As far as independent visual novels go, Celestia: Chain of Fate lands in that growing middle tier of visual novel. Sure it might not have the production values of an Otomate production, or even last week’s Famicom Detective Club by Nintendo. As with all genre’s there’s an A-tier, and Celestia isn’t quite there. Yet it punches far above the typical “indie” visual novel, too, thanks to its absolutely gorgeous art, the complexity of the branching narrative, and… well, the kind of writing that does make you want to see the inevitable CG when the very pretty girl and very, very pretty boys start smooshing lips and bodies together. Celestia is a very believable bit of fantasy romance, which is the point, and it’s one VN fans shouldn’t overlook, despite 2024 being quite a year for the genre.

It’s a bigger game than I was expecting. At around 50-60 hours at a reasonable pace, working through everything, it’s by far the largest Mana game ever produced. The fact that it doesn’t stop being a highly playable joy from the start right through to the end should be a good indication of just how beloved this one is set to become – it may even just unseat Secret of Mana itself. Visions of Mana might not be quite so genre-refining as that classic, but otherwise, this is the perfect representation of what Mana has always meant to represent.

To say anything else about Emio would be doing you all a disservice, as it’s a winding, twisting mystery that is best enjoyed unspoiled. If you did play the remakes of the first two Famicom Detective Club titles then you’ll get more of the same here, just with modern standards of writing. That alone makes it a much stronger experience, because the narrative in this thing is incredible.

Bakeru is a warm, delightful thing and one of the best non-Nintendo platformers that I’ve ever played. Admittedly I’m partial to it given that I love roaming Japan for all its little regional quirks and specialties, and I loved discovering the developer’s interpretations of them here, but even if you’re not attuned to the game’s cultural resonance, its relentless joy will surely prove infectious.

The good news is that now that Big Ant has nailed the look, feel and atmosphere of tennis and delivered a take on the sport that is genuinely impressive, there’s only really one thing left for them to focus on for ongoing updates and iterations. Far be it for me to ever suggest that AI is an easy part of game development, but if the Big Ant team can access enough historical records of how the professionals have constructed their games, understand where they target their shots, under what conditions, and where their games break down, then that massive roster, coupled with personality-based AI, would put Big Ant so far ahead of the competition that there’s no catching up. It’s a big data exercise, and it would be so especially worth it for the sport of tennis.

I admire a game that is willing to take a risk, and certainly trolling the people who believe that games should be mindless content that doesn’t challenge their intelligence with a “political idea,” is a creative risk I can admire. But beyond the initial amusement that I took from knowing that somewhere out there someone is absolutely fuming about this game on a forum or in a tweet, there’s actually very little intelligence in Dustborn. It’s also an experience that is so culturally specific that it probably shouldn’t have been a global release.

The original White Day is one of my favourite horror games. It’s clumsy and clunky, but it had the right energy and really had a lot of creative ideas going for it. I am disappointed that White Day 2 is relatively unambitious and struggles to have its own identity. It’s still an awful lot of fun and I much prefer it to the big action “horror” games that want to be action shooters with ugly monsters. While I found White Day 2 to be an admirable commitment to a more classical form of horror, I was just hoping for something with a little more impact behind it.

It’s very good that the Switch has Ticket To Ride, as it is a lovely, inoffensive, easy-playing board game. It’s as accessible as something like Risk, Monopoly, or Catan, but less luck-based and therefore far less frustrating than those other games. Marmalade is a highly competent developer and while the presentation of the game isn’t the most inspired, this is still going to be heavily in the rotation for multiplayer fun if your group has any interest in board games at all.

I can’t help but feel Rockstar’s classic videogame nasty, Manhunt, was a better attempt at critiquing the voyeuristic quality of reality television. It pre-dated reality TV as a genre, so it’s not explicitly about the subject, but the savage grimness in the way it turned snuff film production into entertainment certainly had something harrowingly poignant to say about what we, as people, will find entertaining to watch. The Crush House, meanwhile, is bright and fruity, and the sinister element that is meant to carry the subversion seems to be something more akin to something like “tee hee, we know this is a bit problematic, but we sure love reality TV anyway.” It makes sense that this is where the developers would land. We all know that reality TV should be critiqued even as we all have at least one example of it that we can’t help but watch. The developers have also made a genuinely entertaining game out of it. It would be ridiculous to criticise candy for being good at being candy. I think I’m just surprised that it didn’t have more substance because it seemed like it had all the potential in the world to be a grand dessert.

