Yonder is the nicest, and yet most deeply transgressive game we’ve seen in our little section of the art world, for quite some time, if not forever.

Like most movies of the thriller genre when you go and replay the game you will likely find things you missed and understand things a lot more but even if you play it only once it does a good job of explaining everything and has a very satisfying ending (regardless of which one you end up getting).

Flip Wars' problem is that it has no depth whatsoever. That silly, simple, chaotic, and utterly pointless button masher that you had a quick laugh at when you play it for the first time really is all that’s on offer.

Finnish studio Housemarque have produced in Nex Machina another game to sit alongside its well-received titles of Alienation and Resogun, and that showcases the serious pedigree it has built since their start in the early nineties with Stardust. It is a rush of colour that delivers a satisfying experience that’ll steal your calm and let you imagine a future where the robots don’t wipe us all out.

While it’s not to the standard of its rhythm games, Rayark did well with its first RPG. Implosion looks gorgeous and is a very slick production. You can tell that it’s a game that comes from a studio that has had minimal need to develop narratives previously, and on the Nintendo Switch, the game’s mobile roots hurt it, but then the Nintendo Switch is also a portable console, and as a game that’s best played in short bursts, it’s a good one to have sitting on the hard drive or memory card.

Shephy is mechanically sound and intrinsically fun, but it’s also a harrowing experience if you think about it hard enough. I can’t tell if Pawn intended the game to be darkly humorous or outright desolate, but either way the grim story both tempered my enjoyment and drove me to play more. It’s an emotion that I’ve rarely experienced from a game, and that itself lends Shephy merit beyond the extent that the randomisation within the game actually hurts it.

I like what The Golf Club 2 has to offer. It is a really solid representation of the sport both in terms of mechanics and the overall aesthetics. Because of the course editor, you have a plethora of options you can use to create the course of your dreams, or just play those made by other people. The possibilities are limitless. However, some technical issues still linger and the career mode could use some additional depth as The Golf Club takes some small steps in the right direction.

For a game that looked like another cute little timewaster, Koichi Ishii has outdone himself.

Final Fantasy XII’s willingness to be different and innovative has left it feeling every bit as modern and poignant now as any new JRPG on the market, and it remains my favourite game within a series that I hold very precious to me.

Damascus Gear is fun. It’s clean, well-playing fun. It could have been an awful lot more, and it’s a little frustrating that the game didn’t make better use of the opportunities that the setting provided it. It’s also not a game that you’ll remember a year down the track, let alone feel nostalgic for in a decade. But it’s, again, good clean fun, and if you’ve got a weekend to kill, this one will do it.

I’m still glad that we’ve got Castle of Shikigami on Steam; flawed as it is, it’s a fun, creative shoot ‘em up and an important part of the genre’s history. Here’s hoping that its two sequels are also in the pipeline, because by most accounts, they’re a huge improvement on the good groundwork set down by this game.

Ripstone took something great that it already had going with Pure Chess, and further enhanced everything that the game was already doing well. In terms of aesthetics, atmosphere, and play features, Chess Ultra is as good as I can conceive Chess actually getting. Bring on a better range of chess sets through DLC, and preferably a Hatsune Miku set among them, and I don’t think I’d ever actually put this down.

While I say that RPG Maker FES is more limited than its PC brethren, it still enables plenty of creativity.

I imagine the target audience is less the philosophical and the obsessive, but rather the more casual JRPG fan looking for a light way to spend their spare time. As with most Falcom games, the game feel is straightforward and kinetic, paired with a vanilla aesthetic that’s more inoffensive than groundbreaking. I can’t fault a game for not being ambitious enough when it’s following a tried and true formula and does it without any perceivable blemishes at all.

The real joy to be had with Poly Bridge is to do with getting away with the cheapest bridge one can get away with. Inevitably, this approach will lead to many a car spectacularly plunging to the depths (not to mention collapsed bridges). The contrast between the horrific events and the happy colourful graphics, mixed as they are with an easy going cheerful soundtrack, is the source of magic that is Poly Bridge. Truly one of the best gaming experiences on mobile.

What beggared my belief is the question of why this “buy once play forever” game utilises all the cheap and nasty tricks from the freemium books. I can only conclude there is a core design problem with Subdivision Infinity, perhaps to do with it originally being conceived as freemium but then turned into premium due to rival releases. Regardless, the end result is a very mechanical affair of short dog fighting followed by lots of tediousness for the sole sake of getting a slightly better ship with which to fight slightly superior enemies in the next round. In the year of our Goddess 2017, this - Subdivision Infinity - is simply not good enough.

Like its predecessor and its DLC, Monument Valley 2 is a short game (say, two hours?). Personally, I do not consider this a disadvantage; on the contrary, I like games that do not pull their punches. I do not need time fillers, thank you very much; I plan on only living once but making the most of that opportunity. Monument Valley 2 certainly deserves a spot in my short but rich life.

Pixel Heroes is some good old classic dungeon crawling action. The lack of narrative context makes it a tough, but not necessarily rewarding game, but putting that aside, the endless gameplay loop is simple and clean, and there's a fun combat system to make it all worth at least a little of your time.

DiRT 4 does a remarkable job of creating a sense of speed.

As with the main Danganronpa games, there’s a number of serious subtexts to Ultra Despair Girls, and actually digging into these themes makes it clear that the game’s a lot smarter than it might appear at first.

If your big point of difference is that you’re playing a blind girl, but the way you’ve structured the gameplay means that she doesn’t behave blind at all, then you’ve shot your game’s credibility in the foot before it even starts.

An intense, special, and downright important game, with a powerful message to share not just about war itself, but also how we also talk about, and share stories about, war.

I hope it’s a game that others embrace as a stepping stone towards understanding a history and culture that too many are too eager to dismiss as “weird” or different.

Those little gripes aside, Neko Navy is a delightful little indie shmup, full of cute characters and oddball humour. It may lack the depth of some of its more established peers, but it’s got plenty of challenge to offer nonetheless, while a smooth difficulty curve means newcomers aren’t entirely left out in the dark. It’s probably not going to go down as one of the shmup greats, but its quirky charm alone is enough to warrant a look.

This is a console that does not need lesser local multiplayer experiences to bolster it up.

The whole effort is leaps and bounds ahead of Mighty No. 9, perhaps owing to the lack of fanbase threatening to withdraw their support if the game wasn’t at least 90 per cent similar to Mega Man. Mighty Gunvolt Burst suffers some early shakiness trying to find its own voice, but it’s not long before the game will win you over.

Borealys saw a winning formula, gave it a little glitter, and came up with something that plays well to both young and old audiences without relying on any gimmicks. My only regret is that in playing so much to its narrative strength, it left a lot of environmental world-building and magic-mastering hidden in the background when those well-designed elements deserved so much more than that.

The game itself can be fun in fleeting moments. And there aren't really any alternatives to what this offers, in this form, so that's a plus for it. However, the campaign is short and the visuals are just terrible.