Fight Crab certainly holds an appealing concept but, like many good ideas, gets let down by in the execution. Multiplayer is easily its strongest component and arming yourselves with a ludicrous weapon to floor opponents has a lot of fun. Unfortunately, the quest to become Supreme Crab gets bogged down in repetition, not made easier by janky controls. There’s an enjoyable game at FC’s core but ultimately, its best experienced in small doses.

It’s in the gameplay, though, that The King’s Bird proves to be flawed. This is a precision platformer where, ironically, you don’t have precise control. Instead, you must use momentum to dip and arc between platforms. What seems initially innovative ultimately frustrates, as you find yourself fighting the controls to build necessary speed. As gorgeous as it is to look at, a simple jump would’ve been preferable to experience this world.

Try as it might to nestle its way into the recesses of my mind, Etherborn may end up being a fleeting memory – a pleasant experience but one which will hang on the forefront of your mind, only to be quickly scuppered by something with a bit more of body.

In spite of all its flaws there’s something about Shakedown: Hawaii that’s quite addictive – probably the fact as players we love numbers increasing and Shakedown: Hawaii does it in a moreish way. Whether intentional or not, VBlank Entertainment Inc. has nabbed aspects from GTA and although it misses the mark, it’s still impressive how it’s condensed such an experience to fit within such a tiny world.

Moving through Summertime Madness, the art gallery comparison reminded me more and more of an art pop up in Manhattan called Color Factory. In Color Factory, guests move through spaces of bright, saturated, colorful designs of atmospheric spaces, playful ball pits and selfie-perfect sets with slogan-plastered objects ready for instagram. The more I walked through the colorful playspaces of Summertime Madness, the more fitting the connection seemed. Rather than thinking of some video games through a cinematic lens or painting frame, Summertime Madness is a reminder of real world spaces like Color Factory. While that isn’t too lofty an aspiration, maybe just walking through a world and feeling something is enough.

Devoid of music and the ups and downs of an engaging narrative arc, the happenings in Horror Tales: The Wine becomes stale quickly. Coupled with some arcane puzzles that can only be resolved by loading a previous save, Horror Tales: The Wine leaves a sour taste in the mouth after a few chapters.

Nick Bounty And The Dame With The Chewed Blue Shoe is a stereotypical comedy video game where it often references itself and other games or breaks the fourth wall with a wink to the camera so emphatic, it could make Borderlands blush – which may be just your thing.

In an attempt to elevate itself beyond just an action-based shooter, Green Phoenix has unfortunately become more humdrum than invigorating.

Dialogue is poor, cliched and uninteresting, so after an hour or so the only thing really pulling you through is the cool black and white, hand-drawn aesthetic, and the excellent soundtrack. The gameplay does a lot to make up for the shortcoming of the overall package, and it’s fun to jump into for quick sessions, but with each death and each mindless conversation with one-dimensional characters, it gets harder to find reasons to keep going.

A Day Without Me offers a very simplistic adventure-horror experience that has some interesting ideas. The game’s trailer definitely showed potential glimpses of dealing with a big demonic threat in your town. However, the final product falls short in capitalizing on its concept.

Board games are great because you can play through time and time again and experience something a little different each time. At least, that’s normally how it is. Arkham Horror: Mother’s Embrace is inspired by the Arkham Horror board game series, but it doesn’t match it in any real way. It’s a bit of a shame, but it’s all a bit too short and a bit too basic most of the time.

The story, while occasionally perplexing, is full of heady material to chew through. It’s the kind of narrative that would require an additional playthrough, totally possible thanks to its roughly 2-4 hour campaign with selectable chapters. The gunplay may be a tiring affair of shooting lemmings in body armor, and the other elements are both underwhelming and frustrating, but Foreclosed is a gorgeous game with a big-ass brain. It just hasn’t quite figured out how to apply that yet.

Strangeland stands as an argument that players should know as little as possible in a horror adventure game to cultivate tension, yet it still manages to circumvent its own potential by trying to do too much.

It’s hard not to come away from The Otterman Empire feeling disappointed. It’s got a cute aesthetic, and the mere concept of space otters should sound appealing. Ultimately, however, Tri-Heart’s latest title gets let down by flawed gameplay. Whether its an experience redeemed with friends is hard to say, though missions provide some degree of fun. Parents looking for a new game will find some joy here, but for anyone else, Otterman is best avoided.

