far out-satirised anything this game has to offer – it feels positively mundane compared to reality’s present offerings. Plus, any wisps of discomfort I had were removed by the brilliant reveal at the end. Which is then, I’m delighted to say, followed by a song.

Oh do just get this. It’s amazing. It totally deserves its price tag, although I’m convinced it’d shift a lot more copies if it were £10. That one person managed to make a properly good Metroid clone in their spare time is extraordinary, and let’s all finally give it some attention.

Super Crush KO, despite its fantastically obnoxious name, lets me in! And it’s hard to say just how much happiness this has brought me. This is a frantic, fast, combo-driven combat platformer that is astoundingly accessible. I’m not going to say “easy”, because actually, I think I’ve been getting quite good at it as it’s gotten tougher. Because I really believe this game has one of the best difficulty curves I’ve ever encountered in the genre.

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.

This is facile, but in the best way. A big, dumb, silly game of making a giant mess. And that can prove pretty cathartic – getting to smash up stuff is always a fun release. It reminds me of that children’s game show of the early ’90s, Finders Keepers. And who doesn’t want to get to do that? Plus arachnid genocide.

It deepens the more you play, as more attacks appear, and more complicated enemies join forces to buff each other. And it’s all rather fun! It’s not too hard, which is a pleasant relief, but it’ll get trickier if you don’t properly try to engage with the tactics of it all.

I was just so intrigued by this. I loved learning so much through playing, and it’s just shocking to remember that Holiday Destination Spain was a place of such turmoil and upheaval within my own lifetime. At £20, its four or so hours feels short, but as I mentioned, it’s immediately intriguing to go back and replay making different decisions, or deliberately failing to help certain people, to see the implications playing out.

Those who want more involvement than occasionally making a choice from two or three options won’t suddenly get over their frustrations with the nature of what’s essentially a visual novel, but for people who want to enjoy a good slightly sci-fi thriller, I’d really recommend this. I’ve really enjoyed it.

It’s a worthwhile couple of hours. It’s always spooky, sometimes scary, and as I’ve said over and again, the creatures are incredible.

This is an often fantastic adventure game, with some really surprisingly deep puzzles, incredible art, and a combat system that survives the wholly inappropriate engine in which it’s built. And its atmosphere will certainly stick with me. Congeal with me, perhaps.

I enjoy playing it though! I’m not wholly convinced I’d be as enjoying it had I spent £15 to do so. Although I’m pretty convinced that aficionados would understand the pricing a lot more. I mean, it’s certainly of note that my highest score is around 18 million, while there are scores on the leaderboards over 2 billion. That is clearly indicative of a lot more game than I’ve been able to touch.

While meddling with the linearity of reality is hardly new for first person games, what I love about how Paradox Vector delivers its impossible corridors is the speed. Normally when exploring corners to find real life is looping impossibly, that you’ve taken five right-angled right turnss and appeared somewhere else, it’s done with a pace that ensures you take it all in. Here you’re zipping about almost (but not quite) as fast an old-school FPS, and realising your shredding of the Euclid’s surviving texts as you zip on by.

It all just comes together so nicely, the lovely cartoon design looking splendid, somehow managing to operate hundreds of enemies on screen at once without any issues, and offering a really good level of challenge without ever putting me off having another try. This is a properly fun time.

All of this is presented in a really beautiful way, the levels bursts of colour, changing depending upon your actions, and soundtracked not by a score, but rather the music of your movements. Transferring to the other side of a block, picking up a shape, going past certain places, rotating, sliding, all come with musical plinks and plonks, and your actions build the soundtrack to your play. It’s something Matthew Brown nodded toward in the Hexcells games, and here Nicolás Recabarren and Tomás Batista take it a stage further.

Where you might be used to Breakout clones offering bonus drops, and that dilemma of trying to catch it before zooming across the screen to get the ball before it drops, here with so much more going on that becomes a much more interesting proposition. You might be in hand-to-hand fisticuffs with an eyeball, trying to blat it before it explodes fireballs in all directions, while seeing a fall of coins to your right, and an iron ball power-up falling to the left, all while trying to judge in which direction the ball’s going to eventually come down.

