There’s so much room for shenanigans thanks to the gameshow theme, but Radical Heights too frequently relies on the bare bones battle royale formula, which is a shame because being a battle royale is by far its least interesting feature. And it’s so early that it’s extremely difficult to predict what type of game it will grow into over the course of what Boss Key predict will be a year-long stint in early access. It doesn’t even have an identity yet. It does play You’re The Best during the victory celebration, though. [Premature Evaluation]

I’ve still happily lost hours mining away, blasting gun-toting demons with bouncing icicles and hanging with my skulls. It’s constantly doling out new weapons and monsters to test them on, and every dive into the subterranean world results in so much more loot than I can carry that I’ve just got to go back down one more time. Brevik, as you might expect, is still pretty good at making the grind compelling. [Premature Evaluation - Early Access]

Super-fans of the show may get some enjoyment out of the story, but only if they can stomach a lot of grind, tedium and wandering through identical corridors, and for anyone else, just stick to watching the anime.

I’m not really convinced by Worlds Adrift the MMO. The freewheeling aviation adventure? That I absolutely dig. I can lose days to it. It’s become my happy place, where I can look at pretty islands and not worry about the weird rattling noise that’s coming from my bathroom. I don’t even mind losing my life to the occasional workplace accident. I’m not bemoaning that it’s multiplayer, either. It’s perfectly suited for it, particularly co-op. [Premature Evaluation]

It’s a mess, but it’s a fun mess, like 52 pickup. It’s got the prettiest rectangles I’ve ever done seen, the back and forth of evolving makes every match exciting, and despite its faults Shadowverse can still produce the highs that keep me coming back to card games. My latest match was textbook CCG fun: I managed to barely scrape by in an unfavorable matchup, only to win at one health on the back of a few lucky top-decks on my end and two weak evolutions from my opponent. In that brief moment, I was over the moon about Shadowverse, and sometimes that’s enough.

Starman isn’t big or brash, but sometimes you just need to sit quietly for a couple of hours and focus on something nice.

I think, streamlined significantly, with the repetition removed, this could have been a really neat two-to-three hour game. Instead, with so much that feels like padding, it gives all the mistakes so much space to become a problem. It’s often a lot of fun to grapple and leap about in, but it’s always too quickly spoiled by something else.

It’s just simply a wonderful creation that you absolutely should buy and play. It’s brief – the nine levels will perhaps take you a couple of hours – but a splendid couple of hours they are. Daft, fun, exuberant and very pretty, it captures a sense of joy like little else. [RPS Recommended]

The between-fight map-wandering feels a bit time-wasting, despite a few feints towards ‘quests’ – really, all it involves is taking turns to move a few hexes over in search of an opponent, a pick-up or a shop where you can recharge health or buy upgrades. But it’s fine, it does the job. In fact, Insane Robots holds up remarkably well as a singleplayer game.

The game is in desperate need of a beefier crafting and construction list, certainly, but more than that it needs to find its purpose, or a hook of any kind. There’s nothing to latch onto, and no moment where everything clicks and it becomes clear where the game is heading. [Premature Evaluation]

It’s an exceptional space sim that’s happy to let you just while away the years, smuggling spice and getting into bar fights, all while this elaborate and galaxy-shaking space opera plays out behind you. It’s shining a spotlight on the Bossks of the universe, sort of just getting on with their job and sometimes being tangentially related to important stuff. [Bestest Bests]

The beginning is still as fun as a kick in the shin, but after that it just becomes a wondrous playground, and perhaps most crucially in light of the misery that is modern open world racers, one that just lets you get on with it. And now it’s slightly prettier, and runs in a window! Hurrah!

Classical education standards aside, this is certainly a mixed bag, but a very interesting one, and I’m certainly very pleased to have played it. If they could have ditched the dullest puzzles for more of the smartest, and had that jump feel a little less awkward, I think it would have shone. But it still glimmers rather nicely, and for a price that makes it worth it.

It’s awful. Colossally awful.

Lethal League Blaze doesn’t flip over the table, but it’s an extremely confident sequel that improves on just about every part of its predecessor. [RPS Bestest Bests]

The strength of its new dinos will pull me back now and again, if only to float around aimlessly on my favourite Gasbag. But as the last of the planned expansions for Ark, Extinction is far from the swan song that I was hoping for.

