I ended up liking Expeditions: A MudRunner Game a lot, and keep going back to it almost daily. This is definitely going to be a game I have installed on both Switch and Steam Deck for the foreseeable future to play as a break from other releases. If you have the option to play on a current generation platform, I’d recommend getting Expeditions: A MudRunner Game there. The team has done a good job in bringing this full game to Switch despite its visual compromises. If the performance in handheld mode can be improved, this will be an easier game to recommend on Switch.

While a few aspects of Buckshot Roulette won’t work for some like the art style, I loved the game, and my main complaint is the lack of Steam Cloud support right now. It plays and looks great on Steam Deck from start to finish and is an easy recommendation at its low asking price. I’m glad I didn’t look into it before playing, because Buckshot Roulette has been one of the nicest surprises of 2024 so far on Steam Deck. I look forward to checking out the multiplayer and console ports later this year.

In its current state, Krimson desperately needs some accessibility options when it comes to the screen shake effect. I love the gameplay, level design, aesthetic, and music, but the aforementioned screen shake and clarity issues in some situations hold it back from being an easy recommendation. It also suffers from noticeable input lag and some unstable performance on Switch. I hope these can be addressed because Krimson deserves better. Right now, I’d recommend trying the demo on Steam to get a taste of the game before buying it.

In a lot of ways, playing Open Roads felt like I just experienced a bigger budget and more ambitious take on Gone Home that forgot what made me love that game in the first place. I wish the narrative struck the same chord with me, but it just felt haphazard in some areas. I don’t want to be too harsh on the game because I did like many things and enjoyed the overall experience, but it made me wish for more after all these years.

I actually really enjoyed playing through Xak here, but unless you’re able to understand Japanese I’d strongly caution against picking this release up. You can enjoy poking at it a bit using the included bookmarks, but actually playing the game requires understanding the text. Only the boldest of adventurers, equipped with Japanese dictionaries and/or translation software, need apply. I hope D4Enterprise can figure out a better solution for this kind of thing going forward, but I suspect this is just how it’s going to be.

Hebereke Enjoy Edition offers up one of the NES’s lesser-known greats with a fine assortment of options and extras to help it shine even brighter. While the unusual approach to translating the game is not ideal, it’s hard to hold it against the game too much. Hebereke/Ufouria is a spectacular game that is still as entertaining as ever, and one I would heartily recommend to anyone.

One Last Breath has some good qualities, but they’re counter-balanced by pacing issues, dull puzzle designs, and an overall excess of vagueness. There is some optional content to help extend things, but it ends up feeling like a chore to complete. Some of the sights and sounds are worth experiencing, but I found myself bored with this game at least as often as I found myself entertained.

If you’re looking for an official way to play the NES Felix the Cat, this is certainly the most affordable way to do so. It’s a pricy cart in the aftermarket, so having it widely available again along with its Game Boy counterpart is welcome. The game itself is a pleasing romp, albeit not much more than that. Still, I can’t help but wish there were some extras here. Every game has a story behind its creation, and telling this one would have helped make the package more special. Alas, we just get the game and a couple variants of it in a plain brown bag. Not bad, but it could have been so much better.

Pepper Grinder is an enjoyable, unique platformer with a zippy pace, interesting mechanics, and some cool level designs. The boss battles are a bit clunky and only subtract from what is otherwise a very tight experience. It’s also worth noting that the game is quite brisk in its run-time, so do take that into account before buying. I personally think it ends a little too soon, but that’s not a terrible problem for a game to have.

For some fans of the original, Not Tonight 2 might feel erratic in some ways, but I enjoyed it almost as much as the original on Switch. I recommend it to fans of the original and those who enjoy Papers Please. It just needs some performance improvements in certain areas.

I love Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective far too much. I’ve bought every single version of it over the years including multiple copies of the DS game. It was always a 5/5 game with its superb story, characters, puzzles, and music, so it is unfortunate that this new version from Capcom is a bit lacking when it comes to how it handles modern mobile screen sizes and its lack of cloud saves. I’m glad we have a version of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective on mobile that supports modern devices and operating systems, but Capcom should’ve done a bit better in some areas.

Crypt Stalker offers up some decent, cheap, Castlevania-like thrills. You get a solid bang for your gaming buck, with plenty of stages to fight through and a few interesting extra modes to enjoy. Sadly, the lack of in-game button mapping coupled with a reversed default layout for jumping and attacking can make this game very hard to enjoy if you’re a few decades invested into the usual button assignments. Hopefully the publisher sees fit to update this with an option to reassign the controls.

