Helheim is a simple yet engaging video game, and it’s pretty hard too.

Spike Volleyball has serious problems. We've experienced bugs, graphical glitches and poor AI every single time we played. It also lacks in options, with a really poor Career Mode.

Air Conflicts Collection is a lazy conversion of two nice games.

The Ballad Singer is an interactive book made video game. The game developed by Curtel Games is not for everyone, but it sure is incredibly rich and deep.

Nippon Marathon is a positively wacky, completely deranged party game, but it’s also very repetitive.

Crimson Curse builds on Gwent’s tense gameplay introducing strong and quintessential easy-to-learn-difficult-to-master new abilities, even though the studio will also need to keep an eye on faction usage for balancing.

A cheap fighting game, a little rough on the edges, but quite varied, challenging and fun, good to have a few laughs at fair price.

Technosphere Reload could have been a challenging and addictive puzzle platformer. However, a problematic camera and all the hidden obstacles and traps make the experience too frustrating.

Mormo’s Curse is a good expansion. The spirit of The Swords of Ditto is still intact, but new modes, enemies and areas offer a satisfying challenge for both old and new players.

Die Young is an escape simulator. Exploration is its strength along with the constant fear of being hunted down and not knowing where to hide. There are several technical problems (to be solved quickly) and some aspects of the gameplay are not perfectly calibrated, but if you can look past there is a good indie game.

The Bard’s Tale IV: Director’s Cut defines a further step forward for InXile Entertainment. The flaws are there, but it's worth playing as long as you like this genre.

A challenging, graphically flawless game that seems like a miracle. Three years of hard work of a single person that cost only 18 euros. A masterpiece that we hope will serve Mario Malagrino among the next big names of Industry.

Strategic Mind: The Pacific is an interesting turn-based tactical game but it certainly isn’t for everyone, however that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’s a bit rough on the edges but in the end it does its job pretty well.

Let’s Sing 2020 has a good selection of songs, a series of fun challenges and good evaluation skills. However, the game has crashed repeatedly and its music videos seem to come from a VHS.

Fly Punch Boom! it's a fun and colorful smash bros like. It has an excellent online mode, thanks to the large community, but the lack of longevity undermines the fun over a long period.

The Hand of Glory overflows with ideas. Not all of them are spot on, but that’s a risk you have to take when you want to do something that goes a little out of the classic schemes. The first impact is alienating because everything is not very homogeneous, from the graphics to the continuous change of register in the narration, but in the long run this strange alchemical formula works, thanks to a plot that turns towards decidedly unexpected territories and leaves the player with a giant cliffhanger, raising the hype for the second part of the game.

Rainswept might be the first game to learn from Kentucky Route Zero not only aesthetically, but also in terms of direction. All things considered, it tells a simple story, but it does so in a way that shows remarkable sensitivity, a talent for writing, and above all a very uncommon attention to the overall direction of scenes. It may not be as revolutionary as its source of inspiration, but it certainly has something to say.

Street Power Football is an underwhelming champagne football. Unpolished gameplay and the very high entry price make the game inaccessible, and the lack of a sense of progression, of a well-structured campaign mode and of online matchmaking ensures that there’s little fun to be had.

OkunoKA Madness is an eye-catching, compelling and graphically pleasing platformer, a bigger and more ruthless version of the original game for Nintendo Switch. It is incredibly well suited for the PC as well, as long you’re playing on a joypad.

The content of this DLC for The Elder Scrolls Online, part of the Greymoor arc, may not satisfy in terms of content added but still manages to give a worthy ending to the Dark Heart of Skyrim storyline. Markarth is essentially a piece of content that focuses on the story; you should not expect new gameplay mechanics or anything of the sort out of it. Could it have been better? That is often the case, but the hopes for ESO’s future lie elsewhere.

