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.

It’s reductive to suggest Little Witch Nobeta is just you running around, busying yourself between each boss battle, but they are undoubtedly the best part of the game. Its pacing is off, and the base game combat hasn’t got that much going for it, but it’s well worth picking up to test yourself against Little Witch Nobeta’s headline offerings.

Space Scavenger makes for an interesting debut from Red Cabin Games. It never reaches the lofty heights of fellow SHMUP titles but carves a unique identity, bringing enjoyable combat and versatile customisation. It’s a shame there isn’t more of it and comes across as rather barebones. Replayability only goes so far, but considering the low price point, this is easier to forgive. For genre fans looking for a new fix, it comes recommended.

The Almost Gone is a clever little indie. It looks great. The spare soundtrack is effective and evocative. The puzzles are smart, and the narrative is superb. It’s also a game that could easily get lost in the crowd of other releases. It deserves attention though, and is well worth playing.

It’s not reinventing the wheel, it’s not pushing anything forwards, it’s just good fun. It’s definitely a game aimed for the younger gamers out there, but I think, thanks to nostalgia and the horrific state of the world, that it should appeal to nearly everyone. The sheer undiluted joy that it delivers straight into your soul is exactly what we all need right now. So, are you ready kids?

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.

In theory, Waking sounds like a fascinating project, with the game showing hints of delivering a highly tailored, personal and transformative experience. But what begins as an exercise for intimate self-reflection wound up becoming an increasingly detached experience for the player. By putting them into the game in the most literal sense, Waking fell short when it was unable to capture all the nuances of its impossible protagonist: yourself. While I admire the boldness of its vision, I simply couldn’t connect with the extent of its execution.

Desperados III is a worthy successor to the previous games in the series, and a welcome return to a genre I’d long thought dead and buried. Now, how about a new Commandos?

It possesses a certain melancholy and longing that I admire. That mood is captured beautifully by its illustrations which in rare moments collapse and collide in colourful fractal parallaxes. Despite the flaws I’ve identified, the direction of its narrative surprised me, and its twists kept me on my toes. Like Seers Isle before it, Across the Grooves’ worldbuilding is its strength. It crafts a deep beatnik, classic rock mythology surrounding the record at its centre, and while I often felt like I didn’t belong in that world, I remained intrigued by the secrets it offered. When I finished Across the Grooves, I replayed Seers Isle. Then I began Across the Grooves again. I look forward to Nova-box’s next project as their work continues to delight.

Overall, Warborn is a colourful and fun tactics game. It takes a little bit from a few places and does good things with them. The gameplay is good, the tactical options are varied, and the soundtrack will drill its way into your brain and never leave. It feels a lot like this will do very well if there are a lot of people keeping the multiplayer alive, but it’s a great game regardless.

It’s been seven years since we first saw Ys: Memories Of Celceta but this PS4 remaster proves a welcome return for Nihon Falcom’s juggernaut franchise. Bringing us real-time combat, an enjoyable storyline packed with humour and appealing visuals, Ys is a must-have for JRPG fans. Whilst there’s no new content for those who previously beat it, MOC remains a thoroughly enjoyable title and, old fan or new, comes strongly recommended.

A Hand With Many Fingers illustrates the quiet fervour of trying to understand something much bigger than yourself – a web of obscure moving parts and shady characters who have, to this day, never been convicted of a crime. Even if you’re not as keen on the niche thrill of chasing a conspiracy, Colestia’s work is an important dissection of power, hegemonic greed, and corruption during the Cold War, as well as its ideological impact across the world – issues that unfortunately remain all too familiar in 2020.

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.

Minecraft Dungeons is a lot of fun, but it’s a little lacking in depth, and it’s rather short to boot. It’s almost exactly what you’d expect from a game looking to fuse the cute world of Minecraft with the gameplay of Diablo, but it sadly never really reaches the potential of either. As I said though, it is good fun. It is replayable too, but it’s hard to really commit to doing so unless you’re helping along someone who is less familiar with games, say a younger sibling or your own kids. This puts it in an important bracket of gaming, where its perfect as an introduction to the genre, but it’s not going to offer much more than a distraction for anyone used to ARPGs.

