A fun RPG with strong tabletop theming held back by poor AI, repetition, and lack of clear signposting.

Though full of beautiful art and interesting lore, this point-and-click adventure is hindered by bugs, poor mechanics, and is in need of much more environmental interaction.

This metroidvania has great 2D graphics, but is marred by an overplayed storyline, bland enemies, and serious bugs.

La Résistance is an overpriced package of underwhelming mechanics and bloated focus trees. You’d do best to avoid this expansion until it goes on sale.

Though the atmosphere is beautiful and the sound design is immersively eerie, plot holes and disturbingly accepted character choices greatly hinder this walking simulator.

While a serviceable dungeon crawler, the lack of polish keeps Conglomerate 451 from being truly engaging.

Daemon X Machina needs some work. Its mechanics are rough, its controls are unwieldy and confusing, and its story is difficult to follow. While it’s mildly entertaining to pilot a giant robot, there are other games that pull off the experience more effectively.

Though this arena fighter starts off fun, repetitive missions, boring arenas, and randomized fight elements cause that entertainment to wear off quickly.

The development team behind Alder’s Blood has clearly put a lot of thought into crafting a striking experience, and while the game has style and an engaging core gameplay loop, it’s also so shaky and unpolished we find it hard to recommend.

The Wanderer is a beautifully creative point and click adventure that leads you through the tale of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein using puzzles and decisions that affect the outcome of the tale. Unfortunately, a handful of game-breaking bugs render it almost unplayable.

Interrogating is really not the answer. Worth some of your time, especially if you’re into that whole noir scene, but otherwise, you can give it a pass.

An FTL-inspired rogue-lite, Crying Suns falls short of what made that game fun and exciting by being repetitive and boring.

While it draws upon influences of games long past, it ultimately fails to incorporate more recent innovations in its genre.

A title that aims high, but is severely undermined by clunky controls, painful camera movements, and confusing, cartoonishly over-the-top story elements.

An interesting narrative and eerie ambience are present, but frustratingly tedious survival features, poor combat, and performance issues plague the title.

A follow-up to Job Simulator that loses most of the humor that made that title so great.

Metro Exodus is a mishmash of borrowed ideas that falls short of creating a worthy sequel, while holding tight to the previous mistakes of the series.

WOUNDED is a visually striking and atmospheric indie title that needed better core mechanics.

Gorgeous scenery and interesting story are outweighed by tedious combat, stilted gameplay, and a lack of variety in combat.

Fixed camera angles, boring gameplay, wooden animations, and poor localization all mar Eternity: The Last Unicorn beyond the point of being anything approaching enjoyable.

In its desire to stick to the original Fallout RPGs, ATOM RPG disregards the lessons CRPGs have learned in the intervening years. Fallen short of both its predecessors and contemporaries in the genre, ATOM RPG .

Suffering from an identity crisis, Choconoa lacks the charm it needs in order to succeed, being frustrating at worst, and forgettable at best.

While a fighting game featuring a wide variety of Weekly Shonen Jump characters seems like a no-brainer, the shoddy execution and surprisingly limited roster hinder JUMP FORCE from being the all-star it wants to be.

While there are a few interesting concepts at play in Jon Shafer’s At the Gates, they frequently go underdeveloped, leading to a lackluster experience.

Book of Demons is a beautiful roguelite dungeon crawler with enemy variety and a plethora of interesting systems built upon a sheer lack of player-side input. A decent time waster, but difficult to recommend at launch prices.

This entry in the Just Cause series has taken itself too seriously, sucking the fun out of what should be a blast.

While fans of turn-based strategy might find some features to be enjoyable, long-time players of the Jagged Alliance series and strategy connoisseurs might feel shortchanged of the beloved gameplay of this genre.

Underworld Ascendant is surprisingly unpolished and actively difficult to play. Without patches addressing the myriad bugs present in the current product, this one is a hard pass.

OVERKILL’s The Walking Dead does a decent job of immersing players into a universe of the undead, but lacks innovation and is ultimately brought to its knees by the overwhelming amount of bugs and lack of player-friendly systems.

Too buggy to currently be considered playable, INSOMNIA: The Ark could eventually be an enjoyable experience in a cool, dieselpunk-futuristic world.

You could try to give The Dark Inside Me the benefit of the doubt and say it’s attempting to be dark and edgy, but any way you look at it, it falls on the wrong side of offensive and trashy, without any kind of decent gameplay to fall back on.

There is a lot to respect about eSports Manager and what it tries to do, but it just fails to execute fully on a number of fronts. Entertainment can be had through playing the matches for your team, and there is a level of ease that quickly comes once you’ve unlocked a few perks. Unfortunately, everything else feels like a chore.

While City of the Shroud, a real-time strategy RPG, has some interesting design ideas in theory, in practice these designs fall flat.

