True Colors is a worthy continuation of the franchise. Releasing all the episodes at the same time was a good call, since you can go through the story in one sitting, offering around 8 hours’ worth of emotional journey. It is not perfect, and it would have deserved a more elaborate ending. It cannot be as emotional as Before the Storm or as important as the first game, but it keeps the best parts of its predecessors and adds some new elements that fit seamlessly in the mix. It is mandatory for all the fans of the series and a must try for those who think video games should be about much more than just shooting and explosions.

Deathloop is far from being the sum of my worst fears, but it went into a direction that does turn it into a mixed experience. There are some good ideas in the game, but repetition kills most of the fun. Still, it is not a bad game. If you have the patience to put together the story you will find it quite appealing, the level design is as brilliant as ever, but on the other hand the maps are really small, and the combat system is half baked. Overall if you expect another Prey or Dishonored you will be disappointed, but if you are looking for an action game that is quirky and different you might have fun with it.

Hindsight 20/20 aims to draw players in with the focus on moral choices and keep them engaged using its combat. But the former lacks enough context and narrative punch while the latter becomes repetitive and does not encourage more than one run-through. The development team does have some names from studios like BioWare and others, but they clearly need to further hone their craft. Their past successes might have left them overconfident. Their chops for decisions and choice creation might be better suited to another genre or require a more established functional setting. Wrath of the Raakshasa has some good ideas but it never delivers on its potential.

Golf Club: Wasteland is a good game but not because of the quality of its actual golfing experience. Putting balls into holes is serviceable. There are some well-designed levels but there are also some frustrating ones. Don’t feel any guilt if you play on Story mode and get as much of the narrative as you can, without bothering with hazards or limits. But the developers at Demagog understand how to create atmosphere and how to let the world tell a story. Radio Nostalgia is an impressive achievement, especially the songs. The team does need to find a game theme and a set of mechanics that allows them to flex their world-building muscles in more expansive ways than Golf Club: Wasteland can.

Pile Up! Box by Box is not a bad family game, but it is a completely forgettable one. Despite the nice visuals and friendly artistic style, the level design and the puzzles do not live up to the promise. The control is not always the best, since the camera often plays tricks with your depth perception making jumping from shelf to shelf, somewhat annoying. The lack of danger and challenge, makes the game kid friendly, but the lack of online co-op is hurting the entire package.

Overall, Rustler is a success story, a light-hearted and satirical game that does not take itself seriously at all. It tries to be an homage for both the classic GTA games but also to the comedy of Monty Python. It is a bit rough around the edges, sometimes it drowns you in Monty Python references and it could have used some more polishing, but it’s a fun experience. You have no real replay value here, but Rustler will keep you entertained for a weekend or two.

King’s Bounty II feels like a half-baked game that’s missing a lot of the features that made the series so popular among players. Even the content that does share similarities with the previous games seems rushed and unpolished. Although I commend the developers’ wish to bring something fresh on the table, I believe King’s Bounty II is a missed opportunity. Even though many of the issues the game had at launch may be fixed in future patches, there are many design choices that are impossible to address. Janky in all aspects, King’s Bounty II can be a worthy new entry for long-time fans or a terrible idea. If you’re considering this, just keep in mind that it’s rough around the edges.

Garden Story is not actually about gardening, in the Stardew Valley sense, and that’s great. The story is about growing friendships and the organic development of communities. The mechanics are good enough to keep players engaged with the world. The stakes are never high. Concord doesn’t shine as a protagonist but the world around him is colorful and fun, a good reason to spend 15 minutes at the end of the day doing a little work to make it even better for everybody else. But longer sessions with the game tend to reveal that there’s a lot of repetition, especially when it comes to the action parts. And if the friendly spell of the world-building breaks it can be hard to go back and pick Garden Story up again. The team at Picogram has a good instinct for universe development and cuteness hooks but they do need to put some extra time into creating a better gameplay loop for their unique universe.

I can easily see myself spending hundreds of hours playing Humankind but not before it gets at least a round of updates to deal with crashes and some performance issues. The core of the 4X gameplay is easy to understand but hard to master, with a very big possibility space. The main selling point, moving through civilizations as history progresses, creates plenty of potential for cool stories, overpowered empires, and surprising twists. But the overall experience sometimes feels like less than the sum of its parts. Amplitude has such a reputation for creating unique civilizations and mechanics that I expected more.

The story, the combat system, the art style, the possibilities, the twists and also the technical performance makes Hades one of the best roguelite games released so far. It is a game that should not be missed, no matter your genre preferences.

Overall, The Falconeer: Warrior Edition remains the very same game with an excellent atmosphere, beautiful visuals, but a gameplay that is not as engaging as we would have hoped. It is still a remarkable achievement for one man, and the game while not perfect it is definitely worth trying. Despite the fact that sometimes the pace is a bit off, due to the big empty traversal sections, and that the difficulty level can be inconsistent, soaring to the skies on the back of your trusted mount is a unique experience.

Sure, the story is nothing impressive. There are moments when the generated levels do not make too much sense. Progress sometimes hinges on the placement of one health chest or one group of enemies. But, despite the randomness, Jupiter Hell feels fair and there’s a lot of depth to discover in this surprising mix.

The idea of creating a game world built around knowledge is a good one. But the developers at Souris-Lab should try to better define their mechanics if they expand on the world of Hemeide and to make clear what kind of players they target. Their puzzle design ability is solid, A Tale of Synapse is a good debut title, and it will be interesting to see what kind of experience they can create next.