Exit Limbo: Opening is a violent, charismatic and gore-ish beat ‘em up which is not only a videogame, but also an heavy metal band. Just what you need to kiss any pent-up sense of frustration goodbye, for example after a tough day at work or, even worse, of domestic captivity during the lockdown. Immersing yourself in its bloody ultraviolence is somehow liberating and it does not matter if proceeding, at first, will be tough: once you get the hang of the complex control system and the wide range of moves available, dismembering all the enemies will be really fun.

Main Assembly offers many powerful tools to the most creative users with which to indulge themselves in building robots, as long as they have the patience to learn how the game works through a good dose of "trial & error" given the meager tutorial.

Surviving, nowadays, is hard. It’s DAMN hard. So it’s good to find a survival game like The Wild Eight that does not enjoy punishing the player without reason. I still don’t know if this softer approach is an attempt to offset some design issues (like the combat, or the clunky inventory) or if it was meant to be like this since the beginning. Anyway, The Wild Wight feels like a survival game approachable even by players that usually don’t like survival games so much, and at the end of the day this feels like good news.

Flame of Ambition is an excellent introduction to the daedric theme that will be further developed with the next big expansion, Blackwood. The two dungeons are entertaining and are characterized by good level design and interesting mechanics, especially when it comes to the Black Drake Villa. We’re definitely excited to see where The Elder Scrolls Online brings us next June.

Hammer & Ravens developers have been brave and they got several good intuitions, even if the balance problems make the management component less engaging and the graphic style makes the tower defence not too sexy. The main character is a blast though.

The Wardrobe: Even Better Edition for Xbox is a good conversion. The transition from mouse to gamepad is almost painless. Years after his first release, the game is still good thanks to its iconoclastic humor and many, many geek references.

Cosmodread is an excellent sci-fi roguelite VR developed by a studio that was truly a pioneer in virtual reality gaming: their first game, Dreadhall, brilliantly experimented with some new concepts. Cosmodread follows in the same vein, and with a little more variety and graphic detail on PC VR, it might have been a true masterpiece. Nevertheless, it's still a masterful exercise in good mechanics, horror mood and style.

Super Soccer Blast: America vs Europe is a small, arcade soccer game that is super entertaining to play, at least for the first hours. As almost every other arcade sport game, when you learn to master all of its mechanics it gets a little less entertaining, but you can always use it as an old-style 1vs1 couch game with friends. Few rules, a fast pace and hilarious names are everything the Euro (or Copa America) summer needs.

Minute of Islands is an adventure where the story and its themes get the main stage, while the gameplay is mostly there to get the story going, but it stands among other games thanks to the depth of its narrative. The added value are the outstanding illustrations, sort of a mix between Attack on Titan and Adventure Time, that manage to create a fresh, colourful, intriguing, but at the same time disturbing world, just like Mo's adventure.

Pulsar: Lost Colony is a bold title, especially for an independent studio that formed it from a Kickstarter project. Leafy Games developers have cleverly decided to embrace the technical limitations of their production, choosing to offer many small moments from a science fiction anthology, with solid management of their spaceship through well-defined and specialized crew roles. The overly spartan graphics and some environments that are too empty risk breaking the immersion, but if you have a couple of good friends to cross the galaxy with, you've found your game.

If you liked Schizm and its sequel, you will simply love Nemezis as well. However, 15 years later, we’d expect something more, with a slightly enhanced gameplay, while Nemezis is just a harder, shorter “more of the same” of Schizm 2.

The underlying gameplay is still so brilliant that it is painful to see it brought it down by obtuse and ancient systems that make the overall experience frustrating.

A complex, amazing Zelda-style action adventure set in a beautifully crafted world with plenty of towns, creatures, buildings, shops and NPCs. There’s a lot to discover and a lot to play, although some mechanics might feel dated to younger players. The game suffers from some still-to-be-fixed bugs which can be annoying. Overall, NAPS Team did a great job, and brought us a game that Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli could have done themselves.

Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot: The First Cases is a solid adventure game. Poor mouse and keyboard support detracts from the overall experience, but the product as a whole is a worthy rendition of Agatha Christie’s books.