If you never did on mobile, then this is an exquisite puzzle game to play on PC, and only a fiver for the honour.

It has its moments. Stumbling on other survivors is a thrill, but in reality those encounters rarely lead anywhere interesting. DayZ is an anecdote-generator, but the odds are you’ll need to feed it more hours of your life than they’re worth.

Had I not winced and winced at the writing, I’d have enjoyed the aimless process of clicking through it all.

I’d love to have played a game that tried to explore that rocky landscape, with some nuance, some introspection, and most of all, with some humility. This is not that game.

I love the presentation, I love the conceit, but ultimately this is just a cleverly disguised badly designed point-and-click adventure. Hell, this is a game where you get moon rock by looking at the moon through binoculars. Come on.

Nowhere near as odd or quirky as its trailers suggested it could be, and offering no surprises, it’s fun is over in the first few minutes. Bums.

For less than a couple of quid, this is well worth it. Randomly generated puzzles, so you won’t run out, plenty of options, and that bonkers triangle mode for a real head-scratcher.

My other thought is that it really needs a system for fainting out a number when it has the correct number of bombs marked – that would make the puzzles a lot cleaner to solve.

As it is, it’s a calm, gentle game, with intermittent moments of brilliance. Apart from that bloody descending number thing.

Accompanied by pleasant ambient music, and some deeper depths of complexity I wasn’t expecting, I’ve had a very pleasant time mucking about with Vignettes. Which is its absolute purpose. It’s a toy, but a detailed one, and one that belies interesting complexity.

It’s Winter is very specifically about nothingness – by which I mean, though its blood is rich with walking simulator platelets, it is not about dreamy escapism, but rather about feeling purposeless, even trapped, by one’s situation. We all know the feeling: that certain kind of boredom, where it’s not that there’s nothing to do, but rather that everything feels futile.

Photographs is a very novel experience (well, a very short story experience, fnarr), lovingly crafted, if not fully composed. I don’t love it as a puzzle game, but it’s a vignette of vignettes, and I like it for that.

Thea 2 is interesting in a ‘may you live in interesting times’ sense. An imperfect thing that I can’t help but feel affectionate towards.

SteamWorld Quest isn’t going to be the next Slay the Spire, and to be honest, die hard Spire-ites will probably find its one-and-done story a bit, well, restricting. But for card novices (which I count myself one of), it’s still a real charmer, no matter how sluggish it might get in those early hours. There’s so much heart in Image & Form’s games, and SteamWorld Quest is no exception.

It is a fine game, but it has already served its purpose: it entertained me for roughly as many minutes as it cost in pennies, and it left me refreshed and ready to play some longer games.

I can’t say Dunderlords excites me anymore. It’s too dynamic to feel dry, but I do find myself in the same situations, and aiming for the same compilations. Playing now is about tweaking well-trodden paths rather than forging new ones, but that’s OK. We’re in a good place, Dunderlords and I. We’re comfortable, though you’d never have caught me using that word when I started.

It’s fun. It’s tremendous fun, and while I was hoping for more room to experiment or completely mess a child up (sorry Dave, it was nothing personal), I still wanted – indeed, still want – to have another go. It’s funny, it’s accessible despite all its numbers and moving parts, and there aren’t many games that get me so animated about a 9-year-old’s school test results. The design is solid too.

Eagle Island promises a lot, but whether it ever truly delivers I cannot say, because after two days with it I am plain done. I was never quite enjoying it as much as I wanted to, and it never quite came together even during the brief window when the plot took a turn and it looked like it was about to really open up. Even the promise of more ways to brutalise my dutiful owl isn’t enough to drag me through another afternoon of increasingly grating near misses.