There are a few great ideas in this game to take Darkest Dungeon’s format and improve upon it but instead, Mistover flounders in its wake, trying desperately to grasp at a market which will find it lacklustre.

Ultimately, I cannot recommend Freakpocalypse to anyone who isn’t an established Cyanide & Happiness fan. This isn’t the sort of point-and-click adventure that bridges gameplay issues with an engaging story, since it relies on crude humour to see it through. If you enjoy C&H, this will be right up your street, but it does nothing to court players that aren’t part of the existing fanbase. I wouldn’t call this a bad game; it’s just a very average one, and there are much better alternatives out there for point-and-click fans.

Ultimately. I can’t say I expected much from AAA Clock. It ticks off the necessary features, bringing a functional clock to the Switch with some nice cosmetic touches, but after a tedious run of the Retro Game, I’m ready to clock out.

Overall, Astria Ascending feels like a missed opportunity. Despite these issues, the game does right by its art direction and world-building, but the fundamental gameplay drags the whole experience down towards mundanity. Having to wait for the seven enemies in front of you to status lock you to death isn’t challenging and engaging combat; it’s tedious. Jumping through dungeons hoping to find a doorway that leads to the next area isn’t interesting trial-and-error exploration; it’s dreadful. In the JRPG marketplace that’s filled with all sorts of storytelling quirks and eccentricities, tedium is simply no longer acceptable.

These puzzles are challenging but invigorating. The short of it is this: you’ll need to push specific objects around, which will cast a shadow on the wall for her shadowy figure to traverse through. That said, everything else about the game is not as memorable—from its overwrought music to its clunky visuals. In My Shadow veers between sheer monotony and needless melodrama. Which makes it difficult to stomach.

Most of Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Earthblood feels like a game entering early access, and every element would benefit from more time and more polish. Too shallow for World of Darkness fans, too simple for ARPG aficionados, and too much tedious exploration filler for button mashers, it’s hard to recommend this one, especially for the asking price.

In spite of its fun premise, there’s an overall aspect of the game being underbaked which is hard to get away from.

If Deadtime Defenders adapts itself while focusing on that looter shooter goal then it’s something I’ll eagerly return to – for now, it’s simply an okay game which does nothing new.

198X is aesthetically pleasing. Its bright, accomplished pixel-art and synth-fueled music capture its desired tone perfectly. But if that’s all that 198X is, I’m not sure it’s worth anyone’s time. Even if you are interested in a pretty but empty 80s nostalgia drip, I’d suggest looking elsewhere; there are plenty of options.

I love bad games. But The Good Life doesn’t fall into this category of bad-fun, it’s simply too much of a mess. Did anyone say no to anything in the course of refining the core concept of this game? Probably not. Is it even fun? I still don’t know because even after 8 to 10 hours, I feel stuck between a begrudging sense of sunk-cost fallacy and possible Stockholm syndrome as someone who also once faced ruinous debt and an unwanted move. Honestly, there’s no such thing as a good life unless you have paws, eat garbage and can pee freely in public, but you don’t need to play this game to know that.

The mannequin-like orgies, hefty focus on vaginal doors, and character designs that look like questionable 50 Shades cosplayers, however, can’t cover up the fact that what the game is really about (or should have been) is finding all the intriguingly bizarre dildos spread throughout the game’s wonky world.

While turning off frustrating features is a blunter solution than seeing them integrated into a better-balanced game, As Far As The Eye has a grounding in something really beautiful. I look forward to the opportunity to experience the game I saw parts of underneath its less well-implemented elements. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the one I got to review.

Accompanying the hideous inventory and tedious combat systems is the unforgiveable control scheme, which can’t be remapped at all. Overall, it feels like each of these are intentional choices to help solidify the ‘90s horror vibe it goes for, but just because something is purposely bad doesn’t actually make it good. Game design has progressed a lot in two decades, and Daymare is at odds with what it wants to achieve.

As distasteful as the title is, it doesn’t seem particularly triggering for most people. The game’s comical tone and frivolous approach stave off any potential triggers its gruesome title might suggest. When you approach the game as a virtual escape room, wherein every time your character dies, you get one step closer to the real world, the whole affair becomes more palatable. But without a potent narrative and puzzles that increase in complexity, Suicide Guy ultimately doesn’t offer anything new to the genre.