A small-scope but excellent game with very clear ideas, enjoyable, sincere and particularly exciting when the going gets tough, like during very intense boss fights. Pimping our ride to make it look even more aggressive and suited to the post apocalyptic world feels great. A Mad Max-like shoot 'em up is exactly what we needed.

It’s November and Just Dance is with us again. And it’s great news, because it’s as much fun as usual. Just don’t expect any innovations.

Gunfire Reborn has great gunplay, huge variety in builds, and a formula as simple as it is immediate: you get in, you shoot, you hope to get to the end. It might not sound like much, but it’s more than enough to make Duoyi’s game incredibly compelling and almost addictive.

Sometimes a good idea is all you need, and Shatter Ground got a great one. The gamble of combining turn-based strategy with a card game and with the stylish fighting of Superhot ended up working quite well. I personally found Fights in Tight Spaces’ roguelite mechanics a little frustrating, but it is a matter of taste and in any case the game offers five different difficulty settings. One last praise goes to the artistic & technical aspects of the game, minimalist yet functional and pleasantly rich in details.

Gear.Club Unlimited 2 Ultimate Edition has a good Career mode, with plenty of races and events and a little bit of story, but it is far from enough to rescue its incredibly sub-par gameplay, to the point that it is incapable of conveying any emotion. And the game doesn’t fare much better graphically, with poor textures and unstable frame rates. A pity, given the resume of the developer.

Just when you think you've seen it all and know it all, out of nowhere comes a Catalan studio that puts together a combination of genres so finely crafted that it leaves you speechless. Treasures of the Aegean might look like a metroidvania at first glance, but exploration is not tied to upgrades. All that you need is the ability to run as fast as you can and make your brain work just as quickly, because the sea is about the claim the island of Santorini once again.

I had high hopes while downloading Go! Go! PogoGirl and luckily I wasn’t disappointed! The game offers exactly what it promises and nothing more: a colorful, valuable and exciting return to the nineties, with a 2D platformer that unaltered the dynamics of the time, adding that touch of Hoppin' Mad (a C64 classic) that absolutely adds to the experience.

Grand Mountain Adventure: Wonderlands is an elegant indie game perfect for anyone who loves winter sports and the mountain as a lifestyle. The camera doesn't always help to stay zen, those who want intense gameplay will be disappointed, but if you need a holiday on the snow this is the right game.

Thanks to a constant hint system always suggesting what our next step should be, Keplerth guarantees a casual approach to the usually hardcore survival genre, as long as you select a low difficulty level. Just like in other sandboxes, you decide how to play, choosing whether to run along the main quest or dedicate to hunting, fishing, breeding, farming, expanding and improving our base. By activating permadeath the gameplay gets as tough as the meanest roguelike and it's worth a try.

Honestly, I feel like I can’t do anything but completely pan Nightdive’s efforts on Blade Runner Enhanced Edition: from a technical standpoint, the game is indefensible, with plenty of bugs, and certainly doesn’t feel “Enhanced” compared to the original (luckily still available on GOG). Undoubtedly the lack of chunks of the source code and the format of the original assets did Nightdive no favors, but this is still a poor tribute to Westwood’s legacy.

Timothy and the Tower of Mu is a declaration of love for the NES carved in pixels. It’s an hard but not frustrating platformer, with lot of contents and secrets to discover. It is unfortunately penalized by an imprecise control system and the lack of configuration options does not help. Players used to jump with precision and timing will ignore these shortcomings, but less experienced players may be put off by the difficulty and be unable to fully enjoy everything Kibou Entertainment created.

Re: Legend tries to keep pace in the sector panorama and it seems to succeed at first, diminishing shortly proceeding in the story.

A bit of JRPG with cards, a bit of a board game, the last piece of a very particular set of three is not a narrative masterpiece nor a memorable challenge, it is a melancholy JRPG in which everything is lived through the cards, it can entertain as long as you accept its merits, defects and quirks.

