A cute coming of age space robot story and a fine addition to the cosy game genre, Growbot is a short and sweet puzzler with an ethereal soundtrack. This is one for those who want a short story, a beautiful art style and relaxing gameplay.

Loopmancer has all the hallmarks for a phenomenal game, but is just let down by some mechanical issues and a middling story. It’s stellar visual design will reel you into its Cyberpunk world and its fast-paced combat will hook you into trying out even more outlandish varieties of weapons. Unlike most dystopian cities, the rot only occurs at the top and in patches, leaving a healthy and exciting core to explore for a few loops. Just don’t look at the faces, even Dredd couldn’t make them any more hideous.

The game has had twenty five years to be transformed into something to wow fans of the series. Instead, it just feels like a lazy port with ugly character models, awkward controls, and an assumption you’ve played it before. Perhaps one for the hardcore Blade Runner fans, but not the newcomers.

A reworked version of the original game that addresses most of the criticism that was aimed at it, Firegirl DX is a much more enjoyable game this time around. It unfortunately falls foul of a few new issues as it blazes a trail on consoles but these flaws can’t spoil what is a fun blend of 2D and 3D visuals in a competent roguelike package.

It’s short, lifeless and lacks substance but for 10 minutes, zipping around a Martian landscape in Space Explorers: Red Planet is strangely entertaining. This isn’t a ‘good’ game but of all the low-budget titles flooding the PSN Store these days, this is certainly one of the better ones.

SpellForce 3: Reforced is a valiant effort to mesh RTS and RPG into a functional package on console. In theory, it shouldn’t work at all, but for the most part it succeeds more than it fails. There’s plenty of issues, whether it be the shallowness of the tactics for success, the visual oddities that plague your journey or the overabundance of burdening dialogue to cut through, but the essence of this fantasy game is good enough to shine through.

MADiSON channels the best instalments of the first-person horror genre to deliver a frantic, nerve-shredding and atmospheric tale of demonic possession. It delivers the scares often and will have you tentatively looking over your shoulder at that shadow that definitely wasn’t there before. It’s been a while since I felt this much trepidation moving through a cursed home, but it feels frighteningly good to test this demonic presence again. A must play for horror fans this year.

Offering up something more lighthearted than a Milestone sim, MX vs ATV Legends does racing competently, be it bike or quad. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for the UTV’s, or the game’s complete lack of anything outside out of its racing career modes. It’s certainly one for MX fans, but not for those looking for more content and fun in a mud-racer.

A dry, poorly thought out and mercifully short clicker game, The Bronze Age is yet another “trophy bait” title from Webnetic. Without a single redeeming feature, the only people who will find any enjoyment here are shameless PlayStation trophy collectors that want to see a number go up.

It’s by no means a bad game, but Yurukill just never manages to hit the same heights as its contemporaries. There’s solid groundwork here for a sequel, it has its unique selling point in the shmup sections, and the puzzles are mostly fun. I wanted to love it, but its story didn’t come together in a satisfying way and too many mechanics felt half-baked or redundant.

If you thought that OlliOlli World couldn’t expand on its charm offensive, then you’d be a fool. Retaining that charm with an absolute challenge of a game behind it, this new DLC is more of the same with a lick of extra-terrestrial paint to it. If you’ve got the patience and the passion for it, then OlliOlli World’s Void Riders is the out-of-this-world trip for fans of persistence and point-based perfection.

Neon White is a video game vision executed with the kind of immense creativity and skill the industry needs more of. Intensely satisfying gameplay combines with a well-executed story, engaging characters and a crisp art style. Every facet compliments another area of the title with a serene cohesion which culminates in an adrenaline pumping, high-octane blockbuster of a game. Neon White is a very strong contender for my game of the year, and if you own a Switch or PC you owe it to yourself to experience this incredible title. Failure is common in Hell, but only through trial can you reach the salvation of Neon Heaven.

A desperately sub-par clicker game that’s little more than a reskin of Webnetic’s previous games, The Wine Story is two minutes of ineffectual clicking without reward. Trophy hunters will be happy with the rapid Platinum trophy turnaround but without any real artistic merit, achievements made here will feel hollow.

Pocky and Rocky Reshrined is a gorgeous run-and-gun shooter, lovingly and faithfully reimagined. It’s just as much fun as it was back in the nineties, but little in the way of extra content and decidedly old-school controls hold it back from greatness.