It’s amazing that a visual novel of the prestige and impact of Fate/Stay Night would be released almost without fanfare, but that’s what’s happened with this. I’m not sure we were even made aware of its impending release until a day or two before it landed. It’s the latest chapter in a game that has a long history of being a massively influential success despite the best efforts of everyone managing it. And I would argue that this tells you more about its raw quality than anything else.

I don’t have much else to say about Hakuoki on the Switch that I didn’t say in my review of the game all the way back on the PlayStation 3. It was wonderful then, it remains wonderful now, and thanks to the quality of the OLED screen the all-important art feels like it’s getting better with age. Hakuoki is like a fine wine and will forever remain worthwhile, no matter how many times it gets bundled up for a re-release.

Niche sports are difficult. Sports are always complex, demanding things to code, and everyone expects their favourite sport to get the FIFA treatment. That level of experience is just not possible with an audience as limited as Pickleball is. However, it’s not unreasonable to expect the game to at least try to look and feel like the real sport. PPA Pickleball Tour 2025 doesn’t even come close.

It’s impossible to experience everything that Natsu-Mon has to offer in a single play-through – much like how it’s impossible to get everything done that you want to over a summer. They’re always over too quickly. But then the very best way to play is to put Natsu-Mon down for quite some time afterward and let that one run through the game be your memory of it. This is something to be experienced, not played, and as far as emergent narratives are concerned, this is the best example of that I’ve seen in many, many years.

The New Denpa Men is a throwaway free-to-play game, but it’s not a bad time by any means and you’ll have a smile on your face while you play. Do I wish that Genius Sonority went the other way with Denpa Men and gunned for something of the scope of Dragon Quest proper? Yes, absolutely, and I think the inherent quirkiness of the series could work at full scale. But do I regret playing this? Not at all.

Cygni: All Guns Blazing is a SHMUP with some seriously high production values behind it. For a genre that is usually quite niche, seeing something that pitches higher like this is impressive. It’s not always perfect – the budget spent on the cut scenes was a noble idea that ultimately misfired – but once you’re into the thick of the swirling maelstrom of activity, it’s hard to be disappointed with what the developers have achieved.

There is a new Tokyo Xanadu on the way, ten years after this first one was released. Whether you’re playing this for the first time, or taking the opportunity to refresh yourself before enjoying the new one, you won’t regret spending time with this new localisation.

Earth Defence Force 6 is pure fun distilled into a video game and it is impossible to put down. It’s based on B-grade sci-fi, and is B-grade in every way itself, and I would take that over over-produced, self-important, vapid blockbuster nonsense any time.

It’s a little annoying that so many people will play Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess and not then take it upon themselves to learn something about where the game comes from. To suggest it’s an “action tower defence” game is doing it a disservice. No. Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess uses the action tower defence mechanical framework to share something an authentic and meaningful interpretation of Kagura through the video game medium. Capcom previously did something similar with Okami, only to have people limit it to a “Zelda clone.” But just as Okami had something sincere to say about Japanese spirituality, so too does this game. Hopefully, at least some players are inspired to learn where this game comes from.

To be very clear here: This version of Rogue is a faithful port of a game that is around 40 years old at this point. That was three years before the original NES version of Final Fantasy (not the remakes), and even then this version is a graphical overlay over a game first released even earler, back in 1980. Rogue is very (very) close to the very first RPG ever made, and there is no way that this port is for anyone but the (very) nostalgic. At the same time, Rogue is such an influential game that the basic idea of it continues to power a significant chunk of modern releases. If you can find a way to enjoy how primitive it looks and the relative simplicity of its systems by modern standards, Rogue holds up almost shockingly well.