It’s a really interesting take on a dungeon game, because you’re not actively controlling anything, and it often feels more like you’re just suggesting that your characters go and do something rather than actually getting them to do it. The mechanics are incredibly cool, and managing your power as you explore while trying to defend your home and also push further into the unknown is very satisfying.

It’s perfect for anybody wanting to play a game with a partner who isn’t normally interested, because it’s fairly hands-off. There are enough choices to make it worth a few playthroughs, and it’s an especially unique way to spend a night indoors with a loved one. It’s one of those games that can help bring new people into the fold.

Action sequences aren’t all just a case of spraying and praying either, a lot of the game looks like that, but you need to approach things in a more considered matter if you want to actually survive. There’s a constant cycle of fun decisions to make in your weapon choices, movement options, and tactical decisions, and they all elevate Huntdown far above many other run and gunners.

Maneater may not be as enthralling as the Nelly Furtado song, but it’ll certainly make you work hard and make you want all her love because the game’s snarky personality does make you want to continue playing all the same. I’d personally wait until it goes on sale, but whenever you do purchase Maneater, I’m certain you’ll have a whale of a time.

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.

Simply put, Monster Train is really good. It’s fun, there are a nigh-on-infinite number of things you can change and mess around with for each run, and it’s difficult, but not soul-crushingly so. It’s got a nice look to it, some very good music, and the card-customisation and cloning is an excellent idea. I’m really looking forward to seeing more people with their hands on it, and I think Monster Train deserves to be huge.

Muse Games have done an excellent job with Embr, and it certainly holds promise for when it finishes development. There’s good depth to its mechanics, co-op play is great with friends, and it’s visually quite appealing. It’s a cautious recommendation at this time due to its brevity, though Muse Games are currently promising a wide feature expansion in future updates. All being said, what we’ve seen so far has been great and it’s one to watch out for.

Llaura McGee’s Ireland-based indie studio, Dreamfeel, is best known for 2014’s indie darling Curtain, a story of queer punks in an abusive relationship. Now with a full team of queer women and nonbinary devs (and music by 2 Mello), If Found… feels like the synergistic realization of all that its parts set out to do. It’s the rare game I would implore you to play without any question. The one that breaks the scale. I don’t care who you are or what games you usually like to play, play it. If not for the mechanical conceit, for the art, for the soundtrack, play it for me, because I want to share this story with so many others. That’s what a myth is, after all.

Cranked Up has the colourful charm of Overcooked, and enough platforming challenge to keep you engaged from start to finish. Frustration is core to the experience, and that may not be for everyone, but if snappy, repeated trial and error gameplay is your thing then Cranked Up is a good shout.

For fans of the oddball 90s game aesthetic – misproportioned bodies, warped perspectives, and bold colours – visiting Heffernan’s gameworlds is like spending time with an eccentric old friend. But in addition to some really great banter, Vol. 1 primarily unfolds through revealing conversations that touch on social issues like gentrification, corporate hegemonies, collective bargaining, and the complicated business of making a living; all of these topics are painfully applicable to current events, which makes Vol. 1 both visually anachronistic and thematically accurate. It’s meta-exploration through chat and movement – a thoughtful voyage through a community going through a slowly snowballing crisis. If you’re looking for confrontation and convention, this probably isn’t the game for you.

I enjoyed my time with Nimbatus, even though it’s been made for people far more capable in design than I am. If you’re one of those elusive professional Minecraft architects or someone with a penchant for computing, Nimbatus as a tool is a real achievement you should invest in. Meanwhile, I’ll stick to watching The Malcontent Orb as it drifts slowly through the universe and slowly drifting, soulless and accursed, into the abyssal nothingness of pixelated space.

If you’re looking for a meditative city builder and enjoy resource management and problem-solving, you should absolutely give Before We Leave a go. But if you’re accustomed to some of the bigger 4X alternatives, you might feel as if what’s here is a little lacking by comparison.

For a game which has spent the past three years in early access, it’s clear Awesome Games Studio has spent their time fine-tuning and creating a replayable experience. While not a perfect game with controls feeling a little loose when the heat gets turned up, and a storyline which isn’t finished or particularly interesting, Fury Unleashed was absolutely a pleasant surprise.