If Say No! More is a rallying call for anxiety-wrecked individuals who don’t know how to say no, it’s an amusing one, even if it’s not always memorable. It serves its purpose best as a comical and occasional reminder that we all have the courage and tenacity to tell someone we won’t always be at their beck and call. Turn to your nearest two-year-old for more advice on this front.

Below has simple but satisfying combat, is easy on the eyes and ears, and the crafting system is fun once you get to grips with it. The trouble is, unlike other recent roguelike games, it doesn’t value fun above frustration and actively punishes you for slip-ups. Despite this, it’s a compelling experience, just not necessarily a fun one.

The Council is a fantastic example of what adventure games are capable of, with tons of content, choices, and characters you won’t soon forget. If you’re looking for something to fill the void that Telltale Games’ departure from the industry is leaving behind, The Council is a worthy contender – so long as you’re ready to deal with everything that comes with it.

Star Renegades is a decent effort from Massive Damage Inc overall. Presenting a highly layered combat system with an interesting premise, there’s a good strategy RPG game at the core, but it struggles to ever thrill you. Though there is considerable overlap between playthroughs, it offers a good degree of replayability thanks to the roguelite mechanics. If you’ve been looking for a different kind of strategy game, this might be the one to fill that niche.

All in all, while the lack of online play is annoying, if you’ve got the players, this is a retro blast.

Weedcraft Inc explores the depths of sensitive subject matter whilst providing a dynamic experience filled with choice and consequence. I loved watching my operation expand from just a few plants in my family home to an unstoppable region-spanning drug empire. Growing can prove tedious due to its trial and error nature and I did experience a handful of crashes whilst playing, but these flaws remain trivial at best.

Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes has a tone flooded with immaturity and unoriginality, which is a shame because underneath it all is a solid combat system screaming to be recognised.

What you’re left with is a decent game, and that’s disappointing because it could have been more. For some reason, Paradox played it safe and didn’t build on its own and the game’s strengths. If you want a different take on the genre, it’s worth picking up on sale, but there are better and more interesting examples to spend your time and money on.

I like Into the Pit a fair bit. The graphical style is nice, the combat is incredibly fluid, and the mechanics there are easy to understand, but also have a noticeable effect when spawning new dungeons. However, I also found it to be a little bit too easy for the most part. The game requires a lot of runs in order to rescue more villagers and max out your character, and it doesn’t do quite enough to keep you drawn in versus other similar games.

The denouement is especially drab, and after six to eight of hours fairly linear exploration, you’ll have seen nearly everything on offer. There’s definitely fertile ground here for further developments, but currently, it’s strangled by a lack of scope and ambition.

Last Stop isn’t perfect. Its limited and tepid interactivity makes it better suited as a TV show, but I can’t deny that the story is entertaining and absorbing enough where, in the grand scheme of things, its shortcomings didn’t matter much. It took me back to the days of charming British sci-fi tv shows like Blake 7, Doctor Who and Torchwood, where these shows shared a love of telling character-driven stories on a backdrop of big themes despite budget constraints. With its intimate cast of characters, eccentric English charm and cosy story-telling, Last Stop replicates these shows’ charisma, creating an enjoyable sci-fi tale that’s gripping and one you’ll want to see through to the end.

Windscape invites you to wander and feel like a part of its mysterious little world. Some NPC models look a tad nightmarish and there’s a significant weight to movement, but with generous, location-based healing/save points, and a focus on enjoying the surroundings rather than demanding combat or frustrating enemy encounters, Windscape is a friendly, pleasant experience that is more meditative and nostalgic than anything else. And it’s all the better for it.

It’s another Early Access game, but one that already feels like a full release. There are loads of things to unlock, the natural replayability that comes with being a roguelike, and the “one more go” that comes from a card game. It’s just really good, and I can’t wait to see what else the game has in store for me.

Peaky Blinders: Mastermind is a solid, if perhaps unexciting puzzle game with enough fan service for those looking to spend more time with the stylized criminals of old London to keep them on the hook.

While I definitely enjoyed my time with Biomutant, I’m left feeling a little deflated coming out the other end of it. The world of Biomutant was a joy to traverse, and there was an almost Breath of the Wild quality, the same drive to see what was over the hill in front of me, or what was around the corner. However, given that combat plays such a huge part of the game, the rather middling nature of it makes fights feel like inconveniences, rather than something to enjoy.