It looks lovely, it stays out of your way as you’re playing, but sensibly highlights rows and columns as you hover over them, and thank goodness there’s an option to switch off the inflatables-in-the-gutters cheating that highlights clues that can currently be addressed. So, independently of anything else, it’s a top quality delivery of a puzzle type that seems to elude so many.

What’s so special here is there’s no deep dark secret. There’s no awful reveal. This is a positive game! It’s about nice people having a good time! Goodness me, it’s extraordinary that this is such a rare thing as to feel notable, but yes! It’s not dishonestly upbeat, but it offers a reflection of a really normal part of life that most media so peculiarly ignores: when things go well. Lovely moments sometimes get to gently peter out, rather than end in Sudden Calamity.

It’s exhausting. That it’s a story means you’ll want to read to the end, but doing so requires a really concerted effort. Which is, obviously, the point. It’s an extremely effective window into the routine life of those with dyslexia, and has very quickly revealed to me how much I don’t take that seriously enough. The idea that the whole world would be encoded behind these shifting, frustrating, bemusing glyphs is utterly overwhelming, a realisation that’s a complete “well duh” for millions of people.

Hexologic is an excellently presented puzzle game, offering some lighter fair than your Hexcells-like challenges, and it’s incredibly cheap.

I’ve had such a good time! I haven’t giggled like that in a long while. I’m not proud of it, except that I am, but I snickered and smirked and properly laughed my way through building the silliest pots the ever-expanding collection of tools allowed me to. And then felt enormous pride as my pottery drew in the crowds to my exhibitions in their hundreds, raking in cash, with people writing me letters begging to buy my work. My Work. Capital W. [Early Access Score = 78]

This is a treat. It’s about a quarter of the length of the games it emulates, but at a squillionth of the price. The animation and pixel art is a nostalgic delight, cutting no corners at all, and the writing is brisk, fun, and always cheerful. That this withstands the comparisons it invites is no small feat, and I dearly hope there’s more to come.

This is such a visually interesting game, using so many different and captivating methods to tell its stories. It’s very sad, and that’s absolutely OK. It offers truth, catharsis, or best of all, gratitude for what you still have. I think this is really splendid.

Tametsi is one of the best logic puzzle games you can buy on PC. It’s up there with Hexcells in my mind, albeit without the latter’s exquisite presentation. Its increasing complexity and perfect difficulty curve makes it one of the most compelling puzzles I’ve had the pleasure to play.

It’s a short-ish game, perhaps two or three hours. For the first half of that, I was pretty convinced we had a gem here, a completely bonkers gem. By the second half, as the threads began to unravel to a subatomic level, I began to suspect we had a sparkly stone someone had coloured in with a felt tip pen. It was hard to mind.

I really never thought I would ever be someone who played deckbuilding games. I never managed to get into Slay The Spire or Darkest Dungeon, and figured it wasn’t a genre I’d ever get to grips with. And then I stumbled on Meteorfall. It was love at first sight. It clicked. I got it. I got really good at it! I played it until I was on game+++ modes for every character, in a way I never play games! I’m having very similar feelings about Iris And The Giant.

There are some nifty puzzles in here, wrapped in its completely excellent presentation, across its two-to-three hours. That this is all the work of one person is completely crazy-bonkers. And for less than a fiver. Goodness gracious, it’s worth waking up for.

And really, that one element of moving around the mine by where you match is so smart, and adds so much. The deeper you go, the more involved it gets, the more tile types there are to bust through, and upgrades to add to your town. And it has me completely hooked.

It’s funny when it’s not being annoying, and fun when it’s not being fiddly. And with 50 of these stupid levels for just £4, it’s hard to make a big fuss. Because, and I just want to be sure that I’ve conveyed this information, it’s the metaphysical dilemmas of pasta.

