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.

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.

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.

It’s funny when it’s not being annoying, and fun when it’s not being fiddly. And with 50 of these stupid levels for just £4, it’s hard to make a big fuss. Because, and I just want to be sure that I’ve conveyed this information, it’s the metaphysical dilemmas of pasta.

And really, that one element of moving around the mine by where you match is so smart, and adds so much. The deeper you go, the more involved it gets, the more tile types there are to bust through, and upgrades to add to your town. And it has me completely hooked.

It deepens the more you play, as more attacks appear, and more complicated enemies join forces to buff each other. And it’s all rather fun! It’s not too hard, which is a pleasant relief, but it’ll get trickier if you don’t properly try to engage with the tactics of it all.

Those who want more involvement than occasionally making a choice from two or three options won’t suddenly get over their frustrations with the nature of what’s essentially a visual novel, but for people who want to enjoy a good slightly sci-fi thriller, I’d really recommend this. I’ve really enjoyed it.

There are some nifty puzzles in here, wrapped in its completely excellent presentation, across its two-to-three hours. That this is all the work of one person is completely crazy-bonkers. And for less than a fiver. Goodness gracious, it’s worth waking up for.

I really never thought I would ever be someone who played deckbuilding games. I never managed to get into Slay The Spire or Darkest Dungeon, and figured it wasn’t a genre I’d ever get to grips with. And then I stumbled on Meteorfall. It was love at first sight. It clicked. I got it. I got really good at it! I played it until I was on game+++ modes for every character, in a way I never play games! I’m having very similar feelings about Iris And The Giant.

It’s a short-ish game, perhaps two or three hours. For the first half of that, I was pretty convinced we had a gem here, a completely bonkers gem. By the second half, as the threads began to unravel to a subatomic level, I began to suspect we had a sparkly stone someone had coloured in with a felt tip pen. It was hard to mind.

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.

Tametsi is one of the best logic puzzle games you can buy on PC. It’s up there with Hexcells in my mind, albeit without the latter’s exquisite presentation. Its increasing complexity and perfect difficulty curve makes it one of the most compelling puzzles I’ve had the pleasure to play.

This is such a visually interesting game, using so many different and captivating methods to tell its stories. It’s very sad, and that’s absolutely OK. It offers truth, catharsis, or best of all, gratitude for what you still have. I think this is really splendid.

This is a treat. It’s about a quarter of the length of the games it emulates, but at a squillionth of the price. The animation and pixel art is a nostalgic delight, cutting no corners at all, and the writing is brisk, fun, and always cheerful. That this withstands the comparisons it invites is no small feat, and I dearly hope there’s more to come.

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.

I’ve had such a good time! I haven’t giggled like that in a long while. I’m not proud of it, except that I am, but I snickered and smirked and properly laughed my way through building the silliest pots the ever-expanding collection of tools allowed me to. And then felt enormous pride as my pottery drew in the crowds to my exhibitions in their hundreds, raking in cash, with people writing me letters begging to buy my work. My Work. Capital W. [Early Access Score = 78]

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

It’s exhausting. That it’s a story means you’ll want to read to the end, but doing so requires a really concerted effort. Which is, obviously, the point. It’s an extremely effective window into the routine life of those with dyslexia, and has very quickly revealed to me how much I don’t take that seriously enough. The idea that the whole world would be encoded behind these shifting, frustrating, bemusing glyphs is utterly overwhelming, a realisation that’s a complete “well duh” for millions of people.

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.

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.

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.

What’s so special here is there’s no deep dark secret. There’s no awful reveal. This is a positive game! It’s about nice people having a good time! Goodness me, it’s extraordinary that this is such a rare thing as to feel notable, but yes! It’s not dishonestly upbeat, but it offers a reflection of a really normal part of life that most media so peculiarly ignores: when things go well. Lovely moments sometimes get to gently peter out, rather than end in Sudden Calamity.

It looks lovely, it stays out of your way as you’re playing, but sensibly highlights rows and columns as you hover over them, and thank goodness there’s an option to switch off the inflatables-in-the-gutters cheating that highlights clues that can currently be addressed. So, independently of anything else, it’s a top quality delivery of a puzzle type that seems to elude so many.

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.

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.

Where you might be used to Breakout clones offering bonus drops, and that dilemma of trying to catch it before zooming across the screen to get the ball before it drops, here with so much more going on that becomes a much more interesting proposition. You might be in hand-to-hand fisticuffs with an eyeball, trying to blat it before it explodes fireballs in all directions, while seeing a fall of coins to your right, and an iron ball power-up falling to the left, all while trying to judge in which direction the ball’s going to eventually come down.

All of this is presented in a really beautiful way, the levels bursts of colour, changing depending upon your actions, and soundtracked not by a score, but rather the music of your movements. Transferring to the other side of a block, picking up a shape, going past certain places, rotating, sliding, all come with musical plinks and plonks, and your actions build the soundtrack to your play. It’s something Matthew Brown nodded toward in the Hexcells games, and here Nicolás Recabarren and Tomás Batista take it a stage further.

It all just comes together so nicely, the lovely cartoon design looking splendid, somehow managing to operate hundreds of enemies on screen at once without any issues, and offering a really good level of challenge without ever putting me off having another try. This is a properly fun time.