A great game that shows what R-Type could be like, if only it was coded in 1958! Blast the freaking aliens like it there’s no tomorrow, with this stunning shoot ‘em up action in black & white, with great FMV intros in every level.

LEGO Bricktales does only one thing, but it does it well: it allows you to play with LEGOs as you would do in your room, without placing constraints on your imagination. Its main limitation is a somewhat stubborn control system and a camera that is not easy to handle, but the final result repays the effort. The added value is a really appreciable technical compartment, which recreates small dioramas with enormous charm, based on historical LEGO sets that will lead to tears anyone who was young in the 80s/90s. It could mark the beginning of a new era for LEGO games, and that would be great news.

A cool puzzle-platformer where cloning and killing ourselves is mandatory to reach our goals, with nice looking pixel art graphics and a great atmosphere.

Bravery and Greed is an enjoyable game with lots of clever ideas, but it seems almost left to its own devices. Excellent co-op, but too many useless equipment items, few bosses, and a not-so-clear overview during the combat phases. Still, it remains a wonderful experience with friends.

34BigThings visual novel is a very interesting experiment, especially with that budget price and because of the excellent writing that succeeds in offering a more informed approach to the organized crime narrative. However the game struggles to convey the weight of choices and activity: this is a less influential element, but it risks depowering at least some of the impact of the narrative.

A metroidvania that starts by leaning on overused stylistic cues, but gradually takes off into its own and fairly strong identity thanks to an excellent narrative, a great combat system, good customization options, and a well-balanced platform/adventure/action mix.

Formula Retro Racing - World Tour is exactly what it sounds like: a sunny arcade that makes simplicity its strong point, yet without sacrificing a fair amount of depth. The world tour promised by the title takes shape in a series of tracks rich in detail, albeit reproduced from crude polygons. The simplicity of the driving model is offset by the presence of muscle cars that introduce drifting, turning the tables and adding a dash of variety. A great game for moments of nostalgia and mood enhancement.

Lone Fungus, although produced by a single developer, is a huge metroidvania. Hardcore gamers will have to work hard to earn all the trophies, while those who prefer a more casual approach can configure the difficulty to their liking and enjoy the game without the slightest frustration.

The strong point of Another Fisherman's Tale certainly lies in the narrative. Indeed, in the metanarrative. The puzzles are not a miracle, and it almost seems that the developers have calibrated the duration of the game to avoid excessive repetitions. The two or three central chapters are spectacular and in practice alone would be worth the price of admission.

Chronicles of 2 Heroes: Amaterasu’s Wrath is a fun videogame, with a well-implemented and detailed game design. The context is intriguing and interesting, capable of projecting the player into a new way of approaching Japan. Too bad for some technical flaws.

Yet another top-view roguelite action-shooter with a sci-fi theme, a genre enjoyed by a large audience who will find in Replikator everything they have loved in dozens of similar games. Originality is not its strong suit, but variety is not lacking and three levels of difficulty make it suitable for a very wide audience. If you can turn a blind eye to a less-than-stellar aesthetic compartment (but the soundtrack deserves applause), we assure you that you will have fun.

Bum Simulator could have simply offered vulgarities with no real purpose, but instead include a quite demential but nevertheless interesting story to follow, and a good crafting system. The world to explore is small, the combat system isn't enough complex and technically it could be way better, but in the end the formula works.

All in all, Voidigo is just another twin stick shooter with roguelite dynamics, but it ranks among the best of all time in its genre. What does this mean? That if you love this type of game, it's a must-have that will keep you hooked for a long time. If, on the other hand, you are used to a more lukewarm reception to roguelites, then this could be your chance to try a video game that represents excellence. Finally, if you are fed enough with this type of gameplay, try to have it as a dessert, and you won't regret it.

Bloodhound is an excellent and well orchestrated FPS that takes its inspiration from the great classics like Doom and Quake. On the narrative side I would have liked more insight, even if the rest reaches its goal. Must have absolutely.

