Before you saddle up to take on Bloodroots, you need to ask yourself one question. Do you like pain? The pain of being killed constantly while trying to time a perfect combo. The pain of having finally killed all the baddies, only to plummet to your doom because of a misplaced jump. The pain of being hit once and having to start that section of the level over again. Over and over.

Just like the sport of soaring, while everything is great when you’re up in the air, the fun comes to a screeching halt when you’re down on the ground. Cruising around on those rising currents of air is an incredible experience that truly captures the feeling of flight. You can sometimes keep your glider aloft for hours by weaving around the sky in just the right way. When you touch down, there’s no getting yourself back up into the air, though. Flight School Studio was on to something with all the gliding, but didn’t quite stick the landing.

It’s a neat, ambitious game that teases us with the silhouette of a rich, engaging mythology and the role of digital exorcisms in this particular world. Its stellar voice cast carries much of the game’s narrative momentum on their shoulders, especially Alex Grossman and Miguel Doucet, who play Brother Gideon. But even with all its ambition and aesthetics, Lucifer’s gameplay and narrative could have been refined into a leaner, meaner experience befitting its daemonic themes.

Valfaris will likely drive gamers to distraction and frustration with its series of brutal and difficult bosses and villains, crazy chase sequences, and general sadist design. Yet, the game’s pristine devotion to emulating a classic 16-bit side-scrolling shooter has a distinct charm. The weapons and enemies are diverse and fun, the world is twisted, and the sheer over-the-top action and storyline prove entertaining enough to work through the pain and still end up having fun. Mostly. When the game isn’t making you want to twist your controller in half.

Despite its faults, Swimsanity can still be great fun. Ultimately, this might come down to the power of friends, as cheesy as that sounds. While the progression is none existent, and the gameplay is occasionally frustrating, it knows just what makes these styles of games tick. Its visuals and music are a little lacking, but that ineffable, undefinable “fun factor” still exists. Swimsanity is a rather simple experience, but it manages to offer just enough content to stop it from being dead in the water.

As a story, My Beautiful Paper Smile is an 8, maybe even a 9 out of 10, especially if you’re patient enough to put up with a tale which is mostly revealed and cliffhangers disguised as a moving plot. But there are long stretches where the story takes a back seat for you to wander, and while the aesthetic is good, the game isn’t open-world and looking the part isn’t enough to carry it. My Beautiful Paper Smile is an ideal Let’s Play game, in that it’s probably much more fun watching someone else play than it is to do it yourself. One for the horror enthusiasts, but I don’t see it reaching across the aisles.

It’s charming and occasionally clever, but as a whole it all just feels kind of familiar.

An unpredictable experience which keeps you guessing as it plays around with the simulator genre it’s found itself wedged in.

As you progress through the levels, however, the game throws more and more obstacles your way – particularly barriers, which are difficult to telegraph and avoid, adding an unnecessary difficulty. Rather than keep the rhythm going, it frequently halts it, hindering the experience. Combined with Switch controls that make it hard to line up your ship properly, Aaero fails to impress.

The Occupation is one of the most elaborately designed games I’ve played in years, delivering heaps of atmosphere and enthralling puzzle-solving and exploration. The ambition here is palpable. Unfortunately, there are just too many moving parts at work, and they seemingly got the better of the small but clearly passionate team at White Paper Games. In time, I’d like to believe, The Occupation will be amazing. But I can’t, in good faith, recommend it in its current state.

Sheltered is a game with some good ideas. The customisation options are fantastic, and the gameplay loop itself is enjoyable. It’s a shame it’s tarnished by horrible RNG and a general feeling of pointlessness. If you really want to struggle against the world there are better games out there that do the same thing, but better.

While there is some good gameplay to be found in Foregone, you’ll spend a lot of your playtime with it wishing you were playing some of the inspirations it appears to be pulling from. That’s a real shame, because there are some highlights in Foregones playtime, but they don’t stand out enough for me to properly recommend it to anybody.

In the end, Chernobylite felt a lot like scavenging for supplies in the Zone. There are certainly interesting things to unearth, but the laborious process of revealing them was barely worth the hassle. If Chernobylite is a loop, it is one that brings increasingly diminished returns with each completed cycle.

A decent little game, tightly designed with some laughs along the way, as well as offering really good audio and visual design. However, it does fall down under more prolonged scrutiny, with undercooked world-building and a tendency to push you towards grinding out money by means of repetition meaning that some may lose interest before reaching the finale.

Fans of the graphic novels may very well be able to stomach the flaws in Blacksad: Under The Skin, but I worry curious newcomers will find the experiential cost of entry too much to stomach.

