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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

If you fancy being completely weirded out by a deeply sinister and absolutely mystifying three-hour creep-em-up, jump on this one. I am super-intrigued to find out what Faceless is going to be.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 love this! I cannot justify this well. I guess sometimes it’s just fun to be rubbish at something. But it’s really nicely presented, the music is fun, and it’s no slapdash effort – the controls and timings are incredibly precise. And if you happened to be good at it, well I cannot imagine how thrilling that would be.

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.

I’ve had a fine old time with this. I’ve carried on playing for far longer than I’d planned, and am about to carry on playing once I’ve finished writing this. Which is a useful reminder that it’s important not to dismiss games because they do what other games have done a lot, especially when they do it this nicely. Also, to remember that storylines based around the enforced wearing of trousers are always welcome.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Each round I get a higher score, a little bit further in, and gain a smidgeon more understanding of the process. Plus it has kick-ass music, and a superbly bemusing visual style.