Streets of Rogue is a small and cheerful antidote to the relatively plain-faced immersive sims of the blockbuster sort. It’s a daft miscellany of violent mobsters and unseen assassins, criss-crossing feuds and small mistakes that snowball into bloody knife fights. If you want a tiny, varied Deus Ex that will make you laugh, this is it. [RPS Bestest Bests]

It’s not my favourite play of all time by any means, and I may never come back to it after my fascination fades. Even so, if I’m asked to come up with an example of a genuinely unique experience that shows what games are capable of in 2019, this is the block my internal Wilmot will bring forward from the tangled stacks of my memory. What it is, is entirely up to you. [RPS Bestest Bests]

The result is a visually stunning game, belying its origins as a creation of two animators, alongside some delightful writing, weaving a complexity of narrative that completely surprised me. But one that offers the player far too little actual investigating, and in the end, far too much tiresome wandering. And then doesn’t end. Although this review now must.

The game makes a fairly decent fist of infantry combat, comes with some nicely crafted maps, and inherits CC’s natural elegance and approachability, but falls short in too many core areas to earn a positive review from someone who has Combat Mission, Graviteam Tactics, and Armored Brigade ready and waiting in his amusement arsenal.

Kine might organise itself like a musical composition, but it also keeps you at arm’s length from the music. You’re here to move the performers around, not strut your stuff. Perhaps the moral of the story there is that raw talent only gets you so far; that the biggest stars took off not just because they had the best tunes, but because they had managers who knew how to move them up the ladder. Or perhaps this is just a game that, for all its enormous cleverness and warmth, hasn’t quite put the pieces together.

Abandon Ship can’t escape FTL’s shadow. It’s too similar to avoid being judged based on the high bar its spacefaring cousin set, but it falls far too short of that bar for me to like it. Turns out those water pumps aren’t worth manning after all.

I’ve absolutely loved this. It’s so refined, so well crafted, so supremely gory for something with such deceptively simple presentation, and has a difficulty pitch that feels always challenging, but remarkably fair. At a measly £11, you’d be silly not to give it a go. [RPS Bestest Bests]

The very nature of play makes even more drastic transitions.

Ultimately, even if more of the jokes had landed, they wouldn’t have been enough to carry the game they’re crushed under. I’m aware that repetition in games gets rubbed in by playing long stints for review. Perhaps it all would have been less tiresome if I’d experienced it in the small bursts the original mobile version of DD was designed for. But repetition in general isn’t good game design. It needs to be spiced up with novelty or thought, and the actual dungeons of Dandy Dungeon don’t pack enough of either.

I think Sayonara Wild Hearts reminded me of all the cool things I’ve liked over the years, because it’s not saying anything deeper than “Cool things are f.cking great, and being cool is great too.” Which is fine. It’s all said in this incredibly alluring wash of pink and blue and purple, this brief flowerbloom of a game, this stylish, inescapably cool thing that references Tarot without, you know, trying too hard about it.

I do enjoy Minilaw. I find its mistakes frustrating precisely because it’s otherwise a tonne of fun to play. It looks gorgeous, the sound and music are first rate, and when it works, gunning attackers down feels great. I light up when I see someone standing foolishly close to a ledge, and prioritise running towards them to line up a kick above far bigger threats, just because hoofing them off is so entertaining. I want to find an excuse to stop here so I can start playing it again, which is a sure sign it’s doing the important things right. But I’m resigned to recommending it only after an annoyed sigh, and a disclamatory “well…” about the clunky controls.

Vestaria Saga is a merciless game. It can be wonky. Unpolished. Occasionally frustrating. But I know a particular subset of players won’t care, because this is a new, old, Fire Emblem, and nobody but Shouzo Kaga makes games like this anymore. Have fun with it, then, if you suspect you fall into that group. Enjoy this beautiful mess.

I believe, even though there is an ending, that the Zero is a loop, and I am just another ghost that echoes around it forever. For it was – it is – unforgettable. [RPS Bestest Bests]

While I’ve been writing this, I’ve still been playing Besiege, in a way. Ideas for new creations have been bubbling away under the surface of my mind, just waiting for me to hop back in and build them – presumably so that they can crumble immediately. At least that’ll spare some sheep.

I can’t, in short, say anything bad about Savage Vessels that isn’t heavily outweighed by everything it’s doing that’s rewarding and exciting. Uncovering new levels stressed me out enough to wail at my desk, but in a way I enjoyed a lot more than the people around me probably did. Its slower pace and clearer presentation made for a less frustrating time than its zombie-stabbing inspiration, and its difficulty is more manageable and better at inviting the sense of “okay, well, this time…” that any good roguelike needs.

And there we have it. Arsebark: Genesis. A bottom-burp of a DLC so pungent that, for me at least, its base game will never smell the same again. Oh and yeah, there’s a giant turtle. But apparently it’s broken at the moment.

Both games boast shortish campaigns, modest price tags, and occasionally shoot themselves in the feet with lines of B movie dialogue. Both bring down The Helicopter Fallacy with a flurry of tracer-laced MG fire, and deserve our admiration, gratitude and patronage for doing so.

There is still suspense in every moment, because I know how easily each moment could go wrong. I can still revel in the discipline required to shoot a turret, recognise that I’ve disabled its firing mechanism, and stand still as it turns around. I can still freak out at inspired surprises I won’t spoil, and delight in paying attention to every little detail. They’ll kill me if I don’t. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Overall, Horizon’s Gate is a joy to play. Its simple art style, combined with its excellent soundtrack and sense of exploration make it a naval sim that captures the inherent charm of discovery.[RPS Bestest Bests]

Here’s the real masterstroke behind Nimbatus’ design. There are several sets of skins, all of which can be mixed and match to make even cooler looking flybots. But they’re all unlockables except the default set, meaning you need to play the campaign to gain access to them. And for once, the cosmetics genuinely are worth grinding for. So I guess I’m just going to have to head back to the hangar, and get better.

My living situation in Among Trees is better than my real life. I cannot fully describe how delightful and relaxing it is to wake up in my cabin and look at the morning light streaming into my new greenhouse.

This is a pleasant clicker game neatly disguised as something a little more fun and adventurous, and while there are some wonderful artistic flourishes (you can play music to a giant carrot in a top hat for bonus items, and there’s a fish god you can feed apples to) they don’t add anything to the game’s basic systems of moving things around for money. For five pounds and change though, Merchant Of The Skies is an entertaining enough obsession of a lazy afternoon.

As much as I can appreciate and credit its beautiful design and atmosphere for that, when I suddenly get the solution to a particular island, I get the mental round of applause all to myself, made all the sweeter by previously thinking this genre was impossible for my brain.

So I’m in danger of overrating Across The Grooves. It’s fairly short, and at only a couple of hours long, you could dig up all its alternative scenes and endings in a long afternoon. It’s more linear and structurally simple than I’d expected, and I was definitely expecting more from the main music. But while it hasn’t truly touched me as deeply as Eliza or Watch Me Jump, it’s given me an unusual angle on time travel and a lot of feelings and thoughts to process. It’s even helped me a little, I think. There are some things that were probably always going to happen, and the only real choice you have isn’t how to fix them, but to either make yourself miserable wondering what you could have done better, or try to salvage a future from the consequences you were left with. I’m glad I got to play it.

Lords Of The West is good fun, and Age Of Empires 2 Definitive Edition remains the king of my PC castle. But as Jurassic Park showed us, bringing any great beast back to life is a risky business, and that applies just as well to electric knights as to velociraptors. A moderate approach is vital. To continue the metaphor, this all feels a bit like the situation in Jurassic World, where the money men get the science men to build a devil dinosaur, because normal dinosaurs weren’t exciting enough. It’s not too much like that situation, I confess, as I’m not particularly worried that Edward Longshanks will climb out of my telly and devour a helicopter. I’m just saying that, much like dinosaurs, AoE2 was impressive enough as nature, or Doctor Microsoft, made it.

