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.