Old Gods Rising is unsettling. It does a wonderful job of making you uneasy, constantly convincing you you’re being watched by someone or something, which the story is happy to suggest. If you want a game with a story which has multiple twists, an ambiguous ending, a nice sense of creepiness (without playing a horror game) and a fun, small insight into ancient civilisations and the gods they worshipped, Old Gods Rising maybe for you. Although, I’d wait for it to be a bit more stable if I were you.

Overall, I’d rather wait and play the PlayStation 4 version. I’d mention the PlayStation 5 but trying to get one is like finding a needle in a haystack. Either the game isn’t optimised well, or my laptop isn’t compatible with it. If you’ve got an option to play this on something that isn’t a PC, I definitely recommend you check it out elsewhere.

The game doesn’t really have any unique ideas or ways to build upon this genre. That would be fine if the ones they did have were executed well, but this sadly isn’t the case. The monotony pervades every aspect of this game. And that’s a shame. You can see certain parts of the game trying to make an impression, but they inevitably falter. However, was there any real hope for an engaging experience if everything was executed well?

I’ll admit that I found Overland difficult and that it was designed to be like that, but more than that I felt it was limiting. There were some nice touches – every time you kill a monster, you attract more, which makes strategy more important than hacking and slashing – but without a sense of purpose or defiance when I overcame my challenges, it was hard to keep going back to it.

Against the Moon should be exactly what I’m looking for in a game. It’s got some deckbuilding, some tactical combat, and a cool setting. It is, on paper at least, an interesting game with some really cool mechanics. Unfortunately, none of it fits together as well as it could, and it feels incredibly short. This style of game is at its best when you can keep going back to it time and time again, and that’s not the case here. Some of the battles feel terribly balanced, and the whole thing just feels a bit off. It’s still getting regular updates though, so I’m quietly hopeful for the game it could become despite this being the full release.

The plot is meant to feel uplifting as hope is, literally, restored and trauma overcome. But it all feels too downbeat and too open to interpretation to make sense. What for some might be an intriguing journey of discovery was for me a baffling, meaningless grind.

Element Space has the potential to offer a genuinely fun experience in the sci-fi genre, which is something that is wonderful to see, but not all that common. The issues presented by its poor performance and the less-than-stellar implementation of many of the mechanics result in something that is often far more frustrating than fun. It’s a huge shame because the world and the characters really did pull me in, but the bugs and crashes kept booting me back out again. Hopefully, the studio can keep these kinds of complaints in mind when developing a potential sequel. If they can improve the quality of life as well as iron out the technical issues, it’s sure to be a far more enticing game.

The stronger elements such as combat, art direction, and sound design are held back by the technical issues, odd design decisions and weak narrative, taking itself far too seriously when – if simplified – this could be a truly fun turn-based combat game.

Inertial Drift follows in the footsteps of Joy-con drift, meaning it has its issues. The game has great visuals, music and the drifting mechanic is a game-changer but it’s barebones gameplay apart from that makes this a game you’ll get bored of just as quickly as you learn to love. With some more refining, the ability to play against more racers and better and more varied game modes, this game could really be improved. I really wanted to like this game but for now, I’ll be keeping my eye out for an Inertial Drift 2.

Its one massive redeeming feature is its soundtrack, an orchestral theme that elevates the whole experience and almost saves the whole thing. It’s worth checking out for its sound work alone, but perhaps not at full price.

It’s just a shame that the execution of everything here leaves a lot to be desired. The performance of the game is significantly less than ideal, with there being far too many loading screens that go on for far too long. There’s also the occasional visual glitch and broken frame rate to help you feel like your TV might be broken. It’s a collection of cool concepts, but it’s not anywhere near as polished as it could be.

It’s a shame that the combat is so messy, and that bugs and poor mission balance and visual communication obfuscate your ability to interact with a core mechanic that feels fairly novel. The inspired visuals of drones crashing around like droplets of water in a roiling ocean are at least fun for a while, but there’s little here to hold your interest in the long term.

