Unusual, peaceful and weirdly gripping, Roia is a meditative treat from start to finish.

A notable improvement on last year’s game and while it still has a way to go before it reaches its full potential, this is a fun and relatively realistic evocation of running a Formula One team.

A modern era dungeon adventure with mythical monsters, political corruption, and a slight lack of polish – that’s at least partly compensated for by its charming idiosyncrasies and spirit of invention.

A tribute to the timelessness of some of Nintendo’s earliest classics and while the whole package is rather thin it’s impressive how entertaining it still manages to be.

A mellow and deeply unusual adventure where you play a man’s shadow adrift in a Dutch city, in a game that defies convention and is all the better for it.

A fantastically polished Metroidvania, with some of the best 16-bit style graphics ever seen and impressively deep combat and role-playing elements.

Fascinatingly strange in all the best ways but while the action is solid the strategy aspects are undercooked and the disparate gameplay elements never gel the way they should.

A depressingly generic free-to-play looter shooter that steals shamelessly from other, better, games but never has the nerve to try and create anything of its own.

The touch controls are nowhere near up to the job, and even with a controller it’s a massive grind, especially when runs are so highly dependent on luck, but this is easily the most cost effective way of enjoying a little hero slaying.

Slow-paced, involving and increasingly tricky as you unlock more buildings, the interlocking webs of necessary ingredients make it a fascinating playground of time and resource management.

Complete with a comprehensive hint system for those moments when deduction and reasoning fail you, it may not have much in the way of animation but it’s every bit as good as the studio’s past outings.

A single-player and couch co-op sequel to one of the world’s oldest racing franchises, whose rudimentary looks and driving model can’t compete with 21st century alternatives.

A mere remaster can’t hide all the foibles of a 20-year-old game, but this is a well-crafted tribute to a classic PlayStation 2 era game, that has long deserved a proper sequel.

A fantastically inventive and charming adventure makes a successful leap from portable to home console, but the high asking price will make it a hard sell for many.

A polished and highly competent roguelike deck builder with some neat twists, that can sometimes feel a touch too random for its own good.

A reincarnation of the 2021 Japanese role-player, that addresses every flaw of the original – and even if some issues remain it’s still a very enjoyable alternative to the Persona series.

One of the least demanded remasters on Switch is a primitive but surprisingly nostalgic reminder of just how ambitious and open-ended gaming could be in the Xbox 360 era.

Exactly as engrossing and meticulously designed as you’d expect of FromSoftware but even by their standards this is an enthralling slice of DLC that underlines and enhances the achievements of the original.

A walking simulator that’s also a love letter to The Thing, transplanting its blend of naturalistic realism and abject horror into an immaculately recreated 1970s North Sea oil rig.

Maps are varied, although all use the classic battle royale technique of gradually forcing you nearer to the centre, and while Squad Busters can feel simplistic, Supercell games are designed to be played for years, and we did find ourselves regularly going back for more of its cluttered, power-up fuelled mayhem.

It probably helps to have a bit of familiarity with the material, but even coming to it cold, if you’re in the mood for some deeply peculiar adventuring, this is completely free with no in-app purchases of any kind.

It’s sad to see another potentially great game ruined by commercial considerations, but compared with its predecessors this is a far less engaging grind.

The music is beautiful, especially on headphones, it’s polished to a high shine, and as with Alike’s previous games, your only complaint will be that is eventually has to end.

It does suffer the odd bug and seems a little battery hungry, given its lack of action, but the allure of Advance Wars’ immaculately honed turn based combat remains untouchable. It’s the perfect mobile catnip for strategy fans – or at least if you haven’t played the original.

A Star Wars version of Overwatch is not the worst idea ever, but its full potential can only barely be glimpsed through a miasma of cloying microtransactions and purposefully shallow gameplay.

A highly authentic movie adaptation but a sadly predictable, and repetitive, video game, that does far too little to justify the continued trend of turning 80s horror film into asymmetric multiplayer games.

The future of MultiVersus remains to be seen, but if it is aspiring to become a go-to fighting game for both offline and online gatherings, nothing spoils the party more than the free-to-play shell it’s encased in. This model might make it more accessible to players in the short term, but when it’s weighing down the overall experience like this, it’s hard not to see history repeating itself sooner or later – even if you can butcher Shaggy with a machete. [Review in Progress]

A charming, polished, and warmly humorous detective game whose cute 3D dioramas and delightful graphical touches are a pleasure to interact with.