Its world, art-style, exploration, and hack-n-slash combat are super fun, but these feel hampered by Tribes of Midgard’s key conceit as a tough tower defence game. Increasingly long nights mean you get little and less time to explore, and this is exacerbated by growing demands on resources. Instead, Tribes of Midgard would have made a better open-world game—its procedurally-generated Norse realm is so explorable. I would gladly play Tribes of Midgard more if I wasn’t bound to the settlement as much, and I hope that’s a mode that could be explored in the future.

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.

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.

In the last few years it’s become a running gag within indie circles that Metroidvania and soulslike games are the go-to genres to build your game around. Unfortunately, Grime wears that on its shoulder with pride, instead of doing anything remotely interesting. In essence, it’s the software equivalent of saying ‘only fans of the soulikes genre will enjoy this’.

Made up of 56 puzzles that make full use of this timeless feature—in which you can fast forward or rewind time to solve its countless riddles—it’s a tough-as-nails, minimalist puzzle game about nudging a cube towards its goal. Cylinders may also be used to help you get to hard-to-reach places, but the crux of the game is about manipulating the very fabric of time so you can get to where you need to be. That said, Induction can be unforgiving in its challenges; if you’re stuck on one level, you won’t be able to move on to the next—which makes for some frustrating moments—but fortunately, a guide to solving the puzzles is readily available online.

Rather than dwell on how Unavowed also cleverly entangles you with unexpected developments at almost every turn—because there’s no question that it absolutely does—the idle banter and jabs traded among its cast of paranormal detectives are heartening and authentic, moving the story forward even in its quietest moments. It’s a point-and-click game destined to be an all-time classic—which is why it is one of the entries in our best point-and-clicks list.

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.

Originally an Apple Arcade exclusive, Mini Motorways is now available on Steam for aspiring city planners. If you’re ready to tear your hair out of your follicles over the algorithm’s decision to construct a house 10 million miles away from its destination, it may very well become one of your favourite time-wasters.

By stripping away most of the unnecessary bits of a bloated RPG—combat, leveling up, and customising your character—Mythic Ocean distills the narrative features of these games into a series of thoughtful conversations with a likeable cast, while revealing something much more profound: the philosophies and idiosyncrasies that dictate our human condition.

Fans of games like Furi and Devil May Cry may be surprised with how well Eldest Souls can produce the same sort of frantic and expressive action those games are known for. Its “soulslike” credentials don’t stem from replicating the slow and plodding experience that the subgenre is known for very much. Instead, it’s the focused and diverse boss encounters, on top of the snappy combat and clever customisation. Eldest Souls may not change the face of soulslikes just yet, but it at least demonstrates that there are still new ways to interpret them.

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.

It must be pretty obvious by now that I love this game. I love the effort that went into it and the expansive scope of its contents. I love how easy the gameplay is to grasp and how complex its plot becomes. I love the surprises and mysteries, and how each character is so full of soul. History buffs will have hours of spotting little details and accuracies, and fans of a good old-fashioned mystery will be kept up all night by the perplexing curse that has befallen this town.

All in all, Out of Line isn’t a terrible experience; I only wished there was a stronger emphasis on establishing its odd setting, along with something more that I could point to as being exceptional.

The Ascent is mostly a mindless, violent jaunt through a meticulously rendered cyberpunk city; what little portrayal of the themes of depravity and inequality are merely set-dressing for the game. Yet for all its facelessness, what was most indelible was still its city, the disparity between the powerful and powerless depicted in its spaces: from the cramped, unsanitary alleys home to the ceaseless chatter of its most downtrodden, to the shine of the marble floor in the wealthier districts, soon to be sullied by the dead bodies you leave behind.

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.

Boomerang X may not be perfect, but it’s perfectly addictive, a game just begging to be replayed. There’s even a built-in speed run timer setting and harder difficulty options and a New Game+ mode underscoring its replayability. Running through its 13 levels another time probably won’t peel back any more of the game’s very thin plot layers, but damn if it isn’t a blast to zip around like an airborne assassin.

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.

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.

I really like how the deck-building mechanics reflect the dispositions of the different characters. You can see this in both combat and negotiation; Sal is pretty strong all around, which makes them a good choice for your first couple of runs. Rook flips a coin every now and then during negotiation that can produce a powerful boost. Smith builds up a stockpile of empty bottles while in combat which they sometimes hurl at their opponents. The result is a wonderful sense of ludonarrative consonance.

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.

It’s a base defense strategy game that dabbles in realism rather than pointless commotion, and it’s a very captivating one. There are minor issues, such as the need for more precise controls (you can’t choose which worker you wish to station at every barricade), but aside from a few frustrating moments, these mostly don’t detract from its strengths.

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.

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.

As a monosyllabic goose who prefers to let your guns–be it machine guns or rocket launchers–do the talking, you’ll be traversing across planets, dodging gunfire and bulldozing legions of robots and bugs with a flurry of bullets sprayed all over the screen. There’s no poetic justice to be meted out, no truly dastardly plot to raze the universe to the ground, and no tearjerker or heroic moments: just the opportunity to enact scenes of pure, exhilarating carnage.

The blindingly abrasive strobe effect that will make this an utterly miserable experience for some, no matter how much you want to see the pretty pictures and explore every corner of the Critters world. But if you’re willing to just ruin your vision for an afternoon and commit to the developer’s description of their own work “to make your eyes bleed” (for their other game, a shooter called Rym 9000), Critters for Sale is an oddball dip into a very particular vision of hell.

On the whole I’m incredibly impressed with Wildermyth. While I was skeptical at first about whether its procedurally-generated narrative events and choices would allow for cohesive character development, its stories are so well-written, funny, and relatable that it’s hard not to be invested in the lives of your motley crew of heroes. Wildermyth is the kind of game that moves seamlessly between heroes making bad jokes one second and reflecting on the nature of existence the next. This tapestry of moments feels appropriate in a game about what it means to be human, both in terms of battling against mortality and the end of the world, but also in the quiet moments of beauty that life is filled with.

Ultreia, too, leans heavily on religious themes, with forgiveness being a saving grace that unlocks a secret true ending, reducing the story into an uncomplicated, religious tale with robots rather than a more nuanced story about adversities. It’s a pity that it ultimately misses the opportunities to delve deeper into the rich world it’s built for itself.

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.