Princess Peach: Showtime! sometimes feels a little too scattered for its own good, but the gameplay variety and usual Good-Feel relaxed atmosphere make this a nice game to chill out with over the course of a weekend or two. If you’re not interested in replaying stages to find hidden goodies, this might be a bit too brief and breezy a game. The game also sorely needs an option to skip the lengthy cutscenes when going back into previously-cleared plays. Overall, this is a solid outing for gaming’s most famous princess, one that easily out-does her Nintendo DS star debut. Here’s hoping it’s just the start of her adventures.

Dungeon Drafters is a decent roguelite game with some enjoyable card mechanics and an above-average level of polish. For players who aren’t too concerned about gameplay balance, there’s a lot to like here. Unfortunately, a few design decisions feel like they’re at odds with the deck customization gimmick that runs at the core of the game and keep it from being all it probably could be. This wouldn’t be my first choice in the genre on the Switch by any means, but if you chew this kind of game up and spit it out then it will keep you happy for a little while.

The early experience can be very frustrating as you get a feel for when you should press on and when you should head back to town. Then you settle into a groove, and it feels good in a fairly mindless way. Then it starts to get a little repetitive, because the game never really tries anything too different and there certainly isn’t much in the way of a plot to keep you going. Grinding-as-lotto makes it an easy game to pick up and put down, and the absence of plot or direction means it’s one of those rare RPGs that you truly can digest in small bites over the course of a long period of time. It serves a very specific need, but if you have that need it does a great job of handling it.

Quilts and Cats of Calico is officially marked as Steam Deck Playable by Valve, but it really should just be Verified. Everything works perfectly including online multiplayer with turn notification support, and it looks gorgeous on the Steam Deck’s screen. Quilts and Cats of Calico is an easy recommendation for anyone looking for a relaxing blend of a puzzle and strategy game.

If you’re looking for a new relaxing puzzle game to sink your teeth into, Sokobond Express is excellent. I haven’t even bothered trying this docked yet because it feels so perfect in handheld mode on the Steam Deck OLED. This is another win for Draknek and Friends, and I can’t wait to see what developer José Hernández does next.

If you’re an RPG fan who likes a good battle system or character customization systems, you’ll find a wealth of enjoyment in Adventure to Fate Lost Island. If you’re looking for an intricate story, hot graphics, or a fancy world to explore, this might not be your cup of tea. You could certainly levy the accusation at Lost Island that it perhaps doesn’t push its design in new directions enough when compared to its predecessor, but what might have felt like going to the well one too many times in 2018 instead comes across as rather refreshing in 2024. Easily worth the asking price, and a game that will do a nice job of filling the RPG lover’s time for hours upon end.

Hades on iOS is incredible. While it has two things I’d love to see fixed in updates, I have no hesitation in recommending it for anyone with a Netflix subscription. The wait for Hades on mobile has been long, but Supergiant Games delivered an excellent version of one of the best games in years with no compromises on iOS here.

Kingdom Come Deliverance: Royal Edition brings the game to the Nintendo Switch in about as good a form as the hardware is capable of, thanks to the talented and experienced folks at Saber Interactive. While there is no mistaking this for the versions on more powerful hardware, this isn’t a bad way to play the game at all. It’s another “impossible port" to enjoy on the go for Switch owners.

If you’re willing to take on the not inconsiderable task of playing through an action-RPG in Japanese, Ys II is a lot of fun. The music is excellent, and it’s surprisingly playable for a game of its time and place. That said, the language barrier is once again very real with this release, and that means that despite this being an enjoyable game and likely the only release of Ys II we’re likely to see on Switch, I can only give it a light recommendation.

While I need more time to see the story to its conclusion and explore more of the vocations and world, Dragon's Dogma 2 is an uncompromised Dragon's Dogma experience that basically does everything I liked in the original better. It is an incredible RPG, but one that isn't without its flaws. I kept thinking to myself how this is a game that I can't believe exists, but here we are. Kudos to Capcom for greenlighting this and I really wish there was a big box PC release for it with a cloth map and artbook. It is that kind of game. In its current state though, I don't recommend playing Dragon's Dogma 2 on Steam Deck. Grab it on PS5 or Xbox Series X if you have those options available. [Review in Progress]

Inkulinati is a very interesting and challenging game at higher difficulties that asks a lot from the player, but those who put in the effort will enjoy the depth and replay value here. The medieval manuscript aesthetic is gorgeous and I ended up loving the blend of roguelite and turn-based strategy gameplay after spending time with the tutorial. If you do plan on getting Inkulinati don’t skip the lengthy tutorial available. I’m glad it finally hit consoles and also has a great Switch port now.

It’s nothing fancy, but if you’re in the mood for a simple yet engaging puzzