Overall, Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle brings a welcome shot of vitality to the turn-based strategy genre thanks to interesting team mechanics and a colorful Nintendo theme that sets it apart from its contemporaries. Taking one of the biggest IPs in the world and marrying it to an all new type of gameplay was a huge risk that paid off wonderfully, and I’m glad that it finally found its way to my Switch. Now, bring me a sequel with a couple of needed improvements and 100% fewer rabbids, and we’re in business…

With some tweaking, Mothergunship could easily become a must-play. As it stands, only those with high-level twitch skills are going to have an enjoyable time. People like me might eventually get through the campaign, but I’m not sure I want to anymore.

Sadly, all its clever systems end up centering on warfare, and it is in warfare where Taishi too often fails to deliver. For every pitched battle ending in an exhilarating upset victory, there were a dozen that left me feeling like they were wasting my time. Despite all the clever tools in Kou Shibusawa’s thirty-year vision for historical simulation, I frequently had no way to create a new history for a unified Japan without marching into the inevitable.

That Death’s Gambit is beautiful and rewarding enough to be worth the struggle is what makes it a more successful homage to Dark Souls than most. It’s not the most creative game, but that doesn’t matter when so few developers are capable of pulling this kind of trick off.

Cosmic Star Heroine has the pieces in place to become a modern classic JRPG in the same way that Shovel Knight and Freedom Planet take their cues from old-school platformers. Given the amount of effort that went into the battle system, it’s clear that Zeboyd Games did their homework on the mechanics of their ancestors. However, while they definitely nailed the combat, the narrative is too rushed and the characters too shallow for Cosmic Star Heroine to reach the majesty of the games that inspired it.

The twin-stick genre is one of my favorites and I can’t help but take it a little personally that Bad Trip only made half the journey toward being a great game. Here’s hoping that Zombie Dynamics can build on their solid aesthetics and create an experience worthy of such a slick look next time out.

Fortunately, not even the rough patches could shake the shine off of the gift that Detached had given me. The likelihood that I will ever board a spaceship in real life decreases with each passing day as the responsibilities of adulthood tether me to the ground, but at least now I can load up Detached, put on my helmet, and dream my dreams again.

Sadly, The Mooseman is a mixed experience. As a piece of art, it is by turns creepy and sublime. As a game, it is a disappointment. The power of its best moments is remarkable, so I hope that, in the future, this creative team will realize their attempts to implement traditional forms of play limit, rather than elevate, their work.

For fans of Tempest and previous Minter games, Tempest 4000 is more of what they love. For those wanting precise arcade action or something new from this creator, it’s a flashing, overwhelming disappointment.

There’s nothing here that rises above serviceable. Omega Strike offers tight controls, satisfying platforming and combat, and one of the most forgettable metroidvania worlds I’ve ever encountered. It’s cute and I’ve played worse, but it never manages to rise above the crowd.

Mars or Die‘s design is beautiful and the RTS and Tower Defense elements work fine, but there’s just not enough here to recommend it. Once I’d finished the tutorial, and all that was left was to get through slightly harder versions of the same fights until credits rolled. It has some good bones for a better game to be built on, but in its current form, this title feels empty and incomplete.

Overall, I predict that Pode’s problems will come more from external forces than from within the game itself. With 20-30 new competitors flooding into the eShop every week, this charming little puzzler will inevitably have a hard time getting noticed. For those who give the bud some attention, however, a beautiful flower will grow.

I wanted to like Airheart. The concept of a roguelike with air combat, exploring worlds, and creating my own plane is a good one. Unfortunately, buggy game mechanics, lackluster crafting and the awful grind for money shoots this little ship out of the sky.

It’s a huge problem when the narrative of a narrative adventure fails to come together in a satisfying way, yet I struggle to write State of Mind off completely when its style is so striking, its world so rich, its ideas so fascinating. The game reportedly had a long development cycle, so it’s possible that Ganteföhr simply ran out of the time or resources necessary to properly finish telling this story, but even if the questions here are infinitely more interesting than the answers, I’m glad that someone is asking them.