Noob - The Factionless is an imprecise and not very incisive video game, with an uncertainty based on a game design that does not offer particular novelties. A missed opportunity.

Adore is a smart and addictive videogame with important messages at its core. Even if it's nothing new, it's still an experience to be had. Must have absolutely.

What's up, Quantum: Recharged? Did you absolutely have to be released in these days without some final tweaks? The game is fast-paced and fun, making it perfect for a score attack, but there are a number of shortcomings that soon end up spoiling the experience. Controlling the spacecraft with the mouse is frustrating, but fortunately the pad does its job very well. The additional challenges are more or less all the same and represent no real added value. With a little more attention to detail it could have become a must-have hyper casual, instead it is little more than a weekend game.

Pure in its design and maniacally focused on details in its execution, Toss! is a typical example of what works extremely well in VR games, on the same level of other classics like Beat Saber and Pistol Whip. [tested on Meta Quest 2]

A video game that would have deserved more care and attention from a technical point of view. The Many Pieces of Mr. Coo could have been much more and with more content. Such a pity.

Days of Doom tries to do something new by fusing together turn-based strategy and roguelite. The end result, however, can only be said to be partially successful. Both the battles and the growth are characterized by slow times that end up diluting the fun: in the short run you have fun, but the risk of getting tired soon is real. The art direction is nice, though derivative at times. Overall a good pastime, but one that risks slipping away without leaving a trace.

Warstride Challenges is a mix of action and violence where all that matters is speed. Perfect for lovers of speedruns, fast-paced games and competition, this FPS is a must-try unless you're looking for a canonical shooter.

The credit Konami has long enjoyed because of its indispensable role in the modern conception of soccer video games has now been exhausted. And you have to recognize eFootball 2024 for what it is, a very slight improvement on the previous version, still plagued by the same, huge problems. The music is still the same: decent gameplay, Dream Team limited by the database, other modes none to be had, cumbersome menus. The time has come for a breakthrough, because the alternative is rather bleak.

Kona 2: Brume is an exciting and engaging video game, biting and well presented. If on the one hand it offers a wonderful and solitary glimpse of Canada, to be precise the Quebec region, on the other there is a thick mystery to be solved that is as complex as the world. Strengthened by an extremely elegant, high-caliber game design, the production achieves its goal without hesitation and with the maturity of someone who wants to say "Present!" in one of the busiest months on the scene for several years now.

An enveloping production, complete and well composed in every nuance. It's really a lot, a lot of stuff, something that never abandons and that entertains, taking you back in time focusing on the present and the future without compromise. It is a language that can do good, that can be essential and unique, that can set the tone for the future. There is passion, there is love, there is a desire to do and, above all, there is a desire to go against the grain. Go beyond the market itself.

Wartales is an intelligent and brutal video game, capable of exalting through excellent game design and mind-boggling contexts and secondary missions. It is impossible to read a very graceful and alive story in a modern way, and the work can be seen in the classic role-playing game as well as it can still be seen. It absolutely is there.

Berzerk is a timeless classic whose gameplay has aged well, in fact it is even more popular now than it was at the time, thanks to progress in hardware. This Recharged edition reintroduces the spirit of the original in a modern guise, but fails to turn it into a more full-fledged game than just a casual score attack. While the effort to maintain some fidelity to the original concept is comprehensible, there has been a real misstep in offering additional content, with only a handful of extra challenges that are everything but challenging. This way it is likely not to be appreciated even by fans of the original game.

Iron Marines Invasion is a Real Time Action Strategy that despite offering a casual approach, with very few options compared to most popular RTSs, manages to provide an excellent level of challenge. Colorful and fast-paced, with missions that hardly last more than ten minutes, it entices you to experiment thanks to the ability to change troops on the fly, although after a couple of defeats you will already know which soldiers to start with. A pleasant confirmation that even games initially designed for smartphones can be appealing on PC. Those looking for hardcore strategy, however, will prefer to skip it.

