Prominence hearkens back to the glory days of first-person point and click adventure games. Its intriguing story will keep you digging through terminals to find out more. Not only does it look like a classic game, but it plays like one too. It’s a nice modern addition to our libraries full of old favorites.

Thanks to these problems, a visually charming and potentially enjoyable — if thoroughly unoriginal — tower defense game becomes much harder to recommend. Of course, grinding to earn upgrade points is always an option, but the levels aren’t that charming.

Limitations aside, Impossible Creatures still feels unique and is definitely worth playing. Fans of Spore will enjoy the creature building and younger players whose only RTS experience is the current Starcraft trilogy might appreciate the simple, straightforward and uncluttered gameplay.

Pitting the player’s wit against a changing set of circumstances is a fun and exhilarating experience on paper, but ROOT makes too many wrong decisions in executing this mechanic that it’s hard not to see the majority of its level-by-level progression as anything but malnourished of some much-needed player-support.

Dragon Fin Soup is a great game trapped in a terrible game’s code.

It’s fitting that Stella Glow is ultimately developer imageepooch’s swan song; they came into the business making waves with their beloved SRPG series Luminous Arc and now they’re going out making waves with another excellent SRPG.

While gameplay at the core is functional and multilayered, most won’t find themselves excited to play over and over again.

For a game so mechanically simple, it’s one of the better experiences out there — four-letter swear words and all.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky SC is not just a title that writers looking to pad their word count would love. There is an incredible amount of depth packed into this release.

Anno 2205 is functional and fun, but with the singular exception of its visuals, it either had so little ambition at the outset or was so scaled back in development that it’s regrettably a missed opportunity.

Fallout 4 contains what should go down as the best open world in the history of this medium considering the sheer wealth of meaningful content packed into it.

Those looking for an engaging story to keep them reading for hours on end will want to pick up The Devil on G-String.

While there has been an influx of open world games over the last few years, Crystal Dynamics have been able to find a perfect balance of cinematic action and strong adventure elements...Rise of the Tomb Raider is an adventure like no other, giving players a twenty hour experience that will have them engaged from the moment Lara comes on screen.

While it isn’t perfect and there are limitations evident in each episode, Life Is Strange sets a new precedent for episodic gaming and reiterates why it’s a bona fide contender for 2015’s GOTY, despite facing fierce competition for that distinguished accolade.

For all the promise Pixel Pi shows amid the early phases, Pulse sadly delves little further into evolving from out its basic foundation — new ideas introduced later on feeling out of place and poorly executed, it’s hard to see them as anything other than square pegs forcibly shunt into round holes.

This is basically five standalone games wrapped into one deep package. While it will have DLC released for it, there’s enough content out of the box to keep players busy until the next Call of Duty and probably some time after that. The campaign is perfectly paced and entertaining throughout, the multiplayer is rich with customization and Zombies is refreshingly challenging. The only real black mark is a story teetering on the on the brink of pretension, but the existentialism of it is undeniably fascinating.

Norn9: Var Commons might not be the very best the otome genre has to offer, but it’s certainly up there.

Conflicks is like eggplant: it’s a taste that requires effort to acquire. Once the feathers get smoothed out, though, there is a robust, entertaining game to explore.

Hopefully, with the potential that the series holds, the following episode will focus more on Jessie and give players a much wider variety of things to do, decide and explore.

Yoshi’s Woolly World won’t suit everyone, but if you find yourself drawn towards its plush, adorable aesthetic, it might be one of the most emotionally pleasant experiences you have all year.

The Men of Yoshiwara: Kikuya may be worth a purchase on Steam for those who haven’t played it, but there are definite issues with the release. The biggest of these is the iffy translation and editing work done to the text, harming its ability to entertain.

Fans have waited a long time for Rodea the Sky Soldier, but unfortunately the final experience never comes within range of Yuji Naka’s past masterpieces.

Mushihimesama is a phenomenal arcade game and an indispensable addition to any shooter fan’s library.

Hypserspace Invaders II: Pixel Edition fuses an intense arcade shooter with eye-searing effects laid over chunky-pixel art, perfectly fused with its fantastic electronic soundtrack, as much a music album as a shooter and with both parts making each other all the better by contrast.

There are so many glaring flaws right up front; the framerate bottoms out, the story characters forced upon the players are atrocious and the always online requirement simply eats up bandwidth while adding nothing to the experience. When it hits that perfect line, however, this manages to be a satisfying and beautiful experience.

WWE 2K16 isn’t without its flaws, but it’s the most feature-rich wrestling game to come along in a while, with a right massive roster, a good deal of likable modes and well-fleshed out main attractions in the domains of 2K Showcase and MyCareer.

It’s a long and dangerous road out of the realms between worlds, but with enough shooting and a nice selection of helpful new internal organs, you might just get strong enough to escape.

This is one of the top visual novel releases on Steam this year, and an excellent horror experience in general.