Drop Duchy contains many more complexities in its later levels, including factions, variable terrain and bonuses such as “faith”. Unfortunately, bar a simple opening tutorial, Sleep Mill offers little explanation of rules, perks and units. You’re left to your own devices and rather too much trial-and-error experimentation to find the hidden potency of the best tactics. Still, this Complete Edition – released for consoles one year on from the game’s PC debut and including a bunch of DLC – has much to recommend it to tactical fans. You juggle blocks and armies at an unhurried pace via an attractive interface but you’ll wish your Napoleon had a few advisers willing to offer battlefield insight more often.

FH6 nudges the accelerator again with a fresh location and a handful of inessential additions such as homes to decorate. But the diminishing returns on show here suggest Playground will need to dig deeper into the engine to find a higher gear next time.

This Yoshi expedition may be a game story without orthodox structure but it’s written with tongue in cheek and features a cast of delightful oddballs.

Crawlers is less of an unknown quantity compared to the out-of-nowhere compulsion of Survivors. But it has no less bite and a lot more crunch.

Winter’s Warmth has this love/hate relationship with snow. It’s the cause of most of Moomins’ problems but also a delight to behold and play with. The game may melt your heart a little even as you pick up that shovel to clear yet another drift blocking your way.

The narrative may not be as convincing as that of Returnal but Saros one-ups its predecessor in almost every facet. It’s a seat-of-the-pants thrill ride that escalates the spectacle with every chapter and will haunt your dreams with walls of coloured missiles.

The evocative presentation carries Nutmeg! a long way, particularly for gamers of a certain age. So add an extra star to the rating above if you’re a child of the 80s.

People of Note offers a visually arresting tableau, scored by a collection of agreeable tunes in genres from rap to rock. The developers’ love of puns delivers a regular supply of chuckles and a smattering of optional puzzles based on everything from moving blocks to mathematics adds novelty to the gameplay. But aside from Cadence’s slight obnoxiousness, People of Note is less of a hit because the music at the heart of the story is only loosely connected to the gameplay and the songs themselves are short on memorable hooks.

If you’re a Switch 2 owner who somehow spurned this previously, this reissue with extra DLC is unmissable. For existing fans who may have played the original to death, it’s much less essential.

Outside of Screamer’s punishing story mode lies a more persuasive set of challenges, time trials and multiplayer races. Yet as a whole it rarely generates the irresistible momentum that drives you to come back.

Marathon would be remarkable as it stands for its enigmatic storytelling but Bungie’s love of riddles elevates the end-game to new heights. The Cryo Archive has only just unlocked in the last week or so and already players have been delighted and frustrated in equal measure by its secrets. Some who encounter it won’t like the randomised nature of its components and others will just wonder why they can’t just shoot stuff to win. Yet veterans of Destiny’s great raids will fall hard for it. Marathon works hard to rebuff your advances and could do with playing less hard to get. But for the player who’s seduced, this could be your next great love affair.

High on Life 2 falls between too many stools to be worthy of a seat at the top table. Its humour will be divisive, sure, but provides plenty of laughs. The gameplay never quite clicks despite propelling you through the story at a fair clip. But its wonkiest pillar is the technical instability of its world, which is rife with glitches that swallow characters into walls, overlap dialogue or, unforgivably, make completing a quest impossible.

The pixel art simply can’t do justice to the Kratos we’ve formed in our mind’s eye. There’s also something deeply grating about listening to teenage American accents attempting to capture the complexities of a Spartan wrestling with his conscience. Perhaps if you could overlook Sons of Sparta’s lineage, you might see it as a perfectly adequate Metroidvania. But Mega Cat Studios knowingly took on the burden of that name only to fall short of the stellar God of War pedigree.

Even if the gameplay is mechanically uncomplicated, there’s no shortage in Reanimal of visual allure, albeit of the kind that makes you wince or at least provokes a morbid chuckle. ‘Did I really just see that?’, you think more than once.