For better or worse, it’s almost identical to its five-year-old predecessor. If you enjoyed that, great – this is more of the same. Otherwise, there’s not a lot to draw you in here.

I’m a big fan of “walking simulators,” but The Magnificent Trufflepigs hems in its exploration and storytelling so severely that I never felt like I was walking much at all. This is more a “get interrupted constantly” simulator: not a vein I’m particularly eager for developers to mine.

The hitboxes are atrocious, the game is janky, laggy, and messy, and it’s all just way too derivative to be enjoyable. I really wanted to like Hellpoint, as I want to like all games, but especially soulslikes, but it’s just not going to happen.

If you have missed flinging innocent people across shaky bridges for dubious reasons, this addition to the Bridge Constructor series is well worth the entry price with a lot of fun puzzles to be completed. However it doesn’t feel as good as its predecessors, and if you are yet to play those, perhaps try Bridge Constructor Portal first to see how you get on. If you are a Walking Dead enthusiast, this probably isn’t for you, despite the guise it hides under. It really makes you feel like Spider-Man if Spider-Man were a slowly decaying husk of Norman Reedus with a crossbow.

I suspect Of Bird and Cage works best as an album first, and maybe a speed runner video as a distant second. Perhaps by the end Gritta escapes her prison and finds the support she needs to reclaim the light of her life in one of the possible endings, but given the oppressively deep hole she starts in, I’m not convinced that the game believes she deserves it. Though she most certainly does.

Outsider: After Life shows in its opening section that it knows what it’s doing. The process of repairing HUD-ini is finely tuned, and sets up intrigue for what comes next. It’s a shame that it only gives way to increasingly repetitive, sometimes painful gameplay, and mismatched pieces of story that don’t quite fit into the full picture.

Narcos: Rise of the Cartels is not a broken game, nor is it ugly or offensive. But it is joyless. It feels cold, like a corporate cash grab, and suffers from a fundamental misunderstanding of its target audience. There are interesting elements and attractive qualities, but the game overall fails to deliver much of anything to anyone in particular.

Promesa attempts to convey a moving, intergenerational tale through its spaces, as it shuttles the player to various locales, interspersing these journeys with quotes shared by a grandfather to his grandchild. You don’t really need to do much; you just walk until you can’t anymore, and then you’ll be transported to the next place. But these spaces are also mostly devoid of meaningful context; I wasn’t even aware I was reading a familial conversation until I read the synopsis on a website. Then there are the purportedly haunting and surreal spaces, which are as sparse and lifeless as the memories you’re supposedly traversing through, having been mostly constructed with far too little subtleties to pique my curiosity. Compounded by the absolutely glacial speed I was travelling at, and I found myself making an early exit.

A self-titled RPG roguelike, Sin Slayers takes a JRPG battle system and procedurally generated levels, mixes them together with a Darkest Dungeon-esque layer of grime and calls it a day. What results is a game lacking in fun and direction, but definitely full of sins.

Voxel Battle Simulator wants you to pit tiny little voxel pixel armies against one another in an all-out competitive battle. You are given an amount of money to defend your base with, from the most basic of infantry that battle on foot, to artileries that can fling munitions across a vast distance. Once you’ve deployed them, you can watch them clash with the opposing team, both armies yelling with all the excitement and confusion of overly energetic puppies as they do so, and unlock more defenses with the spoils of war. However, while the game functions on a fundamental level, it’s barely compelling or innovative enough to keep me playing.

Despite Sheltered 2’s attempts to pander to this crowd, it largely fails to bring any new ideas to the table. Its mindless interactivity with its post-apocalyptic world, combined with an obtuse crafting system, has resulted in a game that is more annoying than tantalising.

The concept seemed safe enough, but by making the lore so vague, the dialogue and RPG elements so weak, and the combat too clumsy, Paranoia hasn’t lived up to expectations. With a name so blunt you’d be expecting to feel chills, to be looking over your shoulder, to thrive for triumph over an oppressive system that you fundamentally disagree with. Paranoia does none of this, and instead offers up a diluted, animated version of their table-top success. There’s a joke in there somewhere regarding board games/bored games, but so powerful is the ennui I’ll let you figure that one out for yourselves.

