I’m not even sure that it’s a fully functioning game, seeing as one time I went back to NeverEnd and found that my save file was corrupted for no obvious reason. In other words, NeverEnd looks bad, plays even worse, and doesn’t work like it should. It may not cost much, but it still manages to be overpriced at that low price point on account of the fact it’s abysmal.

There’s a chance, of course, that Mecho Tales plays better with a full controller than on a handheld. But even if it does, there’s still the question on why you’d want to. Whether you’re playing the game on a small screen or a large one, there’s no getting around the fact that doing so will sear your eyeballs. Your vision is precious, and so is your time, so you’re better off using both far, far away from Mecho Tales.

I feel bad about not liking Bodycheck more than I do. As someone who loves the Vita, I always appreciate when developers show the same level of devotion to the handheld. But there’s still no way I could recommend a mediocre-at-best game to people, no matter how much I want the system to continue to succeed well into its twilight years — and, sadly, this is the definition of a mediocre-at-best game.

Obviously, if forma.8 were anything near a full-priced game, it probably wouldn’t be worth picking up. But seeing as it’s free with PlayStation Plus this month (and fairly reasonably priced on a number of other platforms), it’s hard to say no to a game that’s as pleasantly unobtrusive as this.

Revenant Saga is populated by all kinds of terrible, terrible people, who seemingly have no filters between their brains and their mouths. Anna, obviously, is the worst. Other townsfolk are just plain mean. Even the demons who can speak come off as passive-aggressive losers more than anything else. It’s hard to tell if all that was intentional, or if the game lost/gained something in the translation, but, secretly, Revenant Saga is hilarious. Does that make it worth your time? Probably not, since you still have to slog through a generic RPG to get to the hilarious bits. Of course, if you like generic retro RPGs, then, good news: Revenant Saga delivers everything you could hope for, along with a surprising amount of humour.

Mask of Truth’s fights are standard SRPG fare, with grids and turns and, occasionally, teams. You don’t need to worry about learning anything too complex, which in turn leaves you more time to sift through the story. Conversely, it means that if you don’t find the story compelling, it’s not like there’s some other element here that could win you over. Utawarerumono: Mask of Truth is for diehards only, and everyone else need not apply.

Contrasted with the playful, pleasant narration that accompanied Thomas Was Alone, it just comes off as obnoxious. But really, that’s just a minor annoyance that pales in comparison to the fact that Alteric is demanding without balancing its demands with a sense of fairness. It’d be easy to overlook some annoying gasping if the game was good otherwise, but seeing as Alteric isn’t, it’s the grating cherry on top of an unfair sundae.

It’s nowhere near perfect. But for what it is, and for the (cheap) price it is, there are much worse gaming ways to pass the time than 36 Fragments of Midnight.

Here’s the best way I can describe it: my daily calendar this year has been Jeopardy!-themed. There were new questions every day, it gave dollar values for each question, and at the end of each week I could “wager” my weekly total in a Final Jeopardy! type-question. The experience I got out of that was pretty much the same as what I got playing Jeopardy! on PS4. That’s fine if all you’re after is a bit of trivia; I’m certainly partial to testing my knowledge of random factoids. But if you’re looking for anything like the actual game of Jeopardy!, then keep looking, because you won’t find it here.

What’s frustrating about it is that it’s not hard to imagine Factotum 90 being a fun game. Make the robots move a little more quickly, make the camera less sticky, and suddenly nearly all the issues are fixed. In the absence of those fixes, however, you’re just left with a puzzle game that’s got some great ideas, but that falls just short of executing them.

I wouldn’t want to suggest that anyone other than adventure game fans will want to check it out: it’s relatively easy and short, but it’s still of the walk here, pick up X, combine X with Y school of gameplay. Still, if you’re a fan of the genre and want to see how long Double Fine have been cranking out the classics, this game is well worth checking out.

I can completely understand if the weirdness (or even grossness, depending on how strongly you feel about a bunny girl looking for her master) of Rabi-Ribi turns you off the game entirely. But at the same time, there’s something to be said for not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Like, say, Monster Monpiece before it, Rabi-Ribi may have some pretty questionable aspects, but it also has some pretty enjoyable ones, too. I leave it up to you to decide which of those things wins out.

That word, pleasant, may just be the best way to describe all of Undertale. I know that’s nowhere near as strong a term as many of its devotees have used, but it feels entirely appropriate to me. The characters, the charmingly retro graphics, the interactions: they’re generally quite pleasant. I wouldn’t say they make this a must-play game, but I would say that it means that if you play Undertale, you’ll likely have a grin on your face the whole time.

Really, the only reason to check out Squareboy vs Bullies: Arena Edition is if you’re absolutely desperate for some kind of beat-’em-up game on the go. Even then, and even at a minimal price point, it’s hard to imagine why you’d feel the need to bother with it.

