Last Voyage is a puzzle game which is uncharacteristically comfortable with—and perhaps cautiously optimistic about—the unknown.

It’s not going to knock off Agricola or Galaxy Trucker as a full-blown euro, but as a quick diversion, Pickomino is an excellent choice and another really well made board game app for iOS.

The game translates a board game of the same name which itself borrowed very heavily from Kingsburg, a well-regarded Euro. Like the joke, there’s very little about the result which is original, and the new expectations created by the digital format create requirements it fails to satisfy.

Once again, inkle Studios has bested themselves in creating the gold standard for interactive fiction, and causing us all to start wondering when the next chapter will arrive.

Despite being a tad beige and not hugely ambitious, The Trace is a palatable concoction of hidden object and traditional first-person adventure gaming. Worth trampling a crime scene for, if only to see where the series will go.

The lack of content undermines the feeling of exploring beyond the final frontier and the limp combat is an awkward step back from the elegant Ace Patrol.

The most interesting lesson Pentaction: Medieval has taught me is that there are some game mechanics I genuinely like which respond poorly to refinement.

Marble Age can sit alongside other quirky tactical takes like Empire: The Deck Building Strategy Game and provide a snappy, short­-term bit of strategic jerky.

The twee aesthetic is going to be a deal-breaker for some, but behind it lies a surprising degree of craftsmanship that makes this a strong example of it’s genre, a lengthy and consistently joyous experience where the gameplay’s polish makes up for the game’s weaker elements.

Corto Maltese is a visually diverse, moderately well-designed adventure which simply fails in a few key areas.

It’s truly a fantastic gamebook, and one I would recommend to anyone.

Hadean Lands is an endlessly clever experience.

Seen as a first episode, it offers a strong foundation that, if followed up on by more ambitious level design and greater focus on its strengths, could be a real Wild West legend.

In its current state it’s a better-than-average digital that’s fun to play until you pull off the AI’s fake Fidel beard and realise that it was Woody Allen all along.

This is the Enlightenment in video game form, and that’s a perspective I can really appreciate in moderation.

The Detail is often nice to look at, but it’s a game that most adventure fans can safely skip.

Space Age loves its endless inane cutscenes a lot more than you will, and it tops them off with a completely discordant endgame boss that fulfills Space Age’s cinematic aspirations while throwing the game bits out the airlock.

XCOM: The Board Game is an elegantly presented and thoughtfully executed game that pumps out tense atmosphere like a neurotic smoke machine.

Fahrenheit’s a high concept effort, and while not wholly successful in the delivery, there’s nothing really quite like Fahrenheit outside the Quantic Dream repertoire.

There’s something about a solitaire card game that really does it for me, and Card Crawl is one of the best I’ve played.

It is truly a fantastic gamebook and a great way to spend time with Shakespeare, even if you end up searching for sunken ships on the bottom of the North Sea.

Vietnam ’65 is a surprisingly different and refreshing wargame experience that might win hearts and minds outside of Vietnam, too.

That’s not a deep criticism, of course, and as a logic puzzle Ento is clever enough, but I find myself reflecting back to Zendo with a bit of nostalgia for the forthright inaccuracy of calling the rule the Buddha nature.

Swap Heroes 2 is smart, but slight, and could have been much improved if its main mechanic was given the proper room to stretch.

It may be slightly more demanding up-front than a Tetris sure, but show it a fraction of the forbearance given to an RPG or a 4X game and you’ll be entranced by a beautifully efficient design that makes the player feel like some arcane trickster genius.

For those with an interest in the period or the temperament to appreciate its pitched battles, Pike and Shot’s mix of the cerebral and the visceral make it a compelling and unique game, and its range and longevity of content make it an essential purchase.

Simogo are capable of making extraordinary things, but this isn’t one of them. The name “The Sailor’s Dream”, it turns out, is apt. Like a dream, this an experience you’ll forget all about soon after leaving it.

Essentially, FRAMED is even more Monument Valley than Monument Valley. It’s stylishly attractive and milks its central mechanic, but there isn’t all that much to milk. Rather than getting repetitive or losing focus, both games just end gracefully after a relatively brief, not very challenging, but unique and thoroughly enjoyable experience.