By right, this shlocky 30-year-old franchise should be a shambling wreck, given gaming’s speed of reinvention and its tendency to eat itself. But like the T-virus that never dies, somehow Requiem keeps Resident Evil alive, its cells absorbing the old body and rejuvenating it into something just as terrifying.

They say love means nothing to a tennis player but it’s so easy to lose your heart to this spirited slice of sport.

Grasshopper makes games like no other, a superpower in which the sheer creative force outweighs the sometimes-juvenile side-effects. Romeo is a Dead Man may not always be coherent and is often not pretty but it nonetheless possesses something compelling – as if you can’t look away.

If you’re to judge Nioh 3 by its obvious inspiration, Team Ninja comes up a little short here. Its open world and impenetrable lore lack the invention and sheer charisma of the peerless Elden Ring. That said, the two-in-one personality gives such a distinctive flavour to the combat that some hardened From Software fans might be forced to re-consider their loyalties.

Even if replaying scenes in a different way exposes the reality that you rarely have significant influence, Dispatch sends you away with a smile on your face and a hankering for more from Adhoc.

Remagined mostly offers a rollicking good time that’s rarely too demanding as an RPG, asking only that you contain your cynicism about its typecast troupe of Irish and other nationalities.

As collectively compelling as this soul-cleansing experience is, Cairn over-emphasises resource management to the point of busy-work. You’re constantly fiddling with items to sate Aava’s hunger, bandaging her bloodied hands, and even rearranging her rucksack like a round of Tetris. This hardcore mindset no doubt speaks to the arduousness of shimmying thousands of metres up a vertical surface. But to me it detracts a little from savouring Aava’s pilgrimage. Despite this rocky footing, Cairn reaches for the sky with a tale of stubborn bravery that at times will leave you breathless.

TR-49 is another link in the chain of Inkle’s success, elegantly encoding narrative inside a puzzle game. There’s a ghost in this machine and we can’t be sure whether it’s offering a lesson from the past or a prophecy for the future.

In quieter moments, you will notice the game consists of one escape room after another linked loosely by story strands. It’s also frustrating to find many objects in each space are just inanimate props, incapable of being picked up, never mind flung hither and thither. Nonetheless, Fireproof has tied its puzzles together with an engagingly barmy plot and integrated a comprehensive hint system that’s as subtle as you need it to be to keep the story moving. Ghost Town’s Irishness is almost incidental to the game but the actors’ strong voice performances contribute heartily to the authenticity of this absorbing drama.

Hotel Infinity may be too purist in its pursuit of abstract puzzles – would a few hints of human presence been too hard? – and the intellectual challenge errs on the side of facile. But this is one stay that will lodge in your mind long after you check out.

Zero perhaps repeats its formula a little too often and stretches the storyline beyond its merit. For lovers of JRPGs, however, this prequel/sequel/whatever will do a number on you if you give it time.

Mizuguchi has a fine pedigree in fusing music, visuals and gameplay, his Tetris Effect rebooting the seminal block puzzler in 2018 via sensory override. Lumines Arise runs a similarly psychedelic nightclub, playing different instruments but achieving the same out-of-body fever dream.

The worst offender among your soldier pals is an overly chatty sidekick who regularly prods you over the radio to re-explore old areas. Part of Metroid’s appeal has always lain in getting lost in its creepy caverns but Retro clearly wants no newcomer to be in doubt for long about where to go next. Despite all that, Beyond emerges from development purgatory in better shape than could be expected. Some of its innovations may not gel with the core Metroid principle of a lone woman versus a planet of hostiles. Yet the classic design ensures the Samus suit never goes out of fashion.

You’d never mistake Age of Imprisonment’s gameplay for the mechanical ingenuity contained in Tears of the Kingdom. But this Zelda adventure jailbreaks itself from the constricting conventions of its musou prison.