Infinity Wars – Animated Trading Card Game is a confidently made card game that comes with complexity and depth that tries to distinguish itself from the standard card gameplay that has become popular with Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone.

Nonograms are nice little time-killers, especially on the go, which is obviously lost on a PC. Secondly, a touch screen is easily the best way to play. It makes everything so much easier to control, being able to fill in complete lines at a time with a single stroke, which is much harder when using a mouse. In fact, I disliked using my mouse so much I grabbed my graphics tablet and used that instead – much better, but unfortunately a luxury not everybody has access to. Honestly it just feels wrong to play picross on a PC. Using such a large screen for small, simple puzzles and not being able to take them with you is really awful and I can’t say I’ll ever be playing a picross game on the platform again.

Fishing Sim World is a relaxing experience and is enjoyable in short bursts, but turns into a game that I grew bored with the longer I stuck with it. This is a title clearly aimed for the angling enthusiast, and that’s fine, but improvements can be made to make it a better fishing experience.

When it comes down to it, My Hero One’s Justice is filled with a decent amount of content and some really pretty visual effects, but also lacks longevity in other areas: the roster is a bit small, battles mainly consist of button-mashing and dashing, and the network battle is especially unpolished, leaving no option to train or play other modes while waiting for a match. As is the case with most anime fighters, the fans will likely be the most receptive to the game’s features, while those less-inclined may find a functional fighter that fizzles out in the fun factor a little too quickly.

Just a month ago my game of the year 2018 was Celeste – a 2D platformer that will stay with me forever because of both the mechanics and the story and especially of the way they build a narrative together. Klaus instead feels more like the game was built simply as a convenient way to tell the story, or the story was built to make sense of the game – they don’t seem to really connect or work together to create something more meaningful than the sum of their parts.

Undead Horde may not be the most beautiful or impressive game in the market, but it surely is as fun as hell, difficult at times, but silly in others.

It is a shame that Drake Hollow could not bring more in-depth combat, because everything else about the game is enjoyable, and as a bonus, it has a stellar visual design and cute plant people to warm up your heart. Once the campaign is experienced and a run of Sandbox is over, there is nothing to make players come back for more, so unless updates in the future extend the features of Drake Hollow, expect the life expectancy of this to be short compared to other survival games on the market.

I had a good time playing NEOVERSE – especially Hunter Mode – because at the end of the day the aesthetic of a deck builder doesn’t matter as it’s all about the cards. Finding the card synergies was fun, even though there weren’t too many to find, however because of the lack of cards I can’t see myself playing this game on and off for the next few years like I have with other deck builders. Hopefully NEOVERSE gets some attention from deck building fans, especially now it’s on Xbox Game Pass (at the time of writing), and Tino Games Inc. will add more cards as either a free update or paid DLC instead of charging for schoolgirl uniforms.

I’ve played every game in The Room series so far and I just can’t get enough, Fireproof Games have delivered yet another great port built from the ground up for PC. The Room 4: Old Sins is by far the best one to date; the story, gameplay, and atmosphere all tie together perfectly to create a mysterious story and Lovecraftian vibe. I hope for the next instalment they will push the series even further giving us a deeper look into this world and its mysteries.

The lack of content is deeply disappointing, but the worst part of all is how interesting the idea is. I want to like it. I want it to be better. I wish it was just being released into early access in its current state so it could be greatly expanded on with the help of the community but it looks like this is all we’re going to get. Hopefully we’ll hear some good news from the team in the future or see the approach used elsewhere. Until then, however, I think I’ll leave Can’t Drive This uninstalled.

Neptunia Virtual Stars ends up coming on stage as one of the poorer entries in the Neptunia franchise. This is a huge shame, because having an action shooter blended with hack and slash gameplay has so much potential to be a blast, but this is poorly executed. As it stands, the gameplay is not captivating enough to be enjoyable for the 16 hours or so it takes to beat, standard aiming is unreliable and enemies are reused too much and suffer from no change to their attack patterns. The ladies of Neptunia cannot carry this game over its gameplay, and with so many better options out there for this type of action, Neptunia Virtual Stars is a Vtuber that simply wants to annoy you rather than offer some entertaining pass time.