Ambition: A Minuet in Power aims to be a graphical novel with a difference and comes very close to realizing its goal. The problem is that the game does not manage to keep up the quality of its writing or make its encounters unique enough. The developers do have good ideas. I like the fact that players can start to explore a historical situation (or a big political incident or the state of a country) through the mechanics of this genre. I appreciate the mix of serious subject matter and sometimes silly romance encounters. But Ambition: A Minuet in Power needed a little more focus to convince me to play through it more than one time, even if I appreciate what it is trying to achieve.

I wish that the game could have created a better shell for the entire experience. I like the look of the characters and the world, but it does need a little more variety. And the fantasy-driven story feels a little undercooked. The gameplay in Unbound: Worlds Apart is good enough to keep fans of the genre entertained, especially if they love the occasional challenge. But future titles from Alien Pixel Studios need a little more when it comes to narrative to deliver a truly great gaming experience.

In its current state Blightbound is nothing else but disappointment. There is a lot of potential in the game, but it is squandered not only by technical issues, but also by some very bad design choices. This is far from a finished game, and the people on the forums complain that in many aspects it is even worse than what they saw during the Early Access phase. Blightbound does not need only bug fixes, but a complete overhaul, because it is not a fun experience by any means. It tried to walk in the footsteps of the great classics, but it fell on its face in the most embarrassing way.

The Forgotten City would have been a good game, if the developers would have remained in the lane of adventure games. The action scenes are more of a miss, since the whole game was built on the idea of observing and solving puzzles. Although you have other means at your disposal, the strongest suit of The Forgotten City remains its slower gameplay focused on problem solving. For a small group of people, putting together The Forgotten City is no small feat, and they deserve the praise.

The team at Dinosaur Polo Club clearly has a knack for creating stripped-down but beautiful graphics and for simplifying mechanics down to their essence, which is a clear strength for a title that aims for success on mobile devices. But in order to make Mini Motorways engaging on other platforms, they needed to introduce a new mechanic or a new way to tackle the traffic challenge to add to the depth of the experience.

The Procession to Calvary is short, does not have much gameplay, is not really a challenge but it is truly brilliant. It is a game that is fun due to the humor of Joe Richardson and it makes you laugh and entertains you without trying too hard. Most jokes are over the top and should not exist in a politically correct world. Thank God this game is light years away from that tendency and manages to walk its own path. If you have played Four Last Things, The Procession to Calvary is mandatory. But even if you have not played Richardson’s previous game, this one is worth every minute of the roughly four hours you will need to finish it. It does not care if it offends, as long as it entertains.

Overall, Cris Tales is a charming tale, a great JRPG, and a memorable experience, with plenty of replay value. The characters are endearing, while the story is based on the innocence of childhood. It is almost like a time travel experience taking you back to when your parents used to read you bedtime stories. You can feel that the team poured their heart and soul into the game making it a game that will convince everyone willing to try it, even if they usually do not like JRPGs. It has some issues and for some, the visuals might be too colorful or cheerful, but it is an adventure worth playing through.

The developer clearly is a fan of some classic experiences and knows how to take their spirit and bring it to the present. The challenge is to update the core mechanics interestingly and choose the right concepts for the world he is building. Guild of Darksteel is ultimately a shallow experience that does not offer much more than its demo but I am curious what Sandman can create in the future.

The Farm 51 has created an atmospheric and challenging game that mixes plenty of inspirations in a cool new way. More variety in terms of locations and more options for combat would have made Chernobylite an instant classic.

Out of Line is a very short experience (it took me two hours to finish it), and while the length of a game shouldn’t define a game’s quality, I would’ve expected Out of Line to be at least a bit more fulfilling. That being said, I would recommend the game to those who aren’t looking for overly complex puzzles and a deep, meaningful story. Out of Line is one of those games that won’t challenge puzzle enthusiasts nor appease players looking for an appealing narrative.

Death’s Door has good core mechanics but does not introduce the one big innovation that could make it stand out. I enjoy the battles, especially the bigger ones, but I feel that the puzzles are average, as is the exploration. Some players might draw comparisons to Hades but this is a very different experience that does not aim for the same narrative depth. It’s linear, there are no rogue elements, and the variety in encounters is more limited.

Scarlet Nexus does a lot of things right, but it fails to offer a cohesive gameplay experience. I think it would be best described as a visual novel with action-RPG elements rather than vice-versa. While the story is compelling enough to keep you going until the end, the game is full of bloat that needs to be cut. Despite its shortcomings, Scarlet Nexus is one of the better action RPG titles coming from Bandai Namco. I just wish it would have more respect for the player's time, and do away with all the uninteresting fluff that doesn't tie in the story.

The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos on paper has all the right ingredients. Unfortunately, they are not implemented as you would expect them to be, and the game ends up as a bad parody of itself rather than of the fantasy genre. The coarse and uninspired humor does not work as the developers have intended, and in the long run, it becomes annoying. The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet of Chaos has a lot of untapped potentials, unfortunately, due to the countless technical issues it is hard to recommend the console version to any players.

Where the Heart Leads is not for everyone. If you like interactive visual novels and you enjoy dramas rooted in real life, the game will feel like a hidden gem. If you prefer gameplay over the story and you already have a bad opinion about walking simulators, there is nothing here for you. This being said, Where the Heart Leads remains a relatable experience, and going through it, you are sure to find some connections with your own life. It's that kind of game that surely triggers emotional reactions just by looking back at your life choices.

Battlesector is a good mix of setting and mechanics. It shows how fun and engaging a properly scaled and designed Warhammer 40,000 experience can be. The campaign has interesting choices as it progresses and offers a good level of challenge. Fans can also set up varied skirmishes or face friends in multiplayer (a Slitherine account is required for full functionality).