Altogether, this makes Dungeons of Naheulbeuk a real mixed bag. Its slick and well-observed aesthetic is undercut by rote humour and tired cliche, and its combat has great potential smothered by layers of random chance and obfuscation, with the great swell of combatants meaning that you can sit helplessly as a cavalcade of attacks all target and take down a character before you have a chance to act. There’s definitely something here to enjoy if you’re a diehard tactics fan with a keen eye for optimum strategy and luck mitigation, but it feels like a lot of effort for little reward.

The story itself is told through comic book panels that do inject a bit of colour and personality into the game, but it’s not enough. This is soulless, empty and unpolished – a total whiteout. In old Norse ‘fimbul’ translates as mighty or great. But this particular Fimbul is anything but.

There are aspects of Brotherhood United which are promising, but at this point, it’s an experience which feels unpolished. I had the game crash on me as well as several sections where the background music just wasn’t there. Overall, it just feels like a game I could have stumbled upon on Miniclip back in 2003, and it wouldn’t have felt out of place, nor would it have stuck in my mind.

There is a reasonable game lurking somewhere inside Radio Viscera. The early knockings were enough to show me that there is a lot of fun to be had with this concept. However, the attempts at including variety often miss the mark, and a string of technical problems exacerbate the game’s shortcomings. It is certainly a novel attempt to subvert the genre, but, ultimately, it falls incredibly short. Instead, it makes me yearn for a more traditional twin-stick shooter, even if that would offer no surprises.

These criticisms may be a personal taste thing (tough, I’m the reviewer), but genuinely, if you’re looking for a small puzzle-box game like The Room or GNOG, this might tick a few boxes. It will satisfy in much the same way as a Rubik’s cube or a wooden puzzle does but somehow manages to be a bit more obnoxious. Younger players especially may see the value in this, and it certainly has a place, just don’t expect to find yourself moved and bereft afterwards – you’ll probably just want to make a cup of tea and get on with your day.

Ultimately The Protagonist: EX-1 is another addition to the turn-based strategy game that requires no strategy, with a squad that provides no interest. I cannot begin to care enough about this game to continue playing it, and cannot find a reason to recommend it.

I can think of no better descriptor for the game than candy floss. There is no substance, no depth, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t taste good or isn’t pretty to look at. However, I can’t help but feel like this game would be too hard and frustrating for most young children. Conversely, it doesn’t have much of anything to appeal to anyone over the age of six. In the end, I can’t really recommend the game, and the fact that it depicts the genocide of an entire race with the gleeful candour of the Androids from Dragon Ball Z really doesn’t help.

Like many other life simulators, Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town will probably benefit from sunk cost fallacy (if you make it past the first 20 hours, why not another 20?), but if you want a farm sim to wholeheartedly commit to, seek your pleasure elsewhere.

Parallels will be made between AnShi and Journey, which is a bit unfair. For a start, AnShi is the brainchild of a single developer. Second, the protagonist of Journey never had a hoverboard, which for AnShi, is a literal game-changer. I would caution anyone looking to recapture their experience with Journey to consider AnShi on its own uniquely alien merit, or otherwise brace for disappointment. Ultimately, AnShi wowed me with its otherworldly vistas and sweeping soundtrack, but its meandering plot left me wanting more.

Vane simply doesn’t live up to those games it so achingly apes. It lacks the clearly defined objective and unique aesthetic of Journey; the emotional attachment of The Last Guardian; the intriguing ambiguity of Inside; the charm of Rime. Instead, Vane feels clunky and pretentious, any sense of wonderment outweighed by unnecessary frustration, sluggishness and a lack of clarity.

It wouldn’t be fair to Mechajammer not to acknowledge everything it tries to do and bring to the table, but in a world where I’m spoiled for choice when it comes to roleplaying games, mediocre just doesn’t cut it. In its current state, mediocre is the best that Mechajammer can hope to be. On paper, Mechajmmer has everything it needs to be a sleeper hit, but in reality, the only thing it’s hitting is the very bottom of my Steam library, where games I don’t finish go to be forgotten.

It’s easy to see what Ary is aiming for. The ambition is certainly there, but the execution is off. Way off. At best it’s a clunky mess. At worst it’s broken and near-unplayable. It’s clear Ary was in need of a few more seasons of development before release.