Hirilun doesn't mess around and immediately presents itself for what it is: an extremely fast, difficult, and punishing first person runner where even the smallest error can make the difference between a great and a failed run. It takes a long time to memorize the optimal route, only to have you bitterly discover that there is actually a much faster way to the finish line, although it requires even greater precision. Definitely intended for hardcore audiences who are not scared to try the same jump hundreds of times before finding perfection. A game for the few, but those few will like it.

Cozy. This is PathCraft, a very comfortable experience which doesn’t really break any new ground in the puzzle platformer arena, but it makes you feel home and will challenge you with progressively more difficult puzzles. With its cute art and precise and immediate controls, it’s easy to recommend.

A work as simple and fascinating as it is effective and powerful. Andrea finds himself experiencing himself in the eyes and behaviors of others within a powerful narrative adventure that brings to the table the hardships and problems of Generation Z. A concrete and successful test, in our opinion.

Though it undoubtedly belongs to the retro games strand, Casper Croes' relationship to nostalgia in the game is different from the more widespread one. In the case of Alisa, the past is understood not as an unattainable era of now, but as a model whose limitations can now be a challenge rather than an obstacle. The challenge is to recreate a game today that not only draws inspiration from Resident Evil, but also shares its technical characteristics, yet turns out to be palatable to modern gamers. The challenge can undoubtedly be said to have been met, thanks in part to the use of a good dose of (self)irony reminiscent of Lynch's.

Brilliant idea that is not developed to its fullest potential. Still, if you are not necessarily looking for the next Portal, it will be good fun for some hours.

Gambit Shifter is a nearly-perfect experience: the puzzles are great, the UX is smooth and there aren’t relevant faults in this Italian indie instant classic.

Smallands: Survive the Wilds is an open world survival that puts us in the shoes of an insect-sized creature struggling with a wild world teeming with dangers, managing to instill a certain sense of unease when battling ants, cockroaches and various beetles. Basic resources are fairly common, but to get the more valuable ones you have to grind a little bit and fight, with an overall above-average difficulty. The tiny character is charismatic, and the same can be said for the NPCs, and the story reserves some surprises, to be discovered little by little as you progress through the game, alone or in company.

After nine years, Secrets of Grindea finally leaves Early Access. The finished product is undoubtedly a fun, charming action RPG à la Zelda with a great build variety and an emphasis on loot and farming. However, it does suffer a little when compared with other, similar games that released during its long development cycle.

Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders uses videogame language to be discovered and to surprise. It is an enveloping and engaging video game, which offers a pleasant and exciting play structure, with a generous number of activities. There are some inaccuracies, but it is an RPG with survival dynamics with excellent characteristics. Absolutely must have.

Empty Shell is a twin stick shooter with a horror-themed top down view, similar in gameplay to Hotline Miami but with a less frantic pace and a completely different look, here entirely in grayscale with various filters to simulate the nowadays ancient CRT monitors. The variety of weapons and enemies is quite good, and when life points begin to run low there is a definite anxiety in opening the next door without knowing what we will be fighting. The gameplay is simple and the story takes up the classic experiment where everything went wrong, yet the dark, claustrophobic atmosphere will manage to catch even the most demanding players.

One Last Breath is a puzzle platformer with a very good narrative idea and a satisfying realization. Unfortunately the puzzles are very banal and some maps are made with very little care.

Terra Memoria confirms itself to be neither more nor less than what the trailers and images suggest: a truly cozy Western JRPG. It's an RPG with a modern feel that is an ode to the great classics of the past and, at the same time, to the importance of the journey even before the destination, a cute and cuddly indie work just like its furry protagonists.

What if during the jump from mobile to PC you lose some attractiveness and do not try to remedy it in any way? Slice & Dice's formula, perfect on smartphones, is a bit poor on the desktop, and there is nothing to do but decide which dice to roll and which enemy to attack, hoping for an interesting drop or the arrival of a stronger character. The strategic component would be interesting, thanks to gameplay that allows us to know the moves of monsters in advance, but it is all too simple and too tied to luck. The multiple options and situations make it a good game, but not the expected masterpiece.

