The Hundred Year Kingdom is the most rare and precious of things: it's a smart, engaging, and thoughtful game, but also one that is highly accessible, playable, and respects the player's time. It is clearly a solo project, but it's also weird how a solo developer has managed to figure out how to do that when so many developers 1,000x their size remain committed to wasting our lives on their content.

Despite some initial confusion over the puzzle aspects of Murderous Muses – which I blame more on the way my brain works than the game, sometimes I need to be blatantly told something or I miss the obvious – I still felt that I got a really complete experience. The mash-up of a procedurally-generated environment with FMV is highly successful, and fit together hand in hand. I came into this game loaded with expectations and fearful of being let down… but that fear was completely unfounded. I mean, I’m a games journalist/critic with a degree in art history and a love of true crime – Murderous Muses was basically made for me.

Memory of God has created a poignant experience featuring a character type that is rarely explored in the medium. The game’s esoteric story and tedious mechanics might look bad on the surface, but they contribute effectively to the game’s unique tone – and the ending is sure to be something you’ll remember for a long time.

This remaster really needed the novelty of the Nintendo Switch handheld portability to provide the definite hook to justify a re-purchase.

Story of Seasons doesn’t exactly paint a picture of the realities of the life of a farmer. It is, after all, one of the hardest, if noblest, jobs. But the sweet utopia that the series offers is pristine escapism, and Grand Bazaar has one of the strongest concepts and executions that we’ve seen in the series. This game is a total delight.

Plague Inc is destined to be remembered as a classic. Yes, it's a simple, accessible, "casual" strategy title, but it's also one with some incredibly strong and pertinent themes, and it has an almost maddening habit of getting you to think through its implications long after you've you've put the console down. I'm glad it has come to Nintendo Switch now, because this is the perfect home for it.

The narrative is on the light-side, but that makes it perfect for short bursts at a time. By the time I came to the end of Miitopia, I found it slightly emotional to say goodbye to my companions of more than a decade, but it was truly worth the ride.

Velocity 2X is an awesome example of how shoot ‘em up and platformer can share a coexistence.

This game is undoubtedly a dream on the Switch.

Distant Worlds: Universe is a corker. But make no mistake: while it’s not as forbidding as some Grand Strategy games, patience and a degree of head-scratching will be required. But it’s worth the effort. It’s enormous, complex and – above all – fun.

The Devil’s Third is a hell of a lot of fun because it breaks every rule in the book. I would take that, technical warts an all, over the glistening and safe nonsense that we’re exposed to from almost every other shooter out there.

9 R.I.P. is, ultimately, a playful take on urban legends and more akin to that classic film, Ghost, than something more visceral. If you’re out there looking for proper horror with a similar theme, Death Mark 2 is going to be a better recommendation for you. But it’s okay that Otomate didn’t make that game, either. After all, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to get it on with a hot ghost, even if 9 R.I.P. missed the opportunity to make one of these boys look like anime Patrick Swayze.

As a cricket nut, Don Bradman Cricket is the definitive version of the finest cricket game ever produced. It's also quite possibly the most limited "HD Remaster" yet produced for the console, but Big Ant has now cut its teeth on next-gen development, and I can't wait to see a proper sequel down the track to a game that I have spent more time playing over the past year than any other.

Having not played the original Brigandine, I don't know if this new one does justice to the legacy of the original. I do know that original is well-respected (and quite rare, therefore expensive), but I'm comfortable saying this: developer Matrix Software has done something special with Brigandine: The Legend of Runersia, and this effort deserves to have a legacy all of its own. The Switch is by no means short on great tactics experiences, but Brigandine might just be the best of all of them.

There aren't many visual novels that are presented as well as Alternate Jake Hunter Daedalus: The Awakening of Golden Jazz. It's stylish, slick production that borrows from the classical masters of the crime fiction genre, while adding some genuinely creative approaches to the visual novel that help to make it both feel fresh and hard to put down.

Simple as it might look, but Yomawari is a remarkably complex game that aims to be something far loftier than most attempts at interactive horror. Its intensity is in its subtleties, and the way it is constructed makes it a masterclass in the aesthetics and theming of one of the most important art traditions to have ever come from Japanese culture.