Despite the eco-premise and the catchy visuals, Earth Atlantis is a straightforward, side-scrolling shooter which will appeal to fans of the genre, but what’s here might not be enough to convince newcomers to come aboard. The lack of a strong narrative hurts it as well. Still, this sharp-looking piece of faux nostalgia offers a lot of gameplay, and some daunting challenge to go along with it. Dive in!

While Remothered’s plot leaves much to be desired, it remains a stunning accomplishment thanks to gameplay that turns every moment inside the dark house into a nail-biting, edge-of-the-seat experience in a completely authentic location that dares players to try and get out alive.

Sonic Mania is easily the best Sonic I’ve played and also manages to be a return to the classic Genesis style. While recreating some aspects of the 90’s experience meant dealing with annoying things like running out of lives and restarting entire zones, it didn’t ruin the overall experience — this trip down memory lane was a welcome one.

Despite the minor flaws described above, Unavowed is truly something special, and it deserves every accolade it’s about to receive. I honestly can’t remember being as drawn into an adventure game as I was during this one, and the time just flew by. Simply put, Wadjet Eye’s newest title should be in every gamer’s library as soon as possible.

Slime-San: Superslime Edition is a gret puzzle-platformer that doesn’t try to be anything more than it is, and the content is perfectly executed by being easy to start and difficult to master, and it offers enough content to keep players coming back for hours.

Stay Safe‘s rankings are all about speed, which is unfortunate considering the questionable collision and shoddy controls. As such, I found that getting the top time for each level was seemingly impossible, and without doing that, the true ending remained locked away – Stay Safe‘s final insult, apparently. There’s an interesting concept and some cool art design on offer, but, but the level of dedication required to see it through isn’t worth the effort.

Arkane excelled at engineering a thoughtful, complex addition to Prey’s existing formula, but as someone who’s never been smitten with roguelikes or roguelites, Mooncrash just didn’t grab me the way the original did.

The core experience is still a truly fantastic, deep adventure that should be played by pretty much everyone who can tolerate a stiff, unyielding challenge – but the minimal effort put into this remaster also smacks of a fairly lazy cash grab. New players should dive in without a second thought, but for those who’ve traveled through the Kiln and back before… well, just be aware that there’s almost nothing truly new on offer here.

It’s clearly a game that’s designed to be played for a hell of a lot of hours over an extended period of time, and has a lot of substance going for it. I’ll probably come back to it after a while, but even if the sense of burnout I wound up with persists, my initial experience with Dead Cells was still a hell of a good time.

Brief quibbles and a general lack of emotional heft due to a largely absent plot only slightly mar an otherwise beautiful and consistently surprising mind-bender of a platformer. The developers also were kind enough to include a level editing tool, but it’s hard to imagine Youropa players creating content as clever as what frecle ApS spent the last decade-plus fine-tuning.

Limbo is a perfect fit for the Switch since it’s easy to pick up and put down, the shadowy aesthetics empowered feelings of loneliness and desperation, and even though I didn’t appreciate the spikes in difficulty, I won’t forget the immersive journey that Limbo took me on.

Wheelspin is slightly improved in multiplayer, but that requires having at least one enthusiastic person with a good sense of humor in the same room. Even so, this title is short on features, short on consistent gameplay and short on charm. Wheelspin Frenzy should be avoided.

The weak plot, thin characters and lackadaisical approach to combat added up to a final product that was inconsequential best and a disrespectful waste of my time at worst. I can’t recommend it to JRPG fans, people who want more VR experiences, or really, to anyone at all.

Chasm is a fantastic addition to the metroidvania pantheon and the best one since Shadow Complex. It’s frustrating to see it come so close to greatness, only to stumble by following too closely in Symphony‘s footsteps. It would have also done better by abandoning the procedural approach and going for a well-tailored, hand-crafted experience. I loved playing through it once, but there just wasn’t enough to pull me back in once it was done.