So, whether you’ve long liked the look of Civilisation but balk at the commitment, or have a seemingly self-replicating collection of untouched Stellaris expansions that you can’t quite find the time for, or honestly just like a good puzzler, I reckon you’ll find something to love here. Personally, Slipways has come at just the right time to occupy a gaming space I wanted filling, but even if it hadn’t, I think it’s a phenomenally smart piece of design. Maybe something will soon come along to replace it, but for now, the view from up here is just perfect. At least, it will be, once I’ve linked that here. Oh, and that there, and… Ah, it’s one of those planets, is it? Well, that changes everything. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Death Trash is a singular and unique vision. I don't know how to say, "If you like X or Y then you'll like this". Maybe Fallout (indeed, this game's genesis is in a jokey fanart tweet about making one's own Fallout). Maybe text games on Itch about teeth and skin. People worship the meat like a deity. They eat it raw. And you are, somehow, infected by it. You can talk to it. My biggest disappointment is that my quest to understand the flesh was cut short so quickly - it's maybe four or five-ish hours at the moment, about a quarter of the predicted full runtime, though the "main" questline hit its under construction roadblock after about 2 hours for me. Death Trash evidently has more secrets to wallow in, and it's worth wading in. It's both disgusting (in a good way) and absolutely hypnotic. [Early Access Review]

I'd be among the first to say "but it's good in co-op" doesn't count for most games, because most things are better with a friend, but this is definitely one that's crying out for it, and developers Geometa certainly seem to be aware of it judging by the custom game option to have 4 sides and up to 64 concurrent players. I can see potential for more game modes too (certainly some sort of training ground for test flights and the like would be welcome), but I have to go by what's here, and much as I enjoy a good stretch, what's here feels just out of my reach.

It’s a shame Cloud Gardens felt the need to stretch its playtime with reused ideas, because when Cloud Gardens is at its best, it’s a delight. It's a competent, unique puzzle game and a contemplative, relaxing dreamscape, all rolled into one small package. If you ever have anxiety about the future state of the Earth, check out Cloud Gardens. Watching nature overrun a factory is more cathartic than you might think.

Ultimately Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Hinokami Chronicles doesn’t really offer a lot outside of watching characters beat the shit out of each other with various flashy moves, but I guess that was always the point. Although the playable roster is feeling the distinct lack of demons right now, there’s a lot to enjoy from the characters who are there, delivering on the promise of a power fantasy of Gotouge’s manga epic. For those steeped in knowledge of that manga (or Ufotable’s anime adaptation), The Hinokami Chronicles offers a great little opportunity to spend some more time with the heroes and stories we’ve loved for years.

Whatever the reason, Evertried forgoes a lot of modern conveniences common to the roguelike. If you are in search of an austere tile-hopper, you might find strength in its arrow-key puritanism. But as one indoctrinated by Into The Breach and the recently released Pawnbarian (a similar tile-by-tile roguelike with both clarity and capybaras), the uniformity of Evertried comes across as a lack of polish, a jigsaw that could be pleasing to the eye if only it didn't have so many missing pieces.

It's creepy, but Lixun treats it all as quite ordinary, even when he's trapped in a haunted mirror verison of the Tian family home. The fear is more bound up in what happened to the Tian family itself, because in a way it could happen to any family - and, indeed, does. Firework spins a lot of plates, and it's worth playing just to see them all being kept in the air.

Deflector is really tough. Alien-like minions will just spew a slow orb or two at you, but tougher foes can vomit lines of the bloody things, to the point where just standing your ground feels like beckoning death. Staying on the move is key to survival, but levels will bring acidic pools and towering spikes rising from the ground to bear at you, variables that’ll easily throw you off your game and send you packing to an early grave. This is all done against the backdrop of a sort-of story where a giant tardigrade-esque creature ferries you between levels. Every Deflector run starts the same: heal up, interact with the big beastie, and select which room you’d like to be transported to. You’re presented with a big overview board of subsequent rooms, with pathways snaking between them, including which arenas house powerful enemies and exclusive rewards. [Early Access Review]

When the story is this earnest, it feels churlish to berate it too harshly. Its heart is in the right place, and if anything, I wish there were more slice of life games out there like this. Plenty of games start off domestically, but they often leave it behind in favour of something more spectacular and fantastical. I want more games like The Kids We Were, that have the confidence to focus on the humdrum rhythms of everyday life, and that evoke the same kind of feelings as the films of Makoto Shinkai, Mamoru Hosoda and Hirokazu Kore-eda, and the novels of Shion Miura and Hiromi Kawakami (and if these games do actually exist, please tell me about them. I want to consume and absorb them into my consciousness as soon as possible). They may not end up feeling much like the games we're used to, but I'm glad they exist all the same.