The game is fun and tells a somewhat engaging story. The shooting mechanics, which rely on aiming with the right thumbstick and firing with the right trigger, don’t quite feel right. They are a little too loose which sometimes makes it hard to aim accurately. I think the game as a whole could have benefitted from some sort of auto-targeting mechanic. However, the driving mechanics feel great. The funnest moments happen when you’re in a car. Steering is arcadey in the best way, and using that emergency brake has never felt more satisfying in a game like this.

Despite its apparent unoriginality, Close to the Sun is actually striking and fresh. Don’t let its clear BioShock influences fool you into thinking it’s derivative. It may not be the most consistent experience, but it’s certainly a memorable one. If you’re a fan of strong world-building, spooky atmospheres, and engaging mysteries, it’s worth looking past some of Close to the Sun’s glaring issues.

Its outlandish narrative packed plenty of thrills and we loved learning more about the mysteries surrounding the quaint Germanic town and its residents. The use of photogrammetry also delivered its own distinctive look and we found the controls to be a treat whether using a controller or mouse and keyboard. You should note that it is over in a flash, though, and suffers from a lack of an inventory system. That being said, we would still urge you to check this one out if you’re a fan of point-and-clicks and sci-fi flicks.

At its heart, Beautiful Desolation is also a thinly disguised series of fetch quests, where you’ll be asked to run errands in exchange for favours, usually by picking this piece of tech from far flung corners of the world. Invisible walls, too, add another layer of frustration to this janky experience. I am, however, willing to be hoodwinked into performing these busywork, if it means I can witness more of its broken, picturesque universe.

The Stillness of the Wind is tough to recommend. While struggling to survive on the farm does effectively portray Talma’s circumstances, it doesn’t make for a fun experience. And the story of its world, while unique in concept, is too obtuse and disengaging in how it’s told. While there’s artistic merit in what’s been accomplished here, you should probably stick to a more traditional farming sim.

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.

The biggest issue is just the lack of overall assistance. Sands of Salazaar opens the door, pushes you through, and says “have fun!” before running away and leaving you to figure everything out on your own. Gradually realizing how things work is part of the adventure, though when some of those things include basics such as how to use skills, it’s not quite so fun. These are all issues Han-Squirrel can resolve over time, though. Until then, Sands of Salazaar’s layers and intriguing character stories more than make up for the annoyances, especially for the asking price.

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.

It’s still an impressive accomplishment to have this game run in handheld mode; it’s just a shame that things are so marred by the performance and visual blur. If you’re looking for a new RPG to sink your teeth into, then The Outer Worlds may well be what you’re after, but maybe wait for a few more patches first.

Stronghold: Warlords is an odd game. On the one hand, it’s a wonderful setting, and it has some of the most satisfying castle building I’ve found in a game. It’s a genuine joy to plan everything out, and it makes the fact that the actual strategy side of the game feels a bit outdated sting a bit more. It’s not bad, not at all, but it feels like a game that’s stuck in the past a little bit.

Rustler isn’t shy about its homage to the classic Grand Theft Auto games, as it puts on its persona as a goofy, medieval Grand Theft Auto imitator with unabashed glee.

Shovel Knight Showdown is exactly what it should be: a fun, fast-paced take on the Smash Bros. version of a fighting game, but with all of the Shovel Knight you could ever want stuffed into it. The fact that it balances itself so perfectly between new players and those who have spent more time on it makes it excellent as a party game too. Expect to lose many hours (and lives) to this shovel-tastic fighting game. Yes, writing shovel-tastic hurt, but it’s just that good.

I like Cardaclysm, but I don’t love it. It has you roaming around a world and fighting what are effectively turn-based Pokemon battles. You get new cards as you win these battles, and you can make cards stronger by combining any duplicates you get. It’s a cool system, and having a very hard limit on what you can use in any given battle keeps things fun as you pick up more options. However, combat just feels a bit dull sometimes. There’s definitely an element of misfortune here in that it’s in one of the strongest Review Round-Ups I’ve done too. It’s fun, but it’s not fantastic.