Cthulu: The Cosmic Abyss falls prey to the greatest source of madness: boredom. Bogged down with its litany of technical issues and crashes, its fragile story and bland walking simulator gameplay fail to inspire even a modicum of intrigue. It's not Cthulu who'll cause your mental degradation, but the endless tedium of trying to reach the finale of this abyss.

With a brand new but convoluted UI, slowdown and framerate drops during match highlights and a severe lack of polish overall, Football Manager takes a huge swing and unfortunately doesn't hit the mark this year. The fundamentals of what makes this series great are present, but buried under the weight of everything that needs to be fixed.

Like an unopened box of Celebrations full of only Bounties, Chocolate Factory Simulator promises much and is visually appealing, but delivers very little else. From the laborious process of actually making chocolate to the tedium of upgrading your only source of 'help', this is one factory Charlie would probably send all of his grandparents to visit instead.

What could have potentially been a good hybrid of walking simulator and multiple choice adventure is instead buried under boring gameplay and eye-straining visuals. Ashwalkers squanders any narrative replayability by being an all-round drab experience that is as uninspiring as the wastelands it’s set in.

On the surface, Hellpoint should have been a worthy contender. But too many technical issues suck any real enjoyment out of it.

Played almost entirely on one screen with clunky controls and game play which has you at the mercy of a random number generator, Mittleborg: City of Mages is quite a tedious game to play.

One thing I do know is it is far more fun to watch than it is to play. Find a streamer gung-ho enough to punish themselves, and watch them for a bit. I had more fun writing the review than I did playing the game.

If you like those slide puzzle mini-games you find in many other games, Cubicity is a cutesy, leisurely game built around that core concept. There’s 6 to 8 hours of content in this original package with the hint of more to come later but in less than half of that time, you’ll have seen everything this game has to offer. It’s easy – far too easy for my taste as it becomes boring quickly – but this is a comfortable way to kill an hour or 2 before the monotony sets in.

One of the more disappointing games of the year, Tamarin is pretty to look at but dead behind the eyes, offering very little to win over fans of Rare’s golden age.

I’m sure it will please its target audience but for me, Waifu Uncovered is a simple, functional yet characterless shoot ‘em up that rewards the player with lewd images that are far too stereotypical. There’s less than 3 hours of content in the game across all 3 game play modes and you’ll have to work to get to play on the game’s best mode, “One Finger Mode”.

While Arenas of Tanks is undoubtedly better than Petite Games’ previous tank battle game, this title still has a number of issues that sour the whole experience. Bugs, exploits and a lack of engaging content mean that the otherwise enjoyable combat is left languishing between the rough edges. Maybe third time will be the charm for Petite Games and this series.

Despite a few positives, Phlegethon is a poor example of the retro inspired FPS genre and can’t hold a candle to the 90’s classics its attempting to emulate. This is a step in the right direction for Random-Spin Games as its certainly better than their previous titles but uninspired design, poor AI and half-baked mechanics mean this as an ‘also ran’ in a genre filling up with quality.

Tank warfare has never been as mundane as it is in Tanks vs Tanks. A lack of features, lacklustre AI that makes for easy prey and little depth to the combat means this game gets boring very quickly.

With better, more functional games already in existence and more exciting ones on the horizon (hello Dungeon Chess and Auto-Chess), it’s incredibly difficult to recommend Sabec’s version of Chess to anyone. Checkmate? There’s no way out for this one.

Rough visuals, clunky and repetitive combat and a narrative that spectacularly misses the emotional connections it attempts to evoke, Waking makes you want to do anything but.

Soulless and boring, Street Power Football offers nothing back for its ridiculous asking price. Vote with your wallet and leave this one on the shelf.

In this critics opinion, Tiny Hands Adventure is poor. It’s a 3D platformer that takes inspiration from the classics in the genre but doesn’t demonstrate an understanding of what made them so fun. Littered with design issues, a few technical hiccups and a narrative which is laughable (even to my 7 year old), it’s hard to recommend this game when it’s a shade of the games it attempts to emulate.

Rough, goofy and deeply perplexing, “I’m in Love With Your Dead Grandmother” is among the worst FMV games on consoles. Its only saving grace is how obvious it is that the creators are having a good time making it, giving it a charming sincerity.

A shoddy life sim, with little to nothing of excitement to offer even the most ardent of genre fans.

It’s not just the moths that bug Remothered Broken Porcelain. It’s the fundamentally broken narrative structure, nonsensical cut-scenes, unimaginative gameplay, and tired, badly implemented mechanics. Then there’s the masses of crippling bugs. There’s no amount of patching that will fix this game.

Confused puzzles, a convoluted story, poor use of lighting and no real scares makes Charon’s Staircase a good reason for taking the escalator instead.

Much like most Star Wars product these days, Jedi Power Battles is a nostalgia driven cash-grab that fails to improve the game other than reflecting some surfaces and modernising the controls. It's inconsistent, frustrating and, most egregiously, gave Amidala Force powers. That bad feeling you have about this? You know it to be true.

Built on mobile game design, Robo Wars has gameplay a toddler could master and a slide-show of boring “levels”, if you’re generous enough to call them that. The use of time-gated loot box structure for progression (with no actual microtransactions) only sullies the experience further. There are apps with far more interesting countdown timers available basically everywhere, which are probably much more worthy of your time… and money.

In Tyd wag vir Niemand, abstract yet repetitive puzzles make way for frustrating challenges that manage to make time manipulation boring and irritating, something I thought impossible. It can be easy on the eyes at times but that’s little consolation for a game that actively encourages the player to give up through overtly aggressive and clumsy game design.

If you’re desperate to play a Match-3 game and the only system you could possibly play it on is a PS4 then Rune Lord will give you what you want. There’s some easy trophies to earn here too. Unfortunately, if you’ve got a mobile phone or PC with an internet connection at hand then you already have access to a plethora of more innovative, more original and simply better Match-3 games that are free to play and will only cost you the amount of time to dismiss an occasional advert. When there are better alternatives with no monetary price, Rune Lord becomes a very hard game to sell or recommend.

What could have been a fun and entertaining 2D slice of action instead falls into drab, unfairly punishing territory. The Skylia Prophecy could have done its homework, rather than crib the worst parts of older, more difficult platformers.

Small pockets of appealing visuals can’t paper over the vast number of issues with Task Force Delta – Afghanistan. A tasteless and out-of-touch set-up, incredibly poor AI and an unbalanced health system result in a rough and decidedly sub-par first person shooter.

To summarise, there’s not a lot to Black Death: A Tragic Dirge and what is here falls between poor or simply adequate. Trophy hunters will be happy with an easy to unlock Platinum but anyone else will find a visually pleasing but thematically bland and uninspired virtual diorama to explore that lacks direction or purpose.