It’s hard to say whether Untitled Darkness is a gaming experience at all. It's definitely an experience and an important one at that, and I'm a big fan of solo developers experimenting with their art forms and concepts. It’s helped that the art style and subject matter are both well-executed and designed, as well as being very prevalent in our recent examinations of mental well-being.

Rise Eterna is an average and serviceable strategy RPG offering on Xbox. It’s certainly a welcome release on the platform that doesn’t often host too many games from the genre. The various moving parts are promising, but they don’t come together in a way that feels compelling from a game design standpoint and that means Rise Eterna is worth checking out only if you’re starved for options.

Open Country is an okay game to actually play. It doesn’t look amazing, the camera controls are bonkers and the gunplay isn’t going to give theHunter any sleepless nights, but if you just ignore Gary and his stupid fetch quests, the actual game, the exploring and wandering about, is pretty relaxing.

When it comes down to it, Enter Digiton: Heart of Corruption is just confusing. I routinely found myself asking why the game even exists. It doesn’t have an interesting story to tell, its combat is monotonous, its world design is incredibly poor, and moving through it isn’t fun at all.

Orbibot will fill a gap, as long as that gap isn't a deep one. Aside from the extremely dodgy controls and camera, this is a fairly fun little physics-based puzzler which does its best to kill a bit of time. You'll find it frustrating at times, but for many the easy gathering of Gamerscore could well negate those problems.

If you’re looking for a Zelda-lite experience, Arietta of Spirits doesn’t really put a foot wrong. But to be a truly great game, it needs more content. It needs more exploration options, more side quests, more upgrades. You’ll only be getting three or four game hours with this one, and there’s nothing to really bring you back.

Deadly Days won’t blow your socks off but it will scratch that rogue-lite itch. If you want something to keep you occupied for a good number of hours, love retro-styled graphics and have no issues with dying over-and-over again, then this is definitely a title for you.

The Edge of the World DLC offers much more of the same, which will please some but not everyone. To make The Falconeer a truly must have game, future additions will need to be a little more radical.

Gallic Wars: Battle Simulator is a game that takes an interesting idea and smothers it under a pile of bad controls, dubious design decisions and poor gameplay. If you like Asterix, or strategy games, I can’t recommend this game to you.

The humour, both in character design and the dialogue, is the stand-out winner here with The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos - Chicken Edition, and the rest of it is swept along nicely by the energy these factors bring. The story is good in its own right, but it is brought to life by the silly squabbles amongst the party. All in all, you can’t go wrong with The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk: The Amulet Of Chaos - Chicken Edition on Xbox.

If your sensitivities to randomness and procedural generation are anything like ours, then we’d suggest switching back to X-Com. But if you’re less dismayed by the idea, then Fort Triumph might actually live up to its name.

Action Arcade Wrestling hits the ground running, but soon runs out of steam to the point where the old adage of ‘creative has nothing for you’ comes to mind. If you just want to have a couple of enjoyable matches, then sure go for it; just know that the longevity wanes pretty fast.

The Vale: Shadow of the Crown is utterly unique but it’s one of those games you just have to take a chance on. If I had one criticism it is that there are maybe too many fighting sections and not enough in terms of exploration. But overall this is a brilliant experience and something that any player will remember for a long time to come.

Altogether, we like Gelly Break Deluxe. We do. It comes alive in co-op, it’s colourful, it plays smoothly, and it has a smattering of good ideas. But the adjectives just never get sexy enough: it’s fine, nice, occasionally inventive. With a larger box of ideas to play around with, greater difficulty and more content, it might have unlocked some fancier descriptors. For now, it’s less ‘Deluxe’ and more ‘Decent’.

It’s not often that we’d rake a card game over the coals for its controls, but Solitaire TriPeaks Flowers fumbles something as simple as moving left or right. It overshadows a well-presented mobile port that does everything else right, give or take an under-used flower theme. It’s a cheap and generous rose with a particularly sharp thorn, so come with gloves.

Lake on Xbox is a charming and refreshingly slow narrative adventure. Although your time in Providence Oaks is over before you know it, it offers what is perhaps a rare and much needed downtime in gaming. While there are some graphical and technical issues present, the experience as a whole succeeds in delivering its humble and largely inconsequential narrative, yet one where choices made actually have real consequence.

Crimson Spires is a visual novel shrouded in mystery; one which contains a plethora of intriguing plot points but ultimately fails to satisfy by not delivering answers to too many questions.

Flatland Vol.2 is a very hard platformer with a lot of depth to it. And that in itself will determine what you get from the game. If you want a challenge, and have the necessary vocabulary, then Flatland Vol.2 might be right up your alley. Personally, I need a lie down.

I am a huge Assassin’s Creed fan and loved the Valhalla base game. Yet the first Wrath of the Druids expansion failed to blow me away. It’s a similar case here with The Siege of Paris. It’s good, but really nowhere near what we have come to expect from the franchise as a whole.

Tetragon is an attractive puzzle platformer, but not without its niggles. It’s enjoyable for the most part, however the final boss exposes the control scheme issues that otherwise don’t prove too troublesome elsewhere.

Almost every change in Madden NFL 22 this year is of a positive nature, and it is easily one of the best entries in recent years. Franchise mode is in great shape, and set to get better as the year progresses, and it almost feels like EA Sports are reminding themselves that not everyone wants to just play Ultimate Team. Some modes such as The Yard and Superstar KO still feel tacked on but at least offer a bite-size gameplay experience if time is limited.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite is very good indeed. There are issues, but the presentation is bang on, the action is unrelenting, and with missions taking 25 minutes and upwards to complete, the campaign is a good one. Throw in five classes to go at and this should well keep you busy. That’s not to mention the horde mode that unlocks when you complete the campaign.

While the two genres in Boyfriend Dungeon dovetail nicely, they don’t stand up to scrutiny themselves. The hack-and-slashing is a callow shade of games like Hades, and the dating sim stuff is fine, but lacking in any emotional reaction: we failed to laugh, love or loathe. It may not be the sleazy sim that many have imagined, but it also fails to trigger a reaction other than a shrug emoji.

If you're not a fan of puzzlers and hate the idea of using your brain instead of any brawn, then there isn't going to be much for you here, but those who like to see their grey matter challenged will find that Faraday Protocol is worth a look.

Mayhem Brawler on Xbox doesn’t do anything remarkable that can’t already be experienced in far better games elsewhere, especially since there is no shortage of beat ‘em up titles on the Xbox platform as is. This is a title worth checking out if you have already exhausted all the other alternatives and need another beat ‘em up fix.

If you haven’t played Splitgate but are looking for a new shooter to try out then it is most definitely recommended. 1047 Games have done a great job with server support and connection times have continued to improve since first launch.

There may only be an hour or two of action in NO THING, but it’s that rarest of things in gaming today. That is, a uniquely enjoyable experience which is difficult to put into words, but worth sitting down with and checking out for yourself. You could say there's nothing quite like it.

Foreclosed is a game of two halves. The story and world are both intriguing, hooking you in from the very start. The writing and its use of comic book framing are good too, as are the inclusion of some clever gameplay devices which are used in terms of hacking, movement, and augmentations. But it's the shooting that completely lets Foreclosed down.