At such a low price, I really do recommend this for those looking for a janky horror kick, especially with how successfully it delivers on those spooky PS1 vibes. I'm very interested to see what this team does next.

It’s £4! This is such an obvious buy. If you’re super-great at this sort of game, you can make it harder for yourself with the tougher hats. If you’re terrible at them like I am, you’ll have a great time laughing at your own ineptitude. It’s a huge bundle of fun, and just extraordinary for something made so quickly by so few.

Fortunately the rest of the game is a cute little puzzler, that has its difficulty ramp up slowly and calmly. And there are over 100 of them, so you’re getting a good deal.

Most fun of all is when you find a pan. You can repeatedly lob it at enemies for one-hit kills, until, tragically, it breaks. It’s also splendidly gory, blood spattering messily across the screen as bullets fly in all directions. Just like grandma used to love.

I’m so pleased this is still so much fun to play. It has all the same irritations, like the slightly dodgy tiny-thin platforms in some rooms being a little flaky, and the way you have to re-press a direction key after jumping or the dude stands stock still. Oh, and the sound is awful. But for £3-4, this is a lot of fun and a decent challenge, that feels really remarkably contemporary. I’d really recommend giving it a go!

There are so many excellent details here. Both games in the series so far don’t just have a black-and-white aesthetic for a gimmick – they really explore the possibilities the palette offers. There’s exceptional use of light and dark here. I also love the the way it embraces the nature of the TV series it’s based on, with the almost invisible threads holding up the aeroplane as you see it flying through the storm.

There are a fair few hundred puzzles here, and each grouping also comes with a mosaic mega-picross, the sections unlocked by solving each other puzzle in the group. Which is a lot more effort than was necessary for this to be a good package, so a proper delight to see.

It’s a game about doing sit-ups with a big fuzzy dog! You can deliberately leave the kid’s face sunk into the warm fur, until he sinks so deeply in that he sees through the dog’s eyes. And I really want to get to know that sealion better. Go on, let yourself experience something completely weird and yet utterly lovely. You’ve earned it.

With a hefty edit, this could have been a silly but super-fun lost-phone-meets-hacking adventure. As it is, it’s woefully bloated, but still has that super-fun game inside it.

It’s about 20 minutes long, and right now costs less than 50p. I went into this thinking it was a cool approach to being outright strange, and left being surprisingly touched by its depth of truthfulness, if lacking in tangible hope.

So yes, this is plainly daft, and yet incredibly effective. I dearly wish I could play any level from the start, but beyond that I’ve ended up having a lot of meticulously careful fun with a game I wasn’t even sure about why I’d installed it. I’m really glad I did.

I really enjoyed this. It’s so lovely, and if you ignore its rather clumsy attempts to pluck on heartstrings, it holds together well. There are a bunch of decent puzzles in there, plus there are whole sections of the game you won’t find the first time through. It’s sweet, but there’s a depth to the design of the tower that reveals itself as you climb. It’s cheap too. And most of all, there’s all that waving!

Is my life better for playing General Horse And The Package Of Doom? Unquestionably. It is it also worse? Very probably. Is there £7 worth of entertainment in here? It very much depends upon your definition of “entertainment.” If you love the idea of something that exists at the midpoint of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and The Room, then goodness gracious, is this the game for you.

You can apply the positive words of this review to any of their products. They’re all the same design, and all feature a collection of hand-made, extremely finely crafted puzzles, and they play just as well on phone as they do PC. Miracle Sudoku combines all these puzzle types in interesting new ways, with a focus on trying to include as few starting clues as possible, but I think it gets too difficult too soon.

You’ll think about a subject you likely often don’t, yet one that is soon to have such massive implications for all of humanity. And you’ll not feel berated or lectured at as you do so. Because The Last Survey is as much about its subject matter as it is its portrayal of human behaviour, of paranoia, fear, and the desire to do the right thing at personal cost. Also its damned good writing with some fantastic animation, presented in a way impossible outside of the realm of gaming.