We need more Volt Patrol – it’s too interesting not to push any further than this. Until then, I seriously recommend it if it looks like something you’d be into but just be warned, you’ll come away itching for more and there’s nothing else to fill that void. Also – I hate you drones! How do you work?!

At first I felt like Wonhon was a revenge fantasy built on the outrage of the atrocities committed during the Korean War (a time when Japan annexed Korea and worked to entirely wipe out their culture and history), but it’s not. Not entirely. It gives players a peek through the looking glass at just a few of those horrible truths and grants them some catharsis as they’re able to put some of the victims at ease, even if what they believe they need in that moment is the bloodshed of those that wronged them. But when that starts to come apart all we see is the suffering caused at the hands of War Pigs. It’s just a shame that the game ends before it really gets to explore those avenues any further, leaving it to fall a little short in both the gameplay aspect and in its observations of an abhorrent smear on World History that is all too recent.

I’ve come away from my great time with Space Tow Truck a little smarter, a little more knowledgeable of some basic mechanics of physics and in the history of science in general.

Pawnbarian isn’t for everyone, being a hardcore puzzle game at heart, but it is a great shining example in its field and a must-play for those whose curiosity is piqued by it. Now I just need my Steam Deck to arrive so I can play on the go…

The Kids We Were is a simple game that is fully invested in its narrative. There is not much of a game to play here, meaning it is not for everyone; mainly fans of heavy stories or visual novels will enjoy this time-traveling, heart-warming adventure. It touches on serious topics, treating them with a good conscience, and does so while throwing in the fascination of time travel and the whole idea of “what if you could change someone’s future for the better?” The voxel graphics might not totally fit with the themes, but the music and script make up for this, which allows The Kids We Were to tug on your heartstrings with its satisfying conclusion.

TowerMancer leaves a lot to be desired, which is just so annoying because it feels like they almost had something great, something you wouldn’t be able to pull yourself away from. It has an underlying addictive quality but it constantly works to push the player away with repetitive levels, fixed-path victories, and non-stop griefing. I really do hope to see another iteration from the team with a wider variety of everything – level setups, hazards, rooms, options. It could be a fab little time waster, but in its current state I think most people are just going to come away aggravated, disappointed, or both.

Unfortunately there’s not enough here to justify itself at all – nothing that mixes up the already wonderful gameplay, nor any story purpose, nor extra benefits/modes/items to care about. I only hope that this doesn’t dissuade the team to move on to other things because I would love more Textorcist – there isn’t anything else out there to scratch the same itch. The problem is that, with how fun those first set of big baddies were, we now expect each fight to be pumped full of creative ways to push the player, to always one up the previous encounter, and that’s just a seriously hard target to meet.

It might not be a title you cherish forever, but I guarantee it will leave a bit of itself with you. An interesting twisted take on a classic, with accessible mechanics, and a powerful soundtrack that annoyingly still hasn’t yet become available for purchase.

Despite those flaws, anyone looking for an entertaining mix of turn-based action will have a fun time with it. Just like the Saturday morning cartoons that inspired this game that you all enjoyed as a kid; they might not be the best TV shows, but they did the job of providing happy entertainment. Sometimes that can be enough to be satisfied for the day, and Implausible Industries has created something similar to that emotion with their game Research and Destroy.

None of the collections have skewed negatively for me yet, and although a couple of them I didn’t particularly register with, that continues to be true. I’d say these remarkable bundles are must-plays as long as you understand that balance and don’t get turned off by the odd dud.