One could easily define Lotus Lantern: Rescue Mother as a reskin of Hades set in Chinese mythology, and trash it upon seeing that it does not touch the qualitative heights reached by Supergiant Games' work. The gameplay, however, is captivating, and the roguelite structure coupled with a good handling of the difficulty curve entices you to jump into another run to field test the newly achieved perks and the new character build. Each enemy has its own movement and attack pattern to learn, and the bosses are challenging enough. It doesn't innovate the genre, but it gets the job done.

At face value, Nordic Ashes offers a lot of content, which makes it feel even more weird when you realize that build variety is one of its issues, due to how character progression works during a run. Overall, it’s not a bad enemy hell kind of game, but it doesn’t make top of the class.

The Forgotten Kingdom is the classic excellent DLC for Remnant II: a budget price for an important amount of content. in the future, however, something more will be needed to keep the game alive for a long time.

It's really not easy to recommend a roguelite with classic gameplay at this precise moment in history, yet Shadow of the Depth manages to entertain and offer a good level of challenge, so why shouldn't we consider it? The various classes offer distinct gameplay, and the ability to equip a warrior with a mage's items and successfully field test them opens the door to different builds to explore. Skill trees are lacking, and perks are not as crucial, but the growth of heroes run after run is evident and invites one to throw in the classic "last try." Nothing new, but all well implemented.

A highly atmospheric text adventure, with well-characterized characters despite some clichés and a plot that we can shape, one choice at a time. Cooper's development doesn't involve much furthermore, between rhythm and gameplay, there are several ups and downs which, together with the bugs, don't allow the game to shine like the neon lights of Terrahive.

This new revival, in addition to engaging and exciting, details the talent of Tekla and Jonathan Blow. It is a new look that, in addition to involving and impressing, embellishes the journey, making it pleasant and much higher than it appears. The work is absolutely valuable, so much so that the vote below, exactly in line with the value of the work and the past, remains unchanged or almost unchanged.

You will never look at ants the same way! The small team at Slug Disco has not revolutionised the RTS genre, but they offer us a unique perspective on it, where the quality of world-building plays a huge role in how fascinating this game is. It almost make me forget there is no multiplayer.

Fields of Glory: Kingdoms is the Sword in the Rock of strategists, the Hammer of Thor of 4X games. To use it properly you have to be worthy, you have to be the Chosen Ones. How much time are you willing to invest in learning the gameplay mechanics? If the answer is “as much as it takes,” you have on your hands the most complex and comprehensive grand strategy game around, capable of engaging you for months, if not years, thanks to a painstaking simulation of all aspects of running a kingdom, from politics to religion, from lineage to warfare. If you do not feel like devoting your full attention to the game, it’s not your cup of tea.

Nuke Them All is a variation on the usual RTSs that focuses all on action and confrontations with opposing troops, sometimes interrupted by zombie apocalypses or alien invasions. Base building and resource management are barely sketched out, and complicated scientific research trees are not even present. All we have to do is capture the flags on the battlefield as quickly as possible and then launch the final attack on the enemy. The maps are large with multiple biomes, although elevations and depressions in the terrain do not seem to offer any particular advantages or disadvantages. If you are looking for a casual approach RTS with furious shootouts, this is your game.

Shift 87 is a walking simulator that hybridizes within it an unsuccessful loop mechanic regarding the reporting of any anomalies. The basic idea is interesting, but it's a shame that continuing through the maps is extremely difficult, also due to the various bugs.

While the effort that went into creating Mars 2120 can certainly be praised, this is not the kind of game that you would easily recommend to friends. It’s never bad or outright awful, mind you, and playing it is a fairly easy-going experience. But at the same time, low enemy variety, poor bosses, generic story and uneven optimization means that this game will stay very far from the top of the charts.