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.

When we look at History, and we learn about Wars, we see arrows on maps, armies defeating armies, flags replacing flags. But it’s so easy to forget about the minutiae within that. The farmer in the mountains whose life was bounced between fascist regimes, before being completely destroyed in their wake. A Painter’s Tale offers this perspective with such an extraordinary lightness of touch, almost a nonchalance, and is so much more powerful for it.

It’s also worth noting the excellent underground spooky sound-effects, and some lovely music. This all adds up to a very fun little game, with just enough Lemmings to remind me of happy times, but not so much that I can feel it triggering my anxiety. Oh, and good gracious, it only costs a pound. Which is silly. Put that price up!

It’s free! It’s a bit like Hexcells! It needs the ridiculous decision to have left-click move the puzzle fixed immediately! But it’s definitely worth bringing to your attention.

Honestly I’m not entirely sure if I’m a kitten, and I’m solving these puzzles for food? Or if I’m a scientist who’s motivated myself to solve these challenges else my pet cats will starve? I don’t want to think about it too hard. I just want to sit back, solve little puzzles, and be pleased that there are kitties to watch.

Running at about an hour long, that this is free feels such a brutal shame, but invariably the correct thing to do with a student project where there’s no actual company registered behind it. Still, if they’ve any sense they’ll form one themselves and embellish this into something even longer and more involved. Because this is a huge demonstration of talent, and extremely worth your time.

It’s a shame that there will only be bug fixes from now on – it’d be great to see this embellish into a bigger, more complex idea. Also, I would love to see a change where only one mouse button moves the screen around, as it’s currently tricky to move branches and leaves without accidentally moving about. But there’s definitely enough right now for your weeny £4, and it’s captured me (and oddly, my 6yo) for a decent amount of time. Ooh, and as I type a thunderstorm is rolling in over my latest tree.

Add in some lovely music, and I’m having a great time. I love these simplified versions of larger genre, and while I certainly do wish for more complexity in the battles, I’m still hooked on having yet another turn after each failure.

In another universe this got picked up by Valve and became the next Portal. In this one, it’s a buggy release on Steam that I feel shouldn’t be priced. Or at the very least, be in Early Access. But gosh, it’s impressive.

This is from Minor Key Games, who blew everyone away with 2013’s Eldritch Reanimated, and have since put out a series of very odd little projects, none of which have really caught on. In amongst them is Eponymous, which also received seemingly no attention at all, which is a shame – it deserves some, hence my highlighting this now. And for a couple of pounds, it’s an hour’s oddness well spent.

I want you to buy it and play it. I want you to see all the clever things it does, all the lovely surprises, all the silly moments. But I don’t want to recommend you do that, then you play it and say, “But hey, it just doesn’t make sense – and also I wish he’d have gotten a theatre school friend to do the voice over.” You know that already, go in and enjoy it anyway. And heck, it’s £1.50. You’d spend more on a glass of Coke.

There’s a good amount of game here – it’s a lot shorter than The Witness, but then, good – I’m a way in, and I’m convinced. And indeed frustrated that this isn’t already more famous. Being derivative of something enormously popular is often more of a hindrance than a help, and that’s likely an issue too. I mean, I strive to review things in isolation, and yet all I’ve done is compare it to The Witness throughout. It’s kind of inescapable. But I honestly prefer it, even though I can recognise that it’s not as good in almost every way.

Oh, and goodness me it looks amazing. The screenshots obviously show off the lovely modern interpretation of Game Boy-ish graphics, but a lack of motion doesn’t do it justice. Even the level picking screen is a thing of beauty. Add in some of the best music I’ve heard in a very long while, and the completely brilliant sound effects, and this is a fine package.

I think the social media narrative delivery is a brilliant idea, one I hope a bunch of other people have the sense to steal. It’d be lovely to see other games running with that conceit, much as so many picked up on the lost phone gimmick. But if they don’t, then I Hope She’s OK has offered it with aplomb.

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.

Hopefully it’s relatively clear at this point that this game is odd. It is indeed wonderfully strange, set in some sort of adjacent reality, where death and life seem to overlap. You are as likely to be solving object puzzles as you are to be cooking raw brains to restore the internal organs of a renter. It’s creepy, but presented as if it were anything but.

At £20, I’m hesitant to recommend it. At £10, I’d be demanding you buy it. But then, value is relative to the person purchasing, and you’re a big girl/boy, you can make that decision for yourself. Either way, this is a fab puzzle game, with just adorable art and music.

So, so much has been poured into this, every tiny crack packed with details and extras. The sheer number of computer games to find and play, some dreadful, some pretty decent, is bewildering. Let alone the amount of art created for one-off throwaway gags. And perhaps most importantly, that created to illustrate the repeated goals to escape from creature’s bottom holes.

The whole game is a twisted tribute to Italy’s Ravenna docks, and Romagna mythology, as well as an almost impenetrable folkloric cautionary tale about nostalgia and its erasure of time. Which isn’t something I’ve been able to say of any other game. I love the artistic choices made, and still don’t know if the game suffered from translation issues, or if its blending of English and – think – Catalan was a deliberate decision – I liked it about it either way.

A bright, cheerful, superbly well-made platformer designed for everyone to enjoy?! Have we, too, fallen through a portal into another universe? In fact, this is the continuing work of Skipmore, a Japanese developer which has previously given us, amongst others, Kamiko, 1-Bit Rogue, and Synopsis Quest. Transiruby is their finest yet.

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.

It’s very nicely put together, and the simple pixel graphics and four-colour palette belie some pretty clever physics. The tether operates according to proper underwater floaty properties, meaning you can wrap it around obstacles to complete some challenges, or allow it to swing you upward when taut (I’m not quite sure how realistic is the latter).

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.

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’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.

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.

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