I can’t quite bring myself to hate it. But I knew that going in. It wins enough on concept to make the execution kind of secondary, and honestly, it’s got much more substance than I expected. So, while I can’t recommend that you part with your cash to experience RPGolf Legends this very second, I can absolutely recommend that the effervescent fountain of sparkling madlads at ArticNet keep doing what they're doing, because the world needs more unshackled visionaries like them. However, with the Lunar Steam Sale on at the moment, you could get What the Golf and the Grandia HD Remaster for less money, alternate between the two, and have a much better time.

At the end of the day, though, it’s repetition that kills the beast. Demanding mastery through repetition can work for platformers, but only if it’s done carefully and thoughtfully, where you don’t have to go slug through long trivial stretches before you get another go at the hard bit. The grappling here feels good when you’re allowed to build momentum, but too many levels are more interested in killing it. I’m sorry, Grapple Dog. Swing on.

Tiny Combat Arena is a little simulation with big ambitions, but if you’re looking for something more substantial than a single plane and a single map, it’s probably best to watch it grow from this side of the “add to cart” button for now. Your £15 would be better spent on 30 credits in an After Burner cabinet on the pier. [Early Access Review]

While multiplayer offers a lot of potential for TFC even this early in its early access run, and functions very smoothly in terms of matchmaking and connection, finding an actual opponent is a vanishingly rare event. There are, sadly, very few people on the servers so far, and I’m pretty sure the lion’s share of multiplayer games happening right now are being arranged on Wield’s Discord server. Still, that will hopefully all change if this game gets even half the attention it deserves. On which note, I urge you to grab yourself a pomegranate, sell someone a load of high quality copper, and have a go. [Early Access Review]

If Curious Panda can flesh things out enough on top of the smaller tweaks they already appear to be patching in, and really lean into its unusual details, it could distinguish itself well in an increasingly competitive division. [Early Access Review]

While its tone may be a little uneven, its heart is definitely in the right place. Gibbon: Beyond The Trees deals with a lot of hefty topics in 60 minutes, but it also knows when to let its hair down, too, giving you everything you need to enjoy and celebrate these creatures while they're still with us.

OWW is all about showing your own artistic vision through curation and building architecture. Its approach to the somewhat stuffy art world is playful while also giving a middle finger to those who wish to keep the enjoyment of art to a certain elite. It's an incredible niche game but has the uncanny ability to suck you in with its breezy building and incredibly creative community, even if you can't tell your Monet from your Manet. [Early Access Review]

Ultimately, a fresh theme isn't enough to get me invested in re-living the early access journey of a pawn management game, no matter how many Scottish highlanders muck themselves in front of their horrified children. I enjoy wallowing in failure, sure. Losing is, as always, fun. But I've already played a more complete, and more colourful version of this game to death. [Early Access Review]

If you’re looking for a detective tale to sink your teeth into, you won’t find that here. Instead, I'd suggest one of Frogwares' actual Sherlock Holmes games. But if you're more of a Sherlockian vibes kind of person who just wants to enjoy a jolly good romp, then there's still plenty to admire here. Lord Winklebottom Investigates is a delightfully light snack with a sweet crunch, something that many players will be more than satisfied with. You’ll never feel like you’re solving an actual mystery, but it will certainly chuckle and charm the heck outta you, old boy.

I didn't really mind having to a campaign four times over just to get to the end of it, as the thrill of the draw meant each successive run was just as gripping as the last. It's why I've kept coming back to ORX ever since I first clapped eyes on it earlier in the year, and why I'm confident this roguelike-deckbuilding-tower-defence 'em up has a strong future ahead of it. Whatever luck throws its way, I have a feeling ORX is going to come up trumps every time. [Early Access Review]

Aside from these late-game niggles, Railbound is an absolute charmer. While many of its 150+ puzzles could perhaps be better integrated into its mainline puzzle path, this is still a game where you'll want to explore every nook and cranny to see how it's going to test you next. There's a lot to like in what Afterburn have created here, especially if Dorfromantik's high score tables have left you yearning for a more traditional kind of puzzler in a similarly cosy landscape. With a total journey time of roughly three to four hours, Railbound is one departure you won't want to miss.

