Taking clear inspiration from games like XCOM, Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden expands upon the formula by mixing up how you think about stealth, skill trees, and storylines, truly making it a unique and refreshing entry into the turn-based strategy genre.

The amount of hard work that went into developing Hidden Folks is impressive. No points or timers mean there’s no rush to hurry through a puzzle, and the grandness of each level means you’re assured to spend plenty of time sifting through the world. The sheer number of things to find, and ways to do find them, also increases the replay value for anyone without a photographic memory.

In short; Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King is good, clean fun with never a dull moment. Blossom Tales offers an experience for everyone in the family. With a respectful tip of the hat to the games that started it all, and enough modern twists to keep even the snobbiest of us on the edge of our seats, hopefully there will be more adventures to follow this one.

Everything is an extraordinary journey. It’s Salvador Dali meets Neil deGrasse Tyson meets Eastern Mysticism. It’s art and spirituality brought to life in a medium that transcends the limitations of books and paints. This isn’t the game you want if you’re looking for casual entertainment with which to unwind at the end of a long day. Yet, even though Everything challenges your understanding of self and the universe, it never sacrifices the simple joy of fun.

Half Past Fate is fun. It has a consistent plotline, several love stories, and a fair bit of information about tea. Great ending combined, this is, simply put, a brilliant little game.

Leaping, looting, lacerating, and laughing, Remnant: From The Ashes explodes with character, violence, and a down-right great time in co-op. The procedural generation of the missions presents players with surprises and challenges each time they boot up the title. With its roots in Dark Souls-like gameplay, this is sure to be a powerful title to land in 2019.

Tropico 6 involves a huge time investment and a steep learning curve, but it is a solid entry in the management/sim genre.

RiME is a wonderful experience filled with both light-hearted excitement and touching emotional moments. It invokes the old cliché, “I laughed, I cried,” but, of course, that doesn’t do justice to the amount of effort it took to coordinate the vivid yet dreamlike artwork, the fun and easygoing gameplay, and the dramatic musical score. It’s unfortunate that the graphics can be choppy and the movement can be finicky. Otherwise — especially if you value aesthetics over fun — this is an incredibly satisfying title.

If you’re terrified this will be the same experience as all the other entries in the Far Cry franchise, don’t be. You’ll be pleasantly surprised. While there isn’t revolutionary reinvention, Ubisoft Montreal has proven they’re listening to their fans. It’s everything you’d expect, with a ton of extras thrown on top. The destruction of stealth and the infuriatingly inconsistent AI are exceptions, but everything else that has done the series good in the past does it justice once again. The arcade mode alone shows enough potential to produce content far beyond the main campaign. This is a great game that shines a bright future on a once-declining franchise.

The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker delivers a fresh, memorable, and intricately woven tale of psychological horror. The developer's experience in crafting murder mysteries shows, although investigation of the titular Doctor Dekker's death overwhelms the simulation's promised psychotherapy aspect. Smart, provocative, and a masterclass in acting, this full motion video release falters in its user interface, but the narrative compels you to power through all the same.

A relaxing and beautiful experience, marred only by the occasional technical issue.

With an intricately crafted world, innovative and engaging battle system, and delightful array of scenery and music, Shadows of Adam is a splendid and true tribute to the SNES JRPG. The bugs one might encounter in beta versions are overshadowed by pure awe and captivation—a relentless desire to play more and more.

The neon-clad, Japanese-themed platformer Slime-san is a cute 2D puzzler with simplistic yet endearing design. Requiring all of the skills and reflexes of Super Meat Boy, Slime-san is not a challenge to take lightly. While the intricate levels and fast-paced gameplay have an initial appeal for speedrunners, Slime-san lacks enough substance to keep the player’s attention for long.

The experience of The Norwood Suite is incredibly unique, each design choice, be it of the musical or visual arts, very much reflects Cosmo D's style. The world in which you play feels well developed and full, but not cluttered, keeping you on the path of the game, but not on rails. The Norwood Suite — along with their first release, Off-Peak — are two games worth the effort and confusion.

Chook and Sosig: Walk the Plank is a charming point-and-click adventure that offers fun for all ages. Despite a few errors in execution, the humor, premise, and choice of endings deliver something for everyone to enjoy.

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

Fans and veterans of the 40k universe will no doubt enjoy Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2, while it’s certainly still worth a look for newcomers interested in spaceship warfare.

Overall, Ancestors Legacy isn’t insanely different from other popular RTS entries out there. What it does have are a lot of interesting and unique options and gameplay strengths that will make it a popular choice for those RTS players that hold strategy and planning higher than overwhelming enemies by sheer force. The graphics, gameplay, and multiplayer modes make this title a successful first expedition into the RTS genre for Destructive Creations.

The Long Dark is imperfect, but it could be one of the best experiences in the survival genre. For the impatient, single-player gamer, The Long Dark holds little promise. However, if you relish the challenge of isolation and the feeling that you’re fighting against an environment that isn’t trying to kill you, but rather just doesn’t care about you, then you must try The Long Dark.

An interesting take on the isometric ARPG, Shadows: Awakening provides a short romp through the main campaign with three different endings providing some limited replayability.

Even though combat is a tad repetitive and the freedom to explore and deviate from the linear progression lacking, WORLD OF FINAL FANTASY remains enjoyable. The multitude of mirages to collect and features like "stacking" add much value to gameplay, with the Coliseum and Tearoom going a step further by providing additional battles to tackle. If you’re a fan of JRPGs or of the Final Fantasy series, consider getting this one.

Blasphemous is a truly unforgettable experience that stands out in the Metroidvania genre.

Herald is a delight to play. It has a cast of complex, interesting, and incredibly voiced characters, beautifully captivating art design, and a fresh and fun story that will leave you wanting more.

Despite some frame-rate stutters, slight audio-visual desyncs, and the occasional bad texture rendering, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is eerie, challenging, thoughtful, compelling, and downright fun.

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.

Ever wish XCOM 2 had a love child with Dungeons & Dragons? No? Well XCOM: Chimera Squad is here, anyway.

Dawn of War III is very a solid foundation for the future of the franchise, but it lacks fresh flavor. The expansions to this title are sure to add races, storylines, and mechanics that are simultaneously new and nostalgic, but this initial release is somewhat bare-bones. As always, the Warhammer universe produces great characters, units, and artwork, but there is not much to set it apart from the original Dawn of War or other RTS titles. Also, there are no Sisters of Battle, and that’s awful.

Strong mechanics, fun combat, and replay value are brought down by graphics and a convoluted story, yet you’ll still have fun mowing down scores of enemies.