Though the game posits itself as adorable and relaxing, a depressing vision of humanity arises through its narrative (or lack thereof), one in which the aspects of humanity represented are colonisation, environmental destruction, war, and work. The game tells us one thing but shows us another. A story woven into the chapters or levels of the game that develops these ideas might help address this contradiction. Until then, this game is merely a settler simulation with solid mechanics―a well-oiled machine that’s lacking in heart.

In a world drenched in ash after a volcanic cataclysm, the Squad’s long and treacherous journey may have dashed most of their hopes for survival, let alone of achieving their goal of finding a new home. Ashwalkers led me to identify with the arduousness of its quest–a sadly drab journey overly invested in its destination, with more interesting moments spread out like notable landmarks. This sparsity left me wanting for more to grapple with here and now, rather than the promise of unlocking it later. The latter, it seems, feels like a gambit that doesn’t pay off.

If you’re already a fan of the series then you’ll probably enjoy this, but you’ll also find yourself uncomfortably comfortable with it all, because with Orcs Must Die! 3, not much has really changed.

This game wants to be very charming, and it sometimes comes very close. The art is rich and beautiful, and the interfaces look great. But every other aspect of the game feels one step away from being memorable. Menus are confusing and difficult to use. Locations are overly greebled with landmarks and winding paths, making it difficult to get around with ease or speed—and the map is obtuse, instead of helpful, at a glance.

While Skellboy is pretty rough ‘n’ ready, it’s still generally playable, and its charm manages to shine through. The writing is playful and doesn’t take itself seriously at all, giving the experience a shot of personality. For a monster of a game formed from a mass of ill-fitting parts, they at least didn’t forget the heart.

It’s well priced and a thrill ride from start to finish, including fully working apps and different live-action endings to uncover. Although a little predictable in places, and maybe a tad preachy, it gets the job done and will probably make you flush your phone away.

Mad Devils has good ideas, but it feels like a botched mission, as if the original order got lost in transmission on the way. The action is good when it works, but the contrasting tone and narrative bog down the broader experience. Still, conflicting story and visual design aside, if Mad Devils’ frenetic twin-stick shooting and setting are too good to pass up, make sure to take a friend. It’s dangerous in hell.

So, in the end, it’s easy to say if Blasphemous will appeal. Players who love intentionally difficult games will find a lot of value and horror fans who can muscle through will love the game’s visual and thematic design. Unfortunately, the game takes its masochistic themes of martyrdom too seriously, making the player feel like they’ve stepped into the retro gaming equivalent of a back alley S&M club they mistakenly took for an 80s video arcade.

Where other games insist on non-stop explosions and chase scenes, The Longest Road on Earth calibrates each moment to be poignant and profound, and although the results are quieter and artsier, they also aren’t much less exhausting. And yet, emotional exhaustion seems as viable of a takeaway as any. After all, the small things we use to get through our days, to cope with the perpetual thrum of unexcitement in lives lived conservatively, do eventually fade into routine. We grow tired of the phone game we bought or that playlist we made and we find ourselves ready for the next thing, which tends to be similarly fleeting. By the time the credits roll for The Longest Road on Earth, I was more than ready to move on, but maybe that doesn’t have to be a criticism because it speaks to its own sort of emotional truth.

Creating a game about making a home on foreign land was never going to be easy, and JETT had boldly sought to subvert the themes of colonialism that are so inherent to tales like these. But upon putting down the controller, I mostly felt let down by how little it had to say on the subject. While it touches on other topics, such as the terrifyingly big expanse of space, versus our miniscule existence in the greater scheme of things, these weren’t enough to make up for its flaws. In the end, I just wish JETT had the confidence to pursue what I know it wants to be: to subvert expectations on the well-trodden ground of survival stories.

Building off of the XCOM style of strategy, you get to decide how you move and act or react as you’re fighting it out. While the strategy can be fun, it’s all a bit sluggish, and that can make each fight feel as though it takes an eternity. On top of that, it’s visually just a bit early 2000s, with the colour brown seemingly being the inspiration for everything. It’s not a bad game, but it’s not a good one really either.

Liberated is a peculiar game. While it explores some interesting concepts around surveillance, people’s privacy and how societies react to terrorism, I’m not sure any of its ideas are helped by being a video game. If anything, it has an adverse effect, actively drawing away from the team’s artistic skills and world-building.

There’s no way to continue the relationships you’ve established, or even simply resume a passenger’s storyline, which can sometimes be quite lengthy. It seems like a baffling way to structure a game about talking to people, getting involved in their lives, and developing your character along the way. It’s especially disappointing because the writing is sharp and versatile – capable of being tense, dark, funny, or absurd – and the well-rounded cast of characters are a joy to uncover. Because of this and the poorly fleshed out investigative mechanics, Night Call feels like a mere shadow of its potential.