Followers of melancholic-looking puzzle titles who like to sit down and cosy up on a rainy Sunday afternoon and test their brain with some slow-paced, solo gaming sessions will want to give this one a spin. The title does a good job of churning out challenges that will keep you entertained for hours at a time. However, if a deep story that whisks you off your feet with a meaningful narrative, tight plot and likeable characters is more your bag, then Flood of Light isn’t the title for you. We recommend spending your cash on something like Candle: The Power Of The Flame to scratch your 2D Puzzler itch.

A slice of Viking strategic combat right out of the heart of Scandinavia’s indie development scene, Bad North joins the likes of Element at the vanguard of a new wave of smart yet intrinsically accessible real-time strategy titles. With enough enemy variance to convince you you’re playing an interactive episode of the Vikings TV show, this endlessly entertaining sea of bite-size battles will teach you to fear - and love - the sound of the oncoming horde.

Four years on, and Kero Blaster is just as engaging and rewarding as it was when Pixel first unleashed from within the Japanese indie scene. It doesn’t just look like the classics that made the genre such a pillar of gaming three decades ago, it confidently recreates the deep mechanical prowess of Contra and its ilk, with just a sprinkling of modern persistent systems to make it more palatable to newcomers and replayable far beyond those first few hours of froggy firefights.

While Morphies Law lacks the grandeur of Splatoon 2 and the F2P gratification of Fortnite, there’s no denying that its mass-shifting gimmick has legs - giant ones, at that. It just needs the right kind of post-launch TLC from its developer and some smart adjustments to both net code and player progression. With added gyro controls making the most of those Joy-Cons (should you want to gather mass via motion controls) and support for local play with up to eight players (as opposed to online's four), this indie shooter has the potential to grow into a genuine sleeper hit.

While it’ll be a bittersweet goodbye to Clem and AJ when we reach the final episode later this year, it looks like Telltale could be giving one of gaming’s most nuanced and well-developed heroines the farewell she deserves.

There’s plenty to like about Next Up Hero. Turning death into an applicable AI co-op mechanic is a neat spin on a game with a high death turnover, and its cartoon art style complements an impressively large menagerie of monsters to kill. Unfortunately, there are inherent problems with balancing and some disastrous technical problems. Its grinding takes too long, melee characters are all but pointless due to the high damage output of enemies, and those technical issues make committing time and effort a constant risk.

Don’t let Polygod’s low-poly aesthetic fool you - this is no amateur hour shooter experience. With seven realms to explore (each with their own unique environmental motifs, enemy types and bosses), the game’s procedural nature and old-school mechanics make for a frightening deep source of replay value that harkens back to the good old days of Quake. The shot delay takes a lot longer to overcome on Switch, mainly because this is the kind of game that greatly benefits from the precision of mouse control, but persevere and there’s a speedrunning treat that’ll answer your prayers with violence.

While it’s not going to set your world alight with flashy features or ground-breaking mechanics, we enjoyed our time with Manual Samuel enormously. The joke risks wearing thin, but Sam’s adventure is brief and self-aware enough to hold your interest. Co-op play is surprisingly fun with a willing accomplice and Time Attack offers some longevity, although for most players it’ll be a short ‘one-and-done’ affair. For our money, it’s a pleasant amuse-bouche of a game – a welcome little treat between the larger courses being served up on Switch this summer.

If you’re looking for a family-friendly puzzle/platformer that offers a mixture of quick satisfaction and gradually building difficulty, Tetra’s Escape will certainly appeal. Its soundtrack, graphical style and general presentation are a little rough around the edges, but look past those visual first impressions and you’ll find a cute little indie with puzzle chops that are more than skin deep.

Red’s Kingdom is full of cutesy charm and clever puzzles that act as a nice way to pass the time in small doses. Longer play sessions are ruined by repetition, and the game struggles to really fulfil its potential due to the occasional lack of creativity, but there’s definitely some fun to be had in its nutty world. With a decent level of challenge for all ages, and a puzzle mechanic that can go a surprisingly long way, this one is perhaps best suited to those looking for quick sessions of chilled out puzzle gameplay.

CastleStorm is a wonderfully well-rounded package that offers up enjoyable RTS gameplay in an approachable fashion, with a high skill ceiling that caters to players of all skill and interest levels. Although we do wish the control scheme was better thought out, the addictive gameplay, appealing art style, and hefty amount of playable content make this an easy recommendation for anybody looking for a solid strategy game on their Switch.

While it’s as much a tribute act to Bubble Bobble as it is a game in its own right, Robbotto still manages to offer a fun trip down retro memory lane. The simple chiptunes will have you longing to dust off your Commodore 64 or ZX Spectrum, while its 20 enemy types (and ten bosses) do a decent job of keeping you on your toes as the difficulty starts to ramp up. It’s just a shame starting a co-op campaign will wipe your single-player progress and vice-versa. It’s a bizarrely backwards issue in an otherwise positive retro celebration.

This is a homage to the classic sci-fi RPGs of the '90s that successfully takes out many of the annoying bits but boasts a fair amount of the depth and consistency. Cosmic Star Heroine is a JRPG for those who long ago grew bored of JRPGs, but committed fans might find it just a little too slight an offering.