Moonbreaker really does seem to capture the tabletop experience in digital form, making for bite-sized turn-based battles that are a lot of fun. It's just hard to recommend in its early access state, not because it's a buggy mess (far from it), but more in the sense of units and leaders and maps; it needs some booster packs of its own, I reckon. But once – and if – it gets a steady stream of stuff, I don't see why it can't evolve into a simple, yet surprisingly complex strategy battler. Fingers crossed eh. [Early Access Review]

Lil Gator Game is a short, simple, and sweet adventure about a kid who just wants to play with their sister. That noble quest sends them on an endearing adventure around a truly beautiful island, and it's packed with a bunch of playful NPCs who are simply out to have fun. Their whimsical, comedic nature sucked me in - similar to the Frog Detective series - and pairing that with the simple-yet-engrossing exploration of this gorgeous island perhaps makes the aforementioned A Short Hike the better comparison. It wasn't long before I found myself swinging from trees, skating down mountains, and hunting for more weird toys and funny characters with which to play and chat. Lil Gator Game is all about finding joy, and pairing that goal with the warm tones, joyful music, and natural backdrop made for a surprisingly grounding experience that's sure to stick with me as a favourite of 2022. [RPS Bestest Bests]

As it stands you’ll need not only a wealth of city building experience, but also - more importantly - a bottomless well of patience in order to fully enjoy this space colony sim.

That's the fundamental problem with Industries of Titan. It's a beautifully animated and scored game with the bones of a great city builder/slower-paced RTS, and the flesh of a management game full of dystopian satire and cheerfully amoral characters, but no tendons. Everything flopping about in a kind of cool but dissatisfying pile. I could complain about UI niggles, the excessive time spent waiting around, and the predictability of every map (discounting the visuals, which make it probably the prettiest strategy game ever). But none of those things undermine it so critically as the persistent feeling that it's far less than the sum of its parts.

And like Landlord Of The Woods, Birth is a short, sweet game that feels incredibly human, even though it features a world that, at first sight, couldn’t be further from our own.

Sadder still is that this version of KSP2 is so foundationally shaky it actively discourages you from attempting to build anything too ambitious or complex, in case the game vaporises your efforts on a whim. There’s no sense of achievement when the odds you’re up against aren’t to do with mastering the complex physics of interplanetary space flight, but the game’s own half-finished code. A Kerbal Space Program that pours cold water on your ambitions hardly feels like a Kerbal Space Program at all...Shoved out of the Early Access airlock before it could put its EVA suit on, Kerbal Space Program 2 is in need of a rescue mission. [Early Access Review]

Outlanders has a low detail, high impact art style, almost cartoony in how some people have big top heavy shoulders, and how older people become grey and bent over. I love seeing my leader strut around, holding a lantern at night as if checking everyone is in bed. I love the little flute trill that plays when you confirm or cancel an action, swinging up or down like a luxe slide whistle. I love that in this game about settlers building a new life for themselves, you can have a smoothie stand.

As you might expect from the makers of Bury Me, My Love, this is a game that cuts deep, and by the time I got to the end of Junon's journey, I really felt like I'd done some soul-searching of my own. Crucially, though, this isn't a game that mires itself in its own misery. It's not a laugh riot by any means, but there's an enduring dynamism and sense of optimism to be found among its emotional wreckage, and the more Junon discovers about herself, the more enthralling her story becomes. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Much as I loved trading in gossip, it’s just another distraction in a game where ultimately I’m here to find the love of my life, tentacled or not. I’ve greatly enjoyed weaving my own tales and following my nose exploring the Eldritch corners of this world, but I was hoping for more romantic endeavors seeing as it labels itself first and foremost as a dating sim. I’ve left the Neath with an anthology of tales, it’s just a shame that none of them included escapades of romance, flirtatious encounters, or straight-up monster f.cking.

It won't be for everyone for exactly that reason. But like its realistic lasers, it is expertly calibrated to hit those of us in its niche directly in the heart. [RPS Bestest Bests]

Viewed from a certain angle, Lakeburg Legacies is a dystopian tale where the lives of the people of this small town are decided by a remote higher intelligence using algorithms and percentages, but one where the higher intelligence gets bored and hits ultra speed quite often until they have enough wood to build a hospital.

But it also feels like an exploration of themes, a pressure cooker for societies to organically adapt into the form seen in the far future of King Of Dragon Pass, where other games would just say "the empire united against evil the end". Although everything is familiar, it feels like it's developing as a series through a wealth of thoughtful, amusing stories and possibilities. There is, in a word, still nothing quite like it. [RPS Bestest Bests]

But like The Rookie, it kind of doesn't matter if you lose the thread a couple of times, because Lord, some scenes escalate out of all proportion either way. Judith's most reliable sidekick is her brother, a stoner crossed with an encyclopaedia, and he of course gets kidapped, Judith's grandad's journal is taken, there are more explosions. In some respects, this is par for the mystery course. But it's things like Judith musing that she needs to show the mysterious bad guy that she's serious, and the correct response being just to get out a pen-knife and threaten him in a room full of people, that really made me giggle. Like, sure, that's one way to do it, Judith. Hauma is a bit frustrating in its main puzzle process (i.e. smashing thoughts together seemingly at random), but boy howdy, like a Roman watching Russell Crowe behead an opponent in the arena, you will be entertained.

I did have one minor gripe when Urbo first launched, in that it was sometimes hard to discern the exact level of particular buildings, but a recent update has fixed this so you can always see exactly what's in play. So really, I have no complaints about this whatsoever. Neat! If I was being nitpicky, I'd still say that Dorf is probably the more nourishing puzzle game for me, what with its quests and discoveries and near-endless map sizes to play about in, but if you're more of a cerebral Threes-type, then Urbo will fit right into your regular puzzle regimen. It really is a lovely little thing, and a very chill way to while away a dark and rainy afternoon.

Technically, you can just go ahead and unlock everything in the settings menu if you'd rather avoid these kinds of frustrations, but for me at least, that rather deflates any impetus to keep playing Subpar Pool in the first place. Any sense of structure and challenge is instantly lost when you don't have anything to work towards anymore, so I'd recommend playing it as intended if you're keen on giving it a shot. There is certainly a lot to like here, but as time's gone on, I find myself less and less keen to come back to it. The pool tables are all a little too similar to feel truly different in longer game sessions, and the challenges themselves come just a little too slowly to make it feel fresh and exciting. The allure of the googly-eyed cue ball is strong, but for me, it pales in comparison to the soul-hooking stare of Holedown's hypnotic worm lad.

Naheulbeuk’s Dungeon Master scratches at the Dungeon Keeper itch for a short while, but the problem is that it’s a goofy, comic fantasy story hoping to be carried by a management simulator way too barebones to support it. Parody only works if the underlying offer is interesting enough to be worth investing in, and you can’t ironically play something for any serious length of time before feeling like the joke is on you.

Hopefully, with a bit of rebalancing, Small Saga might yet reach the upper echelons of pint-sized RPGs, joining the likes of Jack Move as another lively reimagining of their Final Fantasy inspirations in miniature. As things currently stand, though, Small Saga gets a much more tepid recommendation - though I'd be half-tempted to say the Adam Curtis battle music (and its excellent score more generally) is almost worth the very reasonable price of entry alone. It's certainly a one-off, I'll give it that, so if you can stomach its lack of challenge, you'll probably still have quite a good time with it.

Time will hopefully grant us concrete evidence as to whether Fntastic genuinely tried to make The Day Before into anything like the survival MMO shown off in the reveal trailer (or subsequent devlog that's been preserved here), or whether it was always destined for the garbage bin. Either way, I'm glad you can't buy it now and I hope people get their refunds. What a tiring mess. [Early Access Review]

Those early frustrations gave way to satisfaction at scraping through a close call, and feeling like I'd won a fight through applying the right skills and plans, and making progress because I'd learned to judge my team's capabilities rather than just make a number go up enough. That's a great spot for any RPG to be in, and if you're less interested in complex or hefty narratives than some chunky tactical combat and tinkering with characters as toolboxes, Kingsvein could be a slightly rough gem.