What I think stands out most about this is the way story is used as a commodity, while also being ingredients in the telling of its own story.

Sheinman has displayed just what a talent he is. Coding, creating the art, writing the game, writing and performing the music (with vocals from the actors)… that’s all sickeningly impressive. Having it manage to come together as a pretty tricky puzzle with so many moving parts is deeply impressive. But more than that, there’s a depth of knowledge here that I find daunting, an understanding of music scenes based on a lot of reading, listening and thinking.

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.

Grab this with both hands. It’s a real treat, and a great introduction to the increasingly peculiar world of Rusty Lake. I don’t think there’s any other developer in the world that’s put this many years into what’s essentially one large project, and it’s paying off. This is a brilliant way to get started. Or if you already did, a joyful return to some games you may not have played in five years, and almost certainly don’t remember properly. Because, who can remember dreams that clearly?

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.

Booth outstays its own conceit, but is so often excellent along the way I still want others to experience it. Until it loses its head, it’s a smart reinterpretation of 1984, an intelligent commentary on the current state of certain rather large dictator-run nations, and an ingenious evolution of the Papers Please concept. Right up until it isn’t any more.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.