A charming, homespun cosy game about exploring the joys of old-fashioned record shops and the importance of in-person socialising.

A fiercely imaginative puzzle solver that builds on all the best elements of Call Of The Sea to deliver a genuinely challenging, Lovecraftian-flavoured adventure.

The makers of Until Dawn unleash a new interactive sci-fi horror, whose polish and narrative twists are undermined by under-informed choices and an awful lot of walking about in dimly lit corridors.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

An impressively full-bodied Japanese role-player that’s good enough to attract non-Monster Hunter fans, with the Pokémon style collection process making up for the flaws in the storytelling and combat.

A missed opportunity for an exciting take on medieval history, that’s inferior to Kingdom Come: Deliverance in every respect.

A competent Left 4 Dead clone that seems to have gained little from the association with John Carpenter, but it is a sensibly priced diversion for those that want a new co-op shooter to play with friends.

An atmospheric and evocative action role-player whose rough edges and lacklustre combat are balanced by compelling world-building, beautiful environments, and a far reaching sense of consequence.

Like its predecessors, it’s incredibly lightweight, your choices set out so briefly you’re regularly left guessing about potential outcomes; a sense the game attempts to paper over by throwing so many of them at you. It’s occasionally amusing, but too insubstantial to be satisfying.

Rhythm action combat proves a fun way to get sweaty, assuming you like the style of music, but the extreme brevity is only slightly extended by online leaderboards.

A beautiful looking 2D side-scrolling puzzle game whose lack of challenge and regularly recycled mechanics prove disappointingly bland, with no significant improvements over the original.

Absorbing VR tower defence that improves on the original game in almost every department, but is let down by a pointless, tacked on narrative.

A very run of the mill Metroidvania that does little of interest with the God Of War setting and stumbles in terms of the dull combat and unengaging plot.

An accomplished and darkly witty first person puzzle game that’s predictably not as good as Portal, but does come surprisingly close at times.

The newly vertiginous sandbox levels prove an excellent canvas for sneaking and stealing, in a welcome new entry in what feels increasingly like the spiritual successor to Thief: The Dark Project.