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.

I’d really like a set of Baltimore levels so I could imagine a crossover with The Wire.

In a complex genre where games like Unity of Command and Battle of the Bulge are like precision-engineered Gothic cathedrals, Russian Front comes across like a Las Vegas one-hour wedding chapel. It seems to have the basic form and function of an operational war game down, but it’s missing the nuance and subtlety of a truly good one.

With the digital version, the bookkeeping is automatic and the game is so much quicker than its cardboard counterpart that, if you’re in a no-win situation, it’s easy to just reset and start again. All of that combines to make digital Sentinels the ideal way to play Sentinels.

In the world of home electronics, I’ve never been interested enough in apex experiences to bother with 3D, but puzzles are dearer enough to me that I’m quite glad to have played those final levels.

Outside of these control niggles, Battle Academy 2 makes a strong case for itself. A solid AI showcase to bolster and balance the online experience, though you’re likely to never be too long without an asynchronous foe given the cross-play antics and established community.

The Magnificent Pixel Dynasty isn’t a case where more is better, or even a case where more is unobtrusive—rather, these half-baked mechanics that have been bolted onto the same construction toy as All Glory to the Pixel King! only serve to detract from the core experience that lays at the heart of both games.

Battle Worlds: Kronos is a fine, if somewhat unremarkable strategy title that does justice to the lineage. It doesn’t rock the boat, but might not do enough to float one, either.