There’s no doubt that The Red Exile – Survival Horror is well put together and it does deliver an interesting concept and thrill ride, but there are plenty of other games in this genre that provide a more diverse experience.

The Bridge Curse: Road to Salvation delivers a chilling and superb bit of horror storytelling, complete with some fun jump scares.

Cats and the Other Lives is clever and inventive. The whole concept of having a cat as the protagonist and finder of the narrative is excellent. But you always get the feeling that this cat isn't worried about how things play out, acting as a bystander to the events which fold.

It may not be for everyone with the mix of death and a cartoony world possibly proving to be a hard mix. Maybe the price is a bit high too, but you’ll mostly find an amazing adventure to be had should you take in The Oregon Trail.

When all the aspects of Call of the Wild: The Angler come together, the resulting mix is actually a pleasant place to spend a few hours. Driving to a new lake, having a few casts and seeing what you can find is remarkably zen; a very calming experience.

We’re still riding that feeling - the feeling of having zero expectations, only for Ashina: The Red Witch to grab hold of our attention for hours. Ah, if only more games surprised us like this.

The mission to bring Age of Empires IV: Anniversary Edition from PC to Xbox is a successful one. Age of Empires IV may not make history buffs out of the uninitiated, but it is a compelling enough entry for those who are interested in the genre or the subject matter.

Adore is simple by design but this means enjoyment is spread more thinly the longer you play. Its depth of customisation options and range of items to acquire will keep your interest for a while, but before long Adore can feel like a little bit of a grind.

Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy is a co-op puzzling masterclass encapsulated by a wonderfully charming world. If you’ve ever played Trine before, it’s more of the same brilliance in regards to creative platforming puzzles and gorgeous environments.

The Let’s Build a Zoo: Aquarium Odyssey campaign is an excellent extension of an already brilliant game. It’s fantastic how much freshness the aquatic theme brings to the table in terms of tasks, buildings, and decorative pieces.

The intro promises some future dramatic, potentially even salacious turns, but not one of the four different stories delivers. It’s all too tentative. In the end, Embraced by Autumn could have done with just a little more confidence and sass.

The excellent on-field action in Madden NFL 24 is badly let down by the performance elsewhere. The menus are in desperate need of an update, and the shallow modes like Madden Ultimate Team and Superstar mode offer little in the way of variation.

The Many Pieces of Mr. Coo is a free-wheeling, surrealist graphic adventure that’s so beautiful that sometimes we just want to sit back and admire.

Colour-matching aside, Overdriven Evolution is a beast. It’s one of the most over-the-top shooters we’ve played, lighting up like a pinball table as you play. But it’s also stacked, absolutely full to the brim with game modes and challenges

Beautiful Sakura: Surfing Club is perhaps the most cynical, half-hearted attempt at weedling £10 out of someone’s pockets, and no amount of baby-oil and AI-generated creepy-fingers can justify its existence. If this is the future of gaming then stop the bus, because we’re getting off.

There’s a high chance that you’ll find the controls of Ultimate General: Gettysburg to be a big issue; one that will affect your enjoyment of the game over its campaign running time. If you can see through that though, then this is a tightly focused game with some brilliant AI and battle tactics to be enjoyed.

Kentucky Route Zero: TV Edition for the Xbox Series X|S is a bit of a strange beast. The narrative is engaging as it meanders to an end goal, but the journey from A to B is pretty abstract.

I could have done without the stealth sections but if you are truly after a new experience that takes you to a far away land, Chants of Sennaar will be right up your street.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre is well worth a look. I mean, what have you got to lose? Except possibly your life?

Moving Out 2 is a cracking game. Single player is tougher, no doubt about it, but the game really comes alive in multiplayer. With a host of levels, and a lot of objectives within those levels, Moving Out 2 is a game that you'll have a lot of fun playing.

We can’t wave the red flag fast and hard enough: DPS Idle is not ready to play - not by a long shot. Its progression is broken, and - more heinously - the purchases aren’t working either. It might be worth trying as a demo for ‘what might be’, once fixes have been applied, but it’s otherwise a waste of time. Some people would say that about idle games as a whole but, in this instance, they’d be right.

Cheap and cheerful, Running Fable isn’t one that will appeal to single players or those looking for narrative. It's all about hitting the mean online streets, having quick fun with others to see who comes out with bragging rights.

EVERSPACE 2 will hold your interest well. It’s likely to be a game that you go back to, time and time again, working with new loot and trying a variety of different approaches.

There’s no doubting the importance of what Acceptance is trying to get across, but it lacks tact. The concept is a clever one, with a well-constructed atmosphere surrounding it and a selection of intriguing characters to boot. But focusing on the gameplays aspects and it’s incredibly boring.

It’s difficult to weigh up episode three of The Expanse: A Telltale Series, because the positives are almost totally cancelled out by the negatives.

Strike Force Kitty on Xbox swallowed up our attention for hours on end, and those hours were great.

Shootvaders The Beginning takes one too many leafs out of Space Invaders’ book. It makes each level near identical to the last, just with more incessant bullets coming your way.

For some, Family Man will feel like a delicious challenge. For us, it made for a dark, relentless struggle that impressed with its scale, but was a few postcodes away from fun. Often, that was because bugs and glitches were waiting for us with baseball bats.