From its violent yet contrasting and beautiful appearance to the fine-tuned and comical combat - thanks to the well-balanced selection of weaponry - this title is well worth a space in your Switch’s indie game library.

Cycle 28 disguises itself as a solid arcade shooter with minimalist aesthetics but slowly reveals itself to be something far beyond that. It successfully manages to engulf the player in the mystery that led to the player character's current predicament and entices you to seek the truth, find answers to questions you didn’t know existed and attempt to break the cycle and… who knows, maybe freedom and a happy conclusion? We rarely get to play video games where each ‘Game Over’ offers the possibility to solve a mystery, so we kept coming back to it again and again - and so will you.

2064: Read Only Memories INTEGRAL takes the classic point-and-click genre of old, strips out many of the annoyingly exacting puzzle systems, and injects a refreshingly positive and progressive outlook. A cast of memorable characters and some spot-on retro presentation should seal the deal for fans of a good story and snappy dialogue.

State of Mind has its moments to shine - certain plot beats in the final act do offer some genuine payoff, and some of those visuals are a joy to see running in docked mode or in handheld - but they’re too often lost in a mire of storytelling cliche and science fiction tropes you’ve seen done better countless times before. A set of in-game achievements do help break up the lengthy plot, but the awkward voice acting and lack of cohesion between its gameplay ideas ultimately make for a muddled experience at best.

With a different visual style to most of the retro shmups on Switch, and dinosaurs and similar enemies to blast, Prehistoric Isle 2 stands out visually from the other options on the eShop, although the presentation is harmed by instances of slowdown and unremarkable (if inoffensive) audio. Overall, Prehistoric Isle 2 can provide some fun, but we wouldn't class this as a must-play title amongst the many shmups currently on Switch.

While its overly simplistic art style isn’t going to linger long in the memory, Unexplored's unusual approach to balancing combat and map generation certainly will. There’s very little story here to be had, but like any great dungeon crawler, the real adventure is the one you write yourself. With plenty of scope for weaponsmithing and all plenty of permanent perks to unlock to help negate the sting of its permadeath, Unexplored: Unlocked Edition offers danger and delight in equal measure.

Our primary criticism of the first game has been addressed, making The Last Wind Monk a much easier recommendation. Experimentation is now a breeze with touch controls and the expanded possibilities offered by character-switching mean puzzles feel more varied. It maintains the original’s great writing and presentation, but offers a far better all-round experience, making it the best entry point for Switch owners into the eccentric world of Asposia.

Minit is a perfect example of a game that introduces a creative new concept, explores it thoroughly, and then ends before things get stale. This may be a short game, but you’re almost assured to have a blast for every bit of it, with funny dialogue, creative puzzle design, and moderate amounts of replayability all being a plus. We’d recommend this to anyone looking for something a little different than the norm, along with anybody who’s looking for a title that takes after the older Zelda games.

Come for the wonderful presentation, stay for the baddie boppin'. Crossing Souls nails its 1980s aesthetic, no question there — the 'long-lost-cartoon' game is strong here, right down to the artfully placed VHS artifacts in the animated cutscenes playing out across a sweeping adolescent adventure. Nostalgia aside, the story and beat-em-up gameplay please and surprise in a few key ways, but come with a few too many paper cuts to prevent Crossing Souls from breaking through to that next level.

Created by a one-person team based out of Madrid, Megaton Rainfall is, at the very least, a technical marvel. It’s very much comparable to No Man’s Sky; an indie hit that wows with its sheer scale and the breadth of its ambition. But much like Hello Games’ oft-maligned space explorer, this superhero simulator struggles to maintain the impressive impact of its first hour, or live up to the lofty heights of those dangerously high ambitions.

Okami HD is an utterly fantastic piece of software, and we feel you’d be doing yourself a disservice to pass on it. For a mere twenty bucks, you can have access to a 40-hour adventure that emulates Zelda wonderfully, adds in plenty of memorable mechanics, features one of the most memorable art styles in gaming, and is completely playable on the go, to boot. Though it may be showing its age a bit visually and its combat is sometimes a little on the easy side, Okami is an important, fun, and notable landmark in gaming history — and one of the easiest recommendations we can make for your Switch library.

Rather than an intense challenge, it offers up a short but memorable adventure that's easily broken up into smaller sessions, or enjoyed all at once in a single lazy afternoon. While the Wii U version provided a unique perspective through its use of the GamePad, we'd still absolutely recommend this solar trip on Switch for anyone who missed out on it before - there's still plenty of time to catch the sunrise.

We’d recommend this game to any puzzle fans looking for something that’s easy to get into and will take a long time to beat, as there’s plenty of content to justify the price. Fans of the first game may be a little disappointed at the lack of ambitious new features but, overall, this feels like a slightly better version of its predecessor.

With an enjoyable, if brief add-on campaign to boot, this little side-scrolling platformer is a blast whether played on the go or blown-up on your TV. Canvassing has never been so much fun.

Overcooked 2 is a fantastic sequel to a co-op classic, building on the gameplay ideas from before in meaningful new ways while polishing up what was already there. There is a lingering sense that this is more of the same, but it’s such a blast to play that you’ll hardly be focused on the lack of any major innovations; overall, this feels like a stronger execution of the original vision. Overcooked 2 is a game that’s full of personality and heart, and we’d recommend this one to anyone looking for a fantastic party game.