Away: Journey To The Unexpected is a game with charming moments, but they aren’t enough to save a dull experience. The highlights are the interactions with your family, but those are at the beginning, then the end of the game. Even the end boss is incredibly easy. It’s an interesting idea, but it feels like a massive letdown in a game that is full of them. The end boss of letdowns, I guess. The only thing I can say in favour of Away is that you should take its advice: stay away.

On the Switch, both docked and handheld play sees frequent dips in framerate and a noticeable number of low-resolution textures. Loading times are also an issue between stages and after deaths. At £34.99, it’s exorbitantly overpriced compared to other, better performing, platformers. I’ve barely managed to talk about every feature Ghost Parade offers yet fails to deliver on. Sadly, a host of ideas have been thrown into the pot, none of which have come out cooked.

On its surface, Moncage does so many things I like. Its narrative is conveyed through interaction, rather than through text or cutscenes. Its predominant mechanic is clever. It’s short. But it stands as an example of just how easily a game can be undone by only one or two critical shortcomings. There’s a world in which a few chewy brain teasers would be enough for me to overlook some one-dimensional characters–this is a puzzle game after all. One-dimensional puzzles, though, are harder to forgive.

I anticipated a touching, engrossing tale of a heartbreaking and folkloric haunt. What I got was a bog-standard, overly conservative horror game mired by mechanics more ancient than the game’s late 1800’s setting. Like the lifeless meatbags which stalk its murky hallways, Maid of Sker is best avoided.

With its numerous glitches and flaws, Broken Porcelain instead becomes a superfluity of horror game tropes; its cheap jump scares, laboured stealth encounters, and confusing plot now an unfortunate fixture of what used to be a promising survival horror series.

Rather than a full-bodied explosion, every gunshot is instead akin to the gentle patter of raindrops on concrete pavements–an almost maudlin description that’s probably the furthest thing RAZE 2070 wants to be known for. Much less can be said about its android enemies, which more closely resemble crash test dummies than the high tech cyborgs of sci-fi shooters. Then there is its introduction video–a snapshot into RAZE 2070’s intergalactic setting–which is made up of mostly stock footage of space from sites like Getty Images. Probably.

I came to Orangeblood almost determined to like it. It had everything, seemingly. Gorgeous 90’s inspired art design, the promise of a funky soundtrack, JRPG style but in a more modern setting… I was so ready to fall in love. It’s only two weeks into 2020 and I’m going back to being jaded and miserable and its this game’s fault.

Devil’s Hunt is a game with obvious flaws, many of which players might excuse for a chance to tear the head off a hulking demon lord or throw unholy lances through the grotesque, glowing body of an angel. There are many more who will watch the trailer on Steam or YouTube and decide the ‘80s metal album aesthetic and combo-happy combat are worth stomaching a story with an infuriating number of dropped threads and unanswered questions. But none of it is worth a writing team that seems to believe rape can be used and excused on the altar of motivating their male protagonist.

Decent production value and acting are all this has going for it. Even so, Bloodshore is one of many projects that don’t ever have to be interactive, and unfortunately, it won’t be the last of its kind.

Hypothetically there could be a lot of fun to be had here, but that’s not the case at the moment and I’d recommend waiting a while to see if things improve as Early Access continues for it. Diving in now is likely to lead to more frustration than actual game playing and that’s no good at all.

Eternity: The Last Unicorn’s one redeeming quality doesn’t do much redeeming, though. The game still has some major issues, first of which is simple—it’s not fun to play. Nostalgia is a feeling video games and entertainment have been profiting off increasingly within the last few years, which is great when the end products are well-executed. But instead of pulling inspiration from the Nintendo 64 era of gaming, Void Studios just made a game that belongs in it.

On the surface, Garbage is a homeless fighting simulator that carries parallels to Punch Club: train hard, win fights, and take showers–the only twist being that you’re a homeless man who now has to live next to the dumpster. But take a closer look beyond its hood, and you’ll find that Garbage is a game that is barely serviceable.

Sometimes you come across a game that is so bad it’s good, maybe a little entertaining, The Room style. This honestly wasn’t one of them. The lifeless Blendr models, the janky controls and ugly misplacement of bad gothic tropes render this the kind of game that should just quietly be forgotten. Maybe moving on swiftly will spare the creators any further embarrassment.