It probably says as much about its competitors and peers as it does about Cursed Castilla itself that things like fairness and non-sucky controls are considered points in its favour. But given the state of retro-inspired gaming, that’s where we are. Cursed Castilla shows that it’s possible to recreate the vibe of 8- and 16-bit games without making those games feel like a chore to play, and for that, I’m incredibly grateful.

While there are lots of cases of newcomers need not apply when it comes to JRPG franchises, I’m hard-pressed to think of any where it works quite as well as it does here. Summon Night 6 is geared towards fans of the first five games, and seeing as the first four of those never made it across the Pacific, that should tell you everything you need to know.

One More Dungeon isn’t exactly a complex game. It’s a tough game, to be sure, and it doesn’t give you anything in the way of handholding before it sets you loose in the dungeon and expects you to figure things out on your own. But outside of the learning curve — which can be measured in minutes — there’s not much here that should surprise you if you’ve ever played some of those original FPSes. One More Dungeon offers some decent enough nostalgia for people pining for the early days of Doom, but otherwise, you shouldn’t go into this game expecting too much.

Super Hydorah isn’t really for me, since dying over and over again has never been my cup of tea. But it is for some people. So if you’re one of those people, and you’re into shmups, good news: here’s your new favourite game.

To be sure, nothing here is necessarily bad. Every aspect of the game is competently-made, if wholly uninspired. Antiquia Lost is totally functional, and you can get from beginning to end without the game ever breaking on you. But that leads to the bigger question of why you’d want to go from beginning to end. I get that some people just live to play retro RPGs, but I’d hope that even these people have better taste than to play something as forgettable as Antiquia Lost.

While I get that the developers wanted to make Gunhouse more challenging, it feels like they did so at the expense of making it more fun. It feels like the whole game could’ve been drastically changed for the better just with that one small shift in how the game is played, so the fact they opted not to do that is kind of frustrating.

Demon Gaze wasn’t the kind of game that was so bad that it needed to be reinvented from the ground up, it was so average enough that a sequel could make slight improvements and still feel like progress. Luckily, Demon Gaze II does that: like the first game, it’s solid enough that you can play it without being too disappointed, but with the added bonus that things are a little bit better this time around.

If Time Recoil truly represents 10tons’ Vita swansong — and they’re currently saying it is — then they’ve picked one heck of a high note to go out on. As far as I’m concerned, Time Recoil is the very best twin-stick shooter the handheld has to offer, and it’s well-worth checking out.

Unfortunately, like its predecessor, Midnight Shadows has all these great ideas, but it doesn’t seem to know what to do with them. The game still consists entirely of your on-screen characters very slowly walking around neighbourhoods, looking for clues and hiding whenever monsters come close. To be sure, there are worse things for a game to be than unsettling and spooky — especially if, obviously, we’re talking about a horror game. It’s just that it doesn’t take long before you wish that Yomawari: Midnight Shadows would deliver more than a creepy feeling, and, like its predecessor, it’s a wish that never quite pays off.

Fallen Legion: Flames of Rebellion will appeal to a very specific type of player: someone who loves Vanillaware RPGs, and is eager to try out a game that isn’t afraid to try something new when it comes to controls. I’d be lying if I said that applied to me, but if it describes you, you should absolutely check this game out.

It calls itself (a) contemporary adventure game about debt, family, and the truth about honesty, but this undersells the bleakness within significantly. It’s dark. It’s angry. It’s self-loathing. It’s nihilistic. It’s built on the premise that everyone lies, all the time, and it uses this as a foundation for critiquing all of modern-day capitalism. Needless to say, literally none of it resonated with me.

If Save the Ninja Clan were a full-priced game, that might be fatal to its chances — after all, the most important part of any twitch platformer is tight controls, and if it doesn’t have that, it doesn’t have anything. Seeing, however, as it’s well under $5, it’s hard to be too demanding of the game. Buy it if you want a disposable twitch platformer, and you may be surprised if you don’t expect all that much.

I’d be lying if I said that Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth – Hacker’s Memory made me eager to check out more games in the series, let alone expand my horizons to see what else Digimon has to offer. But if you’re already a fan, I imagine that this game is competent enough and expansive enough that you’ll find all kinds of stuff to enjoy.

Where Iconoclasts falls a little short is in making it clear what it expects of you in places. It uses little signs to convey instructions, but a lot of the time these illustrations make no sense, and you have to puzzle things out for yourself. It’s obviously never impossible, but there are certainly places where it feels like it may as well be. Still, as the creation of one man after seven years of development, it’s hard to fault Iconoclasts for being a little challenging in places. If that’s the trade-off to be made for a story as strong and distinctive as this, it’s well worth it.