The mobile port works beautifully, its timed button presses easy enough to pull off on a touchscreen and its cute, deliberately blocky graphics looking alluringly colourful on a small screen.

Although compelling, it was originally priced at a rather sporty £24.99 on iOS, which many found off-putting. Its release on Apple Arcade also includes its DLC, making this an irresistible bargain and easily the best way to experience the game on the go.

A heartwarming adventure about growing up, packed full of imagination and 90s snark, but its main strength is the way in which it manages to expertly capture what it feels like to be a young, bored teen on the verge of adulthood.

A near future third person sci-fi adventure whose believable characters, expressive animation, and glorious icy backdrops are undermined by a linear story with too little variety in its interactions.

We’ve learnt never to assume a game’s final quality from even the most positive preview, but we were thoroughly impressed by First Light, which proved to be considerably better than we were expecting. The thought of future Bond films being owned by Amazon is very disquieting, no matter the talent involved, but no matter how all that turns out it’s very clear that Bond’s video game career couldn’t be in better hands. [Hands-On Impressions]

A fun and energetic fighting game that does its best to cater for both casual fans and fighting game veterans, although its roster has some strange priorities and the single-player content is very limited.

A genuinely different kind of team multiplayer game, with exactly the sort of thoughtful weirdness you’d expect from Double Fine.

A surprisingly conservative follow-up to Returnal but the transcendent third person action is so well orchestrated that qualms about the storytelling and lack of innovation seem like only minor concerns in comparison.

A colourful and creative first person adventure, whose From-style asynchronous multiplayer, branching plot, and faltering stealth sequences are hamstrung by a very low budget.

An impressively successful follow-up to Vampire Survivors, that features entirely different gameplay but a similarly deceptive sense of depth and nuance to its charmingly low-tech action.

A noir boomer shooter rich in style and atmosphere but limited by its unremarkable gunplay and flat writing, which fails to capitalise on its fun premise.

The joy of playing something that isn’t a sequel or licensed tie-in is considerable in its own right but this tightly designed third person actioner is a pleasure from beginning to end.

It’s not hard to take issue with Champions but for better or worse it’s clearly not finished yet and… it’s free. If you’re a veteran Pokémon fan then the only real benefit you’re getting here is easy access to a constant stream of online matches, since the matchmaking is actually pretty good. Otherwise, this seems to be aimed at a slightly awkward mix of hardcore esports fans and people brand new to the franchise, who want to know how the battles work (and to be fair, the tutorials are pretty good and the interface fairly straightforward)...Champions fulfils that remit reasonably well but it’s a hard game to get excited about and probably something you’re better off just making a mental note of, so you can come back later when it’s working properly and is more content complete. [Review in Progress]

A loving homage to the original X-COM, that’s far more interested in turning up the difficulty than coming up with any new ideas.

A more family friendly attempt to mimic the likes of Limbo and Inside but while the graphics are impressive the gameplay feels stolid and poorly paced.

An impressive, near-essential expansion for Borderlands 4, with an excellent new vault hunter and some of the best level and mission design in the franchise.

Super Meat Boy in 3D seems to be an inherently flawed concept and while this does its best to make navigating the third dimension feasible, the end result feels frustratingly imprecise.

Whilst ultimately an underdeveloped entry, it does make for a loving send off for Max Caulfield. Unfortunately, being another weak entry, it may also play that role for the franchise itself.

With base building, monstrous sea beasts, and a slow progress from hapless crash survivor to king of the ocean depths, it has more or less the same cadence as the original Subnautica, which was also very good. It does feel slightly like a missed opportunity that this isn’t quite the sea change (pun, I’m afraid, intended) it could have been. Especially given how long the actual sequel is taking.

It’s a well-made game, but lacking in magic. The anodyne character design, lacklustre script, and battles that have challenge but little excitement, conspire to make it feel oddly pedestrian. Still, if you’re craving a decent sized role-player on your phone this certainly manages to tick all the right boxes, even if that’s all it does.

Although the game moves fast, you don’t have to, gradually moving your avatar and adjusting their angle of fire as you smash your way through its stages. It lends itself well to mobile conversion and remains just as addictive as it was on PC and console.

While point ‘n’ click adventures experienced their apogee in the 1990s, it’s still a genre that manages to generate new outings. Mystery Of Silence is one, telling the story of a journalist investigating a mysterious island monastery.

A tough, flashy, and surprisingly versatile extraction shooter which houses a magnetic loop of death and loot beneath its occasionally obtuse idiosyncrasies.

An inessential but enjoyable expansion for the best 2D Mario game of the modern era, with some fun multiplayer distractions and a soupçon of new single-player content.

An anime-infused arcade racer with a full-blown story, cracking multiplayer, and an OTT driving model that gamifies every part of its tricky, knife edge races.

A bizarre mishmash of disparate gameplay elements, with absolutely no sense of coherent design or narrative… and yet its stunning game world is still a fascinating mess to explore.

One of the best puzzle games of recent years is also one of the most empowering and cleverly designed, as its stretches seemingly simple mechanics to impressive lengths.

A mostly successful remake that reimagines Fatal Frame 2 for the modern day, and while it can veer a little too much into action territory it’s still an impressively horrifying video game.