Original Journey is a twin-stick shooter-meets-platform game, with Tower Defense-style fixed guns and an upgrade system more reminiscent of a role-playing game. adly though its gameplay loop of shoot, loot, and retreat is just a tad too tight, rapidly feeling repetitive and restrictive.

It’s not perfect and although you could argue that the typos reflect a slightly lower standard of proof reading in mid-21st Century news publishing it’s still a satisfying read, even if some sort of player agency would have made it even better.

Like the ineffably dull Battleships, OIL has difficulty providing interest when so much of your success depends on luck.

Featuring a high degree of polish and a scattering of secrets and collectibles in each level, it may not be particularly original, and its cut scenes outstay their welcome, but this relatively short and highly entertaining game certainly does not.

At the end of each 10-level world your view pans back to reveal the monochromatic artwork you were exploring in a beautiful final flourish, leaving you to admire the developer’s handiwork and your own dexterity. It’s a masterpiece of minimalist puzzle design.

It’s a slow burn and has zero sense of humour, but believable characters, decent voice-acting, and accurate historical detail make for a sturdy if linear game. This is only the first half of book one, so don’t expect any neat resolutions.

It may have the framework of an ordinary city builder but there’s an insightful, and frequently disturbing, philosophical message at the heart of this cross-genre classic.

An excellent turn-based strategy that mixes tense battlefield tactics with an engrossing meta game of money-grabbing mercs and expensive-to-maintain mechs.

It’s unclear how much Nintendo is going to market Labo as an educational toy but it certainly has great value as such. It not only stimulates artistic urges but making full use of each of the Toy-Con garages feels like the most entertaining science lesson ever. The potential seems limitless and while Labo may not be a video game – and in that sense will provide little relief to Switch owners looking for something new to play – it could well be the next big thing. For big kids as well as little ones.

It’s unclear how much Nintendo is going to market Labo as an educational toy but it certainly has great value as such. It not only stimulates artistic urges but making full use of each of the Toy-Con garages feels like the most entertaining science lesson ever. The potential seems limitless and while Labo may not be a video game – and in that sense will provide little relief to Switch owners looking for something new to play – it could well be the next big thing. For big kids as well as little ones.

One of the most enjoyable roguelikes of recent years, with the heavy emphasis on RNG saved by some fun co-op options.

A fine idea in theory but while designing your own robots does have some unwanted limitations it’s the dull multiplayer that really shorts its circuits.

A fun and funny 2D platformer whose infectious sense of humour comes through clearly in the visuals, the script, and the gameplay.

Half a decade’s worth of expansions deliver a dizzying array of features but this stylish survival game still frustrates as much as it entertains.

A top-to-bottom revamp of the whole God Of War franchise that matches thrilling, if slightly shallow, combat and exploration with some impressively trenchant storytelling.

Fighting giant monsters should never be as dull and formulaic as this cheap and nasty attempt to remind you other better games… and anime.

A superbly crafted 2D adventure that is a near perfect blend of new and old influences, in terms of both gameplay and the stunning visuals and music.

The low-key narration and sparsely surreal graphics play well in this uncluttered game of brinkmanship, dexterity, and puzzle solving. Its challenge certainly isn’t for the faint hearted though.

The apes look pleasantly simian, and it’s nice observing conversations from behind the small visible portion of your hairy forearms, but these are small beacons of light in an otherwise unremittingly bleak landscape.

Even though it offers cross-platform play finding those teammates can be a tricky, but once you’re up and running both sides are at least equally hamstrung by the control set-up.

There isn’t even a win condition, you just keep battering back identikit waves of badly drawn enemies in small, bland maps until one overwhelms you. It’s the video game equivalent of clinical depression.

Getting killed because of unwieldy controls is nobody’s idea of a good time, and Apex Construct rubs salt into those wounds by removing un-banked experience points every time you die. Although not all bad, its sense of adventure and investigation is marred by eternally clumsy motion and combat.

The balloon popping sub-game isn’t up to much, but the rest of Ultrawings is a dream come true for fans of Nintendo’s charming slice of amateur aviation.

Despite its non-essential relationship with the medium, it’s a pleasant enough experience and a lot more polished than many VR-only titles, somewhere between arcade and puzzle action, although you’d be hard pressed to get too excited about it.

It’s great fun, the refined and challenging shooting mechanics and enormous assortment of gun configurations proving highly entertaining.

Minit offers a wonderfully minimalist adventure with not an inch of bloat. Instead, it’s a game where it seems like every tiny detail has been handcrafted and placed in the world only after careful thought from the creators. So while the lifespan of your hero, and the retro visuals, may seem very limiting they help to enable one of the most inventive and imaginative indie games of the year.

Probably the best single-player experience ever in a fighting game, on top of being an extremely accessible and highly technical multiplayer brawler.

Siege Of Dragonspear takes you and your plucky band of adventurers crawling dungeons, having detailed conversations with non-player characters s and generally attempting to overthrow evil using weapons, magic, and light tactics. If you missed the original this will be incomprehensible, featuring no training whatsoever, but if you played Baldur’s Gate you can import your party and just carry on. It’s not as good, but then there’s really nothing else quite like it.