It’s only around 14-20 hours from go to final blow, depending on how frequently you need to repeat boss battles, and that feels about right. Flintlock isn’t a majestic epic in the vein of Elden Ring, and nor did it need to be. This is a nicely streamlined, elegant, and focused Soulslike, with an interesting setting to explore and some excellent, refined combat. This is a tough genre to get right, and the developers, in realising their limitations, have not over-extended themselves. The result is very playable and enjoyable.

I can’t help but feel that B-Project: Ryuusei*Fantasia would have benefitted from an approach more like Jack Jeanne, with its “Princess Maker”-like daily management of activities to train the group, but as a straight-up visual novel, this checks all the boxes with colour and panache. It’s a good addition to the B-Project project by Mages, and good on PQube for localising something with as narrow interest in the West as this.

Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition feels like a release schedule filler. While the multiplayer features are robust, they’re hardly innovative, and really it’s just a package of sliced-up classic games with a timer attached to them. I’d never call a game development project “lazy,” because they’re not, but the minimum work has gone into this, and while it will become a competitive obsession for a small minority, there could have been so much more done to draw in a much broader audience and really celebrate the deep heritage of these games (as well as Nintendo in facilitating competitive play).

Ultimately, the best way to play Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate is in exceedingly short bursts. As a “switch your brain off and button mash” kind of experience it works and in so closely emulating Hades it is inherently entertaining. But it’s also soulless and draining to play for longer than a half hour here or there. It doesn’t even work as TMNT fan service since it behaves more like Hades. It is, simply, a pastiche that is simultaneously a decently made game but also a very bad creative work. If only the games industry were better at using the language to grapple with stuff like this.

Any single run through of Princess Maker 2 Regeneration is just a few short hours, making it very moreish, especially given that the sheer number of endings it is clearly designed around replay value. You’ll probably want to use some kind of guide to get all those endings, as the game does nothing to indicate how any of them are unlocked… but then again, perhaps the spirit of experimentation is what you’ll love most about this. As a stat-based simulation sandbox, there’s a lot of joy in this trip through Princess Maker nostalgia. But given how difficult it was to effectively modernise this classic, perhaps it is time for a new title in the series. The last one was released back in 2007, and there’s a lot of creative opportunity that this series is now leaving on the table.

It’s incredibly frustrating to review a game like Tsukihime, because there is just so much to dig into with its narrative and thematic depth. I want to pull this thing apart piece by piece and examine the characters, dynamics, and brilliant use of language, that the need to avoid spoilers means that I can’t really talk about it. All I can say is that there is so much depth and intensity to the narrative that it works as a piece of literature, and for this remake that’s backed with utterly gorgeous art and presentation that pushes to the very boundaries of the visual novel format. It is such a good thing that we finally have this masterpiece on our Switches, easily accessible and wonderfully translated.

It’s still a lot of fun, don’t get me wrong. I’ll be playing this with my brother for our weekend gaming catch-ups for quite some time, there are already lengthy periods where there is not a single online game of Machi Koro With Everyone available, and you can be sitting in a lobby that you’ve created for 10 minutes just to get a group to join randomly (in a game that is less than a week old). Given that, it’s unfortunate that the party game flavour makes it less viable as a long-term single-player experience. I love it, but at the same time, Machi Koro With Everyone is an almost excellent adaptation of a brilliant board game that made one very big, unforgivable mistake.

Trails Through Daybreak is a new starting point for a new, epic arc (with the second chapter already out in Japan). By the end of it, I was not only invested in the new characters and contribution to the Legend Of Heroes history that was being created through their actions, but I wanted to go back and replay all the rest of the games in this series all over again. More than a single game, The Legend of Heroes is an expansive project, and it’s inspiring every time I get to play one.

Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge is a delightfully charming, remarkably in-depth eco-management sim. I figured it would be a pretty chill game with some intense parts of difficulty for me because that’s where I’m at these days. What I got was better than anything I expected. It’s not confusing, there is very little stress involved, and it is easy to get lost spending hours at a time meeting new frog friends and saving the wetlands. The expansive help section is especially appreciated. The game goes at the pace you choose. It was actually so overwhelmingly chill it was a bit easier to overlook some of the parts I did struggle with.