For the very small niche of people who care that much about Snooker, however, Snooker 19 does deliver. There are more accessible Pool titles out there - including on the Nintendo Switch itself, but as an attempt to go the full distance with a deeply authentic simulation, Snooker 19 is a good and genuine effort.

With time and patches, this could be a must play, but as it is I can only cautiously recommend RymdResa as a game with fascinating ideas and inconsistent execution.

what Darksiders III gets right - the combat system and that beautiful, intricate labyrinth design - it gets so right that it can hold its head high against the many peers that it has at this at this time of year.

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

The purity and simplicity of what drives this game is appealing, and even refreshing, and the perfect thing for a lazy Sunday afternoon, when you just need to clear your head.

Normally when I review a game, I play, I write, and I’m done. Cat Café Manager is different: I fully intend to continue playing it for many more hours. A terrible saying is that variety is the spice of life, and this game provides a lot of variety via the choices players can make with regards to progression. The cats are great, of course, but the real fun here is running the café and learning the town’s story. Aside from some fairly minor issues, such as my qualms with building, I always came away from Cat Café Manager with a smile on my face.

I find that the complexity of its systems add a nice layer of strategy that most “Diablo clones” could benefit from. More than that, though, I find the narrative to be delightful in the way it revels in the Grimm Brothers’ sense of villainy, and then sticks you right in the middle of it and left to figure out for yourself if you’re comfortable helping a monster that completely evil.

Neon Chrome certainly has its charms, and it can be a lot of fun, especially if you bring some friends along. At the same time, I feel like there’s a lot of missed opportunity here.

"Incredibly successful" is actually a wonderful phrase to go out on. I struggle to find an aspect of This Is The Police that I didn't find enjoyable and appropriate for the style of game as well as what was promised in trailers prior to the game's release. Taking over the role of police chief to run Freeburg would have been a great simulation/management game on its own, but then add layer upon layer of villainous folk and reasons to go over to the dark side, and the game becomes a fully immersive experience that requires great difficulty to put down.

It's priced just right as an impulse purchase, and offers so much content that anyone who's ever enjoyed a tower defence game should get a kick out of it.

It's a good start to the franchise, with opportunities to expand upon the world there, add some story context and hopefully flesh out the experience further.

It's not that Moons of Madness is without merit, but it does come across as a game where the development team never quite reached creative cohesion and weren't able to quite work out what they wanted to achieve with this game. From the butchering of Lovecraft's vision, to a scenic structure that feels too disjointed for its own good, to the over-reliance on cheap horror tricks like jump scares in the absence of true narrative and thematic depth, Moons of Madness is just a little too confused for its own good. It's an inoffensive way for sci-fi and horror fans to while away a few hours, but by no means a masterpiece.

Despite moments of brilliance and an overall lovely aesthetic, there are mechanics which seem to be at odds with each other and thus the game seems conflicted. One moment you’re slowly following an enormous, glowing beast through an oceanic tunnel, and the next you’re chaining drifts together to zip through tight caverns while breaking through cracked glass panes.

While the core mechanics remain functionally the same, that (even more) exotic setting and (lesser known) time period, brilliant environment design and brief, but effective, narrative all combine to make something that offers just that little bit more.

The World Next Door isn't perfect, but is shows that Viz is - for now, at least - willing to take on a project that's a little different and oddball. Colourful, creative, and generally well designed, it's worth forgiving this particular title its teen B-tier narrative tropes.

It's hard to make a game that successfully melds genuine strategy and fast action together. There's always the risk that the strategy could be too simple, or the action would either overpower the strategy, rendering it redundant, or become irrelevant itself because the strategy side of things determines success or failure. Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires strikes that balance where both on-field performance and strategy equally determine success, and while it's a different flavour to the typical Warriors formula, it's wonderfully entertaining, and anyone who says the Warriors games "never change" should be sat in front of this until they learn otherwise.

I soured quickly on Penny-Punching Princess. I love the art. I love the combat. I found the sharp challenge and simple, clean mechanics to all be very enjoyable. But I just couldn’t get past how shallow it really was in the end, and how the game failed to live up to the tantalising promises made in its lede. It could have easily been a 5/5 game, but instead it’s one of the real disappointments in 2018.

While it doesn’t offer a whole lot to do and risks getting overshadowed by bigger party racers like Nintendo’s own Mario Kart, Chiki Chiki Boxy Racers is good for an afternoon of fun with up to eight players. It doesn’t overstay its welcome and it’s simple enough that players of all ages can immediately understand the controls and goals.

White Day: A Labyrinth Named School is, simply, an excellent game. If you haven’t played it yet, you should. The new wave of re-releases of it, for the modern consoles, but especially the Nintendo Switch, give you the chance to do that. So, if you missed it last year, here are your Halloween chills for 2022 served up to you.

This appears to be a theme with the Mega Man franchise. Each series starts off well, and then after a half dozen or so numbered titles, the quality falls off a cliff. Much like with the original Legacy Collections, I would recommend the first collection over the second in a heartbeat if you were to only choose one.

It’s clumsy and filled with flaws, but it’s precisely these imperfections that make it so interesting.

A new NBA arcade game will always be something to get excited about. Many of us have fond memories of dropping coins into those arcade cabinets back in the day. A game that can capture that raw sense of fun, while modernising the more archaic elements would instantly become one of the most entertaining games of the year. I’m sure the developers went into NBA Playgrounds with the most noble of intentions, but this game is not the NBA I remembered. This game is one that young me would never have considered to be worth my allowance.

As a game, Beholder is really well made. It has an interesting aesthetic, clever, challenging mechanics, and plenty of paths through the game. Its real struggle is in getting you to genuinely care about what’s going on, and it’s hard to get there; the gameplay too often makes it too clear that you need to make decisions that have little to do with your moral core.

The buggy nature of route markers, the lack of a serious crafting system, and the the underdeveloped protagonist are all issues with the game. But when I step back and examine the game as a whole, what stands out is the gameplay.

The levels are hard and they offer a good challenge for those who are willing to stick it out through the long loading times.

Table Top Racing's small issues are not enough to ruin what is essentially an easy, casual party racing game, but they're enough to ensure that it's never going to be remembered as a classic. Then again, it's being sold for a couple of dollars, so you can't really lose either.

King’s Bounty II is excellent, and much like The Witcher 3, having this thing on the Switch, portable, and playable wherever is very much worth dealing with the drop in visual fidelity. Hugely expansive in scope, and deeply traditional as a fantasy RPG, for fans of fantasy RPGs, King’s Bounty II is a rough gem in so many ways, and the lack of budget compared to what the big guns can achieve is evident at every step. Ultimately, however, that tactical combat system is impossible to put down.

Dokapon Kingdom Connect is a very niche thing indeed. But it’s silly, wacky, colourful and charming. Everyone in the household can have a laugh with it, and putting aside the old school “cheating” AI, it’s mechanically sound. It’s no replacement for Boom Street/Fortune Street/Itadaki Street, but it’s not a bad substitute, and might be on high rotation on your Switch longer than you think.