Excellent writing, an incredible number of choices with consequences that genuinely impact the whole journey, and a ton of replay value, Steve Jackson’s Sorcery! – The Complete Collection is an absolute treat of an RPG, and if you love the genre, you should play it. The only black marks on it were the menu navigation and the bugs I experienced, but they weren’t enough to make me not want to recommend it.

Despite its obvious and numerous drawbacks, Broken Mind is an oddly compelling story driven first person shooter cum adventure puzzler. It’s not going to be challenging those titles at the apex of the genre but its a perfectly fine game to spend an evening with.

Another disappointing and short addition to the wonderful Jurassic World Evolution 2, this movie tie-in content is rapidly exposed as bare-bones and dinosaur feed. The new mechanics are tedious, requiring more of the gameplay least enjoyed in the base games, while the admission fee to this additional park ride simply isn’t worth it unless you’re a hardcore fan.

A Night At the Races is an interesting if unbalanced narrative experiment. Despite its issues, it’s a peculiar indie curio that completely divorces its central arcade game play from its story which results in some odd effects. If you like original experiences, this is certainly worth the hour it takes to complete.

It’ll scratch an itch for a niche subset of JRPG fans, but its almost complete lack of an engaging narrative or characters, alongside repetitive areas, means Metal Max Xeno Reborn left me very underwhelmed. If not for its systems-heavy combat mechanics and solid Monster Hunter-esque gameplay loop, there would be very little here for me to recommend.

Guild of Dungeoneering: Ultimate Edition is a remaster done right. All new animations, effects, bug fixes and nice surprises are stuffed in alongside all of the DLC content to make a complete package. The handcrafted art style is lovely, the card-based exploration and combat mostly satisfying and easy to get into. While it may lack a bit of depth to keep the dungeon raiding at full throttle, it has enough in the tank for a good few hours of monster slaying.

Repetitive, uninteresting, and lacking in substance, Jumanji: The Curse Returns contributes nothing new or dynamic to the game board genre apart from a dose of movie nostalgia. This game didn’t feel suited to the Switch console, and likely best played on a mobile device because it is short and sweet, but not much else.

More entertaining than your average tycoon game, Ravenous Devils leverages a famous penny dreadful theme, namely Sweeney Todd, to give it a unique, dark tone. It’s a shame that this long pig pie is part-baked with a number of frustrating glitches that upsets its flavour. It also fails to turn its theme into anything mechanically interesting. Still, you’ll easily lose a few evenings to this game before its recipe becomes stale.

Super Perils of Baking is a 16 bit, 2D side scrolling platformer and an ode to the retro game genre in terms of variety, difficulty and platformer peril. It’s jam packed with things to do and collect but you’ll need a sprinkling of rage induced dopamine to get you through the enemies, highs and lows. There’s hours of fun that’s certainly worth your time, especially for the price point.

Wearing every cliché on its sleeve, The Quarry is having a whale of a time with its setting. Sometimes it's satirising the slasher film, others it subverts them. With many endings and path-altering decisions to make, no two playthroughs are alike. Coupled with a heap of horror alumni, as well as up and comers, The Quarry is a veritable romp through jump scares, ghost stories and video nasties.

An essential purchase for fans of Ash Williams and the unique blend of gore and comedy that the Evil Dead series has created, this asymmetrical horror game builds on the foundation that games like Dead by Daylight have laid. It might not innovate but there’s a surprising amount of content and replayability in Evil Dead: The Game that raids 40 years of film and television for ideas and puts them to excellent use.

The promise of branching story lines and visceral combat fall unfortunately short in this upgraded Beat ‘Em Up experience. Despite a fantastic animation style and strong technical performance, it can’t quite grasp what made the best of the genre so compelling. If you have a buddy you can unleash your inner warrior alongside you’ll find something worth risking your honour for. If you venture out alone however, prepare to be a rather disgruntled warrior, provided your non-playable counterpart doesn’t break the game altogether.

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.

Don’t fall for the similar name, Bus Driver Simulator Countryside is nothing like its popular predecessor. It is bland, it is ugly, and if it is meant to be an accurate depiction of driving around Russian suburbs, it is offensive to Russia. Don’t wait around for this one, seek alternate routes of enjoyments.