Indie platformer The Free Ones currently struggles with the absence of simply too many game essentials to be forgiven. Its fast-paced grappling action does lend a touch of excitement to its otherwise stagnant gameplay, and its potential, while imprisoned now, could be unleashed with future developer updates.

Frustrating gameplay paired with needlessly dark and messy levels holds this 2D “horror” platformer back from accomplishing what it sets out to do. It’s difficult to find much Dream Alone attempts that can’t be found better executed elsewhere.

Agony is a survival horror title that serves as a bold interpretation of biblical hell, crushed by a monolith of technical problems and unpolished design.

Solo is a meditative relationship questionnaire under the guise of an aesthetically-simple puzzler. Its desire to play the love doctor lends a unique flavor to its otherwise bland and hodgepodge puzzle gameplay, but it’s not enough to save it from its painful inability to let its hair down and stay awhile.

Guilt Battle Arena capitalizes on the idea of a party night teeming with shouts of triumph and despair with its chaotic couch co-op gameplay. A fresh update helps to increase its overall playability, but the tiny title has a long uphill journey to make before it can more readily compete with similar smash-your-friends indies.

Lost in the Dungeon offers a difficult and tedious challenge for those looking for one. Unfortunately, it isn’t founded on enough complexity to hold your interest for the long term.

Ark Park is a jack of all trades, but master of none. Resource collecting is the thread that attempts to tie several dissonant gameplay mechanics together but it’s not nearly deep enough or engaging enough to be successful at it. Any enjoyment that could be had by observing dinosaurs and wild jungles is marred by blurry graphics. This is one title that ought to go extinct.

Tempest Citadel makes large promises and misses the mark on them all. While it’s certainly playable, it’s a frustrating experience that lacks player engagement. The most redeeming part of this title is the original artwork, which may entice the unsuspecting consumer into purchasing a lackluster entry into the already crowded strategy genre.

This blend of the old with the new relies too heavily on the old, while the new stuff fails to thrive. In its current state it’s buggy and lacks some fundamental requirements for smooth play we’ve come to expect from the genre.

If your goal is to never have an interaction beyond your basement, this game delivers. Otherwise, its only function is to give players a few laughs and severe second-hand embarrassment. Alternatively, it could be turned into a drinking game with your buddies: Take a shot every time the camera goes out of focus, the acronym “PUA” is said, or there’s an opportunity to whip Big Richie out.

Bio Inc. Redemption presents us with a confused tone: part of it wants to be taken seriously as a realistic medical simulator, while other parts seem to be trying to get a cynical laugh with out-of-place gore and sound effects. Still, this title is well polished and the gameplay is interesting (save for the Achilles’ heel of a terrible point management mechanic that destroys the immersion and fun). Flaws in both balance and theme could have been overlooked if not for the inclusion of this one unfortunate element.

Yume Nikki: Dream Diary is a visually faithful recreation of the original Yume Nikki, but beyond that, it falls short. A slew of game-breaking bugs and unintuitive gameplay creates a disappointing experience not worth the asking price.

Steamburg needs more polishing to be player-friendly, being too buggy and clumsy in its current state. But even if these problems were addressed, Steamburg would merely be a predictable puzzle adventure with lacklustre visuals, a stereotypical storyline, and uninspired puzzles.

With Sonic and Mario in the spotlight again, Bubsy takes another swipe at being a lovable mascot, but doesn’t succeed in capturing the same sentiment. Ultimately, Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back (Bubsy), the platforming game, arrives as the two-decades-too-late 5th entry in the series. Despite excellent controls, the title does not overcome some of its more pressing shortcomings, such as level design, resulting in a sub-par gaming experience.

Raiders of the Broken Planet just isn’t there yet. While an alpha build of the title showed promise, the title has much development ground to cover yet. Raiders of the Broken Planet isn’t half-baked: it barely got into the oven before players were encouraged to start eating the dough.

With deadly bugs that prevent key gameplay mechanics, zero replayability, and an astonishingly small amount of content (<30 minutes to complete), Beat the Game is a visual masterpiece more akin to a brief bad trip at a Tomorrowland than an actual game. If you’re into audio or music production and are looking for something that will let you develop and explore it in a different light, you will be disappointed. However, when it comes to cinematography, BtG is a high nine. With a bit more care and effort from solid game and sound designers, this novelty release could have been great. And if you need drugs to enjoy music, you’re doing it wrong.

Suicide Guy caters to the underserved demographic of people who enjoy 3D puzzle platformers, except this serving is more of a home-cooked meal from Grandma’s house after she had gotten dementia. It’s made with love, and is good at certain parts, but in the end, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Graphics and level design can be clever at times, but are essentially ruined by the frustrating physics and collision, lack of any good music, repetitive sound effects, half-finished animations, and stale platforming. I want to love Suicide Guy, and I do, in a way -- I appreciate the effort that was made, but when I was done I felt unsatisfied and dead inside.