Lunistice has been created to give fans of platformers who are on their way to middle age something to reminisce with. The developer has done a great job in replicating what made the platformers for the PlayStation and Saturn so enjoyable that I could not help but smile as I played. The game brings tight controls, silky smooth gameplay, and a wonderful visual style that upholds the charm of those consoles of old; there is something aesthetically pleasing about it. Lunistice might not be a long game, but what there is a blast to play. Not all games have to push the boundaries of the medium, some can just give us a jolly good time. Lunistice does that without needing hours of your time, yet engages the player with its platforming and level design. Lunistice is a good pick for anyone who wants to enjoy a platformer that feels stripped straight from the late 90s for an afternoon or two. Plus, at an incredible price of £4.99, checking out this blast to the past will not hurt anyone’s gaming budget.

Thy Creature is a game that wonderfully displays its horror with great artwork, and it shows that the developers had fun crafting their vision of the traditional Frankenstein story. While the puzzles are simple when outside of battle, moving them into the framework of a bullet-hell and having the player need to resolve these while avoiding waves of horrors is a fascinating blend that somehow works. It sure is a challenge, but one that always ends in a satisfying feeling. It might be easy to beat for veteran bullet-hell players, but for the average gamer, this game will offer an unsettling challenge that will test you over its 10-hour adventure. It will frustrate, it will amaze, but overall, it sits as a good game with a unique blend of two genres that it somehow makes work together.

There is something remarkably enjoyable about taking a wild war machine and going ham against a stupid amount of enemies – pushing that enemy count up to as much as your PC can handle in free battle mode and watching all hell break lose is something magical. If only the rest of the game was as brilliant as its impressive shipbuilding.

It is hard to ignore Gun Jam’s lack of content in its current state, as it feels like the game should be in Early Access now rather than fully released. There are elements that clearly should be featured, tutorials, and ways to look at high scores, that are criminally missing that hurt the overall presentation, while the limited stages and song count hurt the general package. That said, what is here shows the foundations of the game’s mechanics and quality. Gun Jam feels like the game is a few updates away from being a good rhythm-based shooter hybrid because what is here is fun to play. The soundtrack is top-notch, an absolutely great set of head-banging tunes. Even despite that unfinished feeling, rhythm fans will most likely enjoy and appreciate what is available and what the developers are moulding. With the team at Jaw Drop Games having heard the feedback from players and promising to support the game with content in the future, which I hope they stick with in the long run, Gun Jam should be able to eventually join the list of good rhythm games that its promising beginnings seem to exhibit.

It’s nice to see Puppet Combo mess around and make whatever they want to because what are these games if not investigative deconstructions and crazed experiments, but next to the greats like Babysitter Bloodbath, Nun Massacre, and The Glass Staircase, Christmas Massacre sits closer to the bottom of the list alongside Samhain and the likes.

Spirit Hunter: Death Mark II is a sequel that decides to change a few elements to offer a more streamlined, less frustrating and generally overall better experience than the previous entries in the series. But there is a negative that comes with making the game easier to play and changing the investigation elements to be side-scrolling. While I enjoy this change, the lack of variety in the environments means it can become dreary during the slowly-paced elements between the interesting and climatic parts of each chapter. That said, the main element, the visual novel storytelling, brings a compelling horror tale that blends twists on Japanese folklore with a modernised setting to offer a strong atmospheric story with twists and turns to the end. Spirit Hunter: Death Mark II is a game for visual novel fans who enjoy tales about the supernatural with adult themes.

There’s a ton of depth that is often lacking in such bonny titles and plenty to keep you engaged for well over ten hours. Plus the difficulty is absolutely perfect for a real hungry brain-teaser lover such as myself. The only negative thing I can even really say about it is that it’s not exactly a novel concept as there are many other games that will have you programming bots. Human Resource machine is incredibly similar with its drag-and-drop command layout, I got quite addicted to Bitburner a year or so ago which uses a real programming language to have you level-up in a sort of an idle game, and I’m very excited for Linkito that lets you build out entire systems with logic gates and bits of hardware. That doesn’t stop Star Stuff being great, though – it actually means there’s somewhere to go from here if you want more. Give it a shot.