In effect, Legend of Mana is less interested in being a JRPG as it is a story of immersion. You’re given these truly beautiful, art gallery-worthy environments to explore, these eclectic, memorable characters to interact with, and a narrative that is broken up into a series of vignettes that keeps the overall game feeling vibrant and energetic. Perhaps the best comparison I can draw with Legend of Mana is to that of the most beautiful picture book version of Aesop’s Fables you could imagine. Without being religiously heavy-handed, this game has a way of sharing wonderful little stories of morality and humour, and it’s certainly going to be rolling around in my head for some time to come entirely because of the quality of those stories.

The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot is an incredible game that is just so much fun to play whether you are diving head first into someone’s Castle or if you are working on your own Castle’s defences and trying to get things just right.

In the interests of variety, evolution, and the survival of creative thought, Hohokum is a game that needs to exist and be celebrated by those who can appreciate it.

As a game, EDF 5 is such a massive leap from the previous title in the series, in every way, that it feels like it belongs in a different series entirely. And yet, for all its nonsense, giant monsters, and ever-escalating explosions, there's also a sense that this EDF, moreso than its predecessors, has also remembered that something can be B-grade, and still convey some kind of message of worth.

Essentially, Trails of Cold Steel III is just more Trails of Cold Steel, but with a bunch of new characters, some new ideas for the narrative to explore, and some welcome design tweaks. I mean that as an absolute compliment, though—Cold Steel and Cold Steel II are two of the best JRPGs in recent memory, so having more of the same is hardly an issue. I'm still not entirely sold on the idea of the original Class VII being pushed to the background for much of this game, but the new Class VII are fantastic additions to the roster who bring a lot of new ideas with them.

I’m obviously the target market for this game. I like trashy fanservicey things, and Seven Pirates H, by virtue of being one of the trashiest and most fanserviey things I’ve ever played, just happens to be a really good example of that. Everything within the game is well-crafted in service of this one particular goal, and the result is outrageous, ridiculous and fun. This is the finest example of raunch humour on the Switch.

It’s a pity that there will be some (or many) who will inevitably dismiss Death’s End re;Quest as an anime fan service game, because it has a smart core under those trappings. As a blend of visual novel and JRPG, and as a blend of science fiction and conspiracy thriller that has a good, sharp bite to it, I would have to say this is the most inherently interesting game that Compile Heart has created to date.

Hidden in my Paradise is an exceptional hidden object game that captured my attention for several hours. (And trust me, that is not an easy feat.) You can play whether you have two minutes or two hours to spare. Yes, I have major beef with the controller optimisation or lack thereof, but there is so much to make up for that. The snap aspect, the fine details in the items, the amount of layering of items in the paradises, the art style, the freedom to create levels, and the sheer number of objects have made Hidden in my Paradise a shining example of the genre. I have collected every item and created every snap in every paradise. I have collected every item available. I did the same for the content of the Halloween update. The only thing to do for now is begin anew and hope for more extras.

Those amusing bugs aside, Greedfall: The Dying World is an earnest project by one of the most earnest game developers out there. It’s a game that is trying hard to say something important about a topic that is of great importance, while structuring it into an RPG that builds on the truly interesting world and lore conceived in the original. Spiders remains the best of the B-tier European RPG developers, and that’s a compliment. Belonging outside of the big-budget blockbuster developers affords a creative freedom that Spiders has never been hesitant to embrace.

My suspicion is that Dragon Star Varnir will be remembered as one of Idea Factory’s greatest. There are some corners cut with the gameplay, and the Switch port isn’t ideal, but the concept, theming, art and narrative are all so different that this stands as one of the more interesting and narratively innovative take on the Grimm brothers tradition.

There’s a lot to love about Cat Quest, most of all perhaps its familiarity. That trait feels more like a blessing than the death knell that it is for a lot of other games, and it’s evident that this is a game with a lot of heart. It’s a bit like eating comfort food – there’s no pretentiousness in the execution, and each bite has an expected outcome but most importantly, you know it’s going to be delicious.

As it turns out, Yakuza Kiwami feels every bit as current as Yakuza 0 from earlier this year, or Yakuza 5 on the PlayStation 3 before it. It’s a magnificent game, in other words.