Planet Ancyra Chronicles appears to be made by a team of developers who are each individually good at their jobs – the level design, the narrative design, and the score all have their moments. Unfortunately, it seems the team suffered from miscommunication, because this title’s individual parts struggle to fit together into a single, cohesive experience. Perhaps only the most persistent of players will be able to make it to the end of this otherwise interesting story.

Dead Purge: Outbreak is not fun or innovative, borrowing too heavily from many superior titles. Ultimately, the title is a zombie itself: slow-moving, mindless, collapsing readily and often.

Subject A-119 makes a strong showing with a variety of abilities, but the puzzles, through mechanical and logical limitations, quickly fatigue the player. Puzzle addicts might be tempted to explore this title but, overall, Subject A-119 mechanics are more confusing than the actual puzzles, ultimately leaving players underwhelmed.

It’s been thirty years since Hironobu Sakaguchi created Final Fantasy; when story wasn't the standard, he made something extraordinary and defined a generation. Now, we have In Vitra, struggling to be what it's not — there's nothing in this title that produces the Japanese cultural feeling of a JRPG. No imagination, coupled with a lack of understanding of the genre, destroys the essence of what inspired In Vitra. The characters are so dull, you’ll wish you were playing Final Fantasy I-VI. Please, do yourself a service and pass on this title, especially if you already played the series mentioned above.

1166 offers the equivalent of a B-movie horror in video game form, complete with all the quirks and mistakes that come with small budget productions. If you want a new take on side-scrolling storytelling that mixes Lovecraftian style occult horrors with surreal walks through pixel fields, you’ll feel right at home in 1166. Watch that the arbitrary level design, simplistic game mechanics, and poor choice of graphics don’t keep you from experience a potentially psychologically disturbing adventure through dimensions and time.

Snow Moto Racing Freedom disappoints visually and physically. The snow effects are lackluster, appearing more like blurry fog, and you can see the triangular 3D mesh used to make the ground as you drive by it. With the minimal features and low scale graphics, Snow Moto Racing Freedom plays more like an early-2000s arcade racer that you would expect to find at the mall or the back room of your local pizzeria. I am sure Unity has its limitations both regarding graphic quality and gameplay physics, but the consistent lack of standard features bring this title down into the bargain bin.

Troll and I is unplayable. By all accounts, the game is full of glitches, even on the latest generation of consoles -- let alone all of the victims who bought the game to play on a PC more than a year old. It may work on certain systems to some degree, but the advertised minimum specifications are certainly false, and therefore merit a hefty downgrade. If you manage to get past the game-breaking bugs, the gameplay itself is frustrating and unoriginal, and the story seems to have nothing to offer. Save your money and your sanity, and skip this one.

Dead Rising 4 has a bit of an identity crisis. It neither commits to the open-world aspect enough to be considered exemplary in the genre, nor does it deliver enough of the mainstays of the series to satisfy longtime fans. Unfortunately, Dead Rising 4 marks the low point in the franchise, and while you may get some mindless enjoyment from killing zombie hordes, the fun is dying, not rising.

Kronos uses uninspired or recycled art style, storyline, and dialogue, but that's just that start of what's wrong with this title. Beyond the aesthetic issues, the bugs in Kronos are too much to ignore. Maybe with more work on bugs and glitches, it could be playable enough to enjoy; for now, it doesn’t come close to standing out in an already competitive genre.

When a game isn't visually appealing, nor long, and when its puzzles are as simple as clunky controls make them painful, then it better be good in terms of story. Bucket Detective is not. And the frustration from the lack of a good narrative is made all so much more frustrating by the fact that there is potential here in pockets, including some good humor, silly art, and cute music.

We Are Chicago raises real issues that still plague parts of America, and encourages young people to stay away from gang violence, and this goal is praiseworthy – but between the flat graphics, the uninspired characters, and the nausea-inducing camera movement, We Are Chicago isn't an enjoyable gaming experience.

While it's commendable that a two-man team set out to create an adventure of relatively broad scope, Hero is difficult to recommend. Its music and sound effects are good, but the lackluster graphics, lack of polish, and uninspired gameplay are too glaring to ignore.

Despite its promising premise, Ashbourne severely lacks substance and feels much more like a Beta than it does a full release. Pressingly needed is a bulky patch, if Endemic interactive wants it to be a compelling, memorable addition to the competitive genre that is Action-RPG.

The idea is sound, but the execution is still a bit lacking.

I wanted to like Meadow, mostly because it sounded unique, interesting, and potentially captivating. It isn’t though, at least not for me.