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.