I cannot currently think of any reason why I would ever uninstall Into The Breach. [RPS Recommended]

Yume Nikki thrives on its own obtuseness and obscurity, even now it has been dragged into the light somewhat. Dream Diary really does feel like a second-hand retelling of half-remembered and ill-understood nightmares, and I found my mind wandering on imaginings of its own to get as far as possible from these dreary dreams.

I don’t understand the logic of breaking a small game up and then releasing it within the same 30 days. There’s a decent chance that the elements introduced in Chapters 2 and 3 (March 8th and 22nd) will elaborate this into something far more gripping and involved, and I’ll eventually look back at this first chapter as a slow start. But by using this peculiar release method, all the emphasis is on a fussy and ultimately not very interesting introduction.

Every part of Stellaris is still here; the pieces have just been rearranged, neatly.

A truly beautiful game, uplifting, gorgeous and alive. [RPS Recommended]

That it ultimately collapses into a string of unpleasant platforming sequences that the core design simply can’t sustain means I grew to loathe Crossing Souls, once it entirely abandoned its redeeming features for everything it couldn’t get right.

Railway Empire should be so much better. There are some extra track types and junctions that I’d like to see, but it’s still one of the best when it comes to the actual creation of a railway line. And on the economic side of things, it boasts a huge list of resources and manufactured items, reactive cities that change their needs as they grow and buy goods. And, of course, there’s the stock market shadiness. On paper it’s my dream railway sim. The reality is considerably more disappointing.

The measure of an open world is ultimately not the story it tells but whether you’re happy to kill time within it, and Kingdom Come: Deliverance offers plenty of ways to do that, even if a lot of them will, in fact, get you slaughtered. It isn’t the departure I was hoping for, thanks to a shortage of character to set against the nuance of its historical sandbox, but the grubby realism is a pleasant shock next to the tales of elves and dragons that are its nearest competition.

I should also emphasise that for every memorable interaction you’ll have with another player, there’ll be many where you’re just killed. Rust is a strange, harsh game that’s worth exploring – but only certain parts of it, and only for so long. I’ll never commit to constructing my own fortress, but I’ll happily knock on the door of one belonging to another player.

Rise and Fall adds, tweaks and expands, but it doesn’t address some of the underlying issues, particularly those related to the AI. We’re not quite in the new golden age yet.

When a sale comes along I will be the first to invite all ye completionist trope-soakers to partake, to wade around in this sweet trash heap one more time, listening to the guttural Scots-Cornish-Caribbean of my old friends, the Bangaa.

It is its own unique idea, that while not world-changing or particularly revolutionary, is quietly brilliant in its delivery. I only worry that it’s slightly too quiet.

Problems with lobbies and repetitive modes aside, Dragon Ball FighterZ is everything I want out of a Dragon Ball fighting game. It’s colourful, kinetic and full of character. Struggling through the matchmaking noise has been worth it to actually fight as my main man Goku, and throwing a Kamehameha has never felt better, but there’s still work to be done to give the excellent core of the game the wider structure that it deserves.

More than anything, Lost Sphear serves as a reminder that there’s a lot more to capturing the spirit of your idols than just miming them in your bathroom mirror, and I hope that Tokyo RPG Factory learns that lesson before they release yet another love letter to the exact same game.

Celeste is a difficult game about overcoming difficulties. Come for the challenge, stay for the joy of Madeline’s company and the generosity of this wonderful game. [RPS Recommended]

Subnautica is at the top of my mental list of the greatest survival games. [RPS Recommended]

Unless you plan on speedrunning the game, Iconoclasts has relatively limited replay value. Still, in the end Iconoclasts wasn’t quite what I expected, but I greatly enjoyed my time with it, and would recommend it to any platformer fan.

If you’ve any interest in transhumanist philosophy or even ethics in general, then you owe it to yourself to pick this one up. If you don’t, then The Red Strings Club should still hit the spot – and you might find you have more to say the next time someone asks you about the nature of happiness. [RPS Recommended]

The Tomb Kings are ultimately a great addition to Warhammer’s perpetually pissed-off factions, but their poor integration into the Vortex campaign suggests that Creative Assembly haven’t quite figured out how to add factions who don’t share the core participants’ objectives. Consider this, then, a slightly more emphatic recommendation if you’ve got access to the Mortal Empires sandbox, where everyone is competing in the same race to conquer the world.

It is, in fact, a perfect game to play in the background while listening to podcasts. Or perhaps while listening to the audiobook of Moby Dick, and add The North Water and Jamrach’s Menagerie to your whaling horror reading/listening lists as well, if you’ve got the stomach for them.

Paradise is a very satisfying and deeply peculiar game.

Plunkbat’s systems read as simplistic when compared to other modern multiplayer games. There aren’t dozens of character classes with hundreds of interlocking skills. There is no AI director monitoring players to dole out excitement in set portions. Safe zones and bombing zones are randomly placed. But its loose grip upon player’s experiences means you’re more free to decide the kind of excitement you get from it. Back on the menu, I immediately hit the button to join another game. [RPS Recommended]

The deaths are surprisingly grim, made more so by the arcadey point scoring ways, creating a macabre atmosphere that just keeps to the right levels of distaste. This could have been the Hidden Folks of murdering. And it’s all there, underneath the mess, waiting for someone to rescue. Sadly that has, so far, not been realised.

Shadowhand, by contrast, is not for me. I’ll put Pip and Adam’s love of the previous game, which looks to be the same mix of cogs and odds, down to a monumental clash of tastes. Where they found that blend of petticoats and card-plucking soothing and thoughtful, I found this one boring in the extreme and stylistically overblown, floating through a brief few hours with it in a somnambulic state (I couldn’t bear to finish it) occasionally roused enough to tut at an uncooperative deck or the hackneyed dialogue.

Okami is a delight from start to finish. [RPS Recommended]

It, itself, is a lovely story well told, with great humour, moments of genuine pathos, and plenty of intrigue. It hasn’t made an impact on me like its predecessor did, it doesn’t have the same weight, but it remains a superb time. You absolutely should play it if you’ve played To The Moon. If you haven’t, you should blooming well go and play that, and then this.

More than anything, the feeling that dominated throughout was one of magic. Its impossible logic made so much sense, its undimensional structure somehow coherent, so long as you allow yourself to float between the solving and the unsolving. It is that suspended place, between confusion and understanding, reality and impossibility, that makes Gorogoa so bewitching and enticing. [RPS Recommended]

SpellForce 3 is a game that, when pulled apart, doesn’t always come out looking great, but that I’ve still really enjoyed. I get a sort of primal delight in seeing two of my favourite genres blended together competently, and that’s definitely SpellForce — competent. It probably seems like I’m damning it with faint praise, but it’s a cautious recommendation. So many RPGs give you positions of power and authority but then just throw a few arbitrary choices your way; SpellForce lets you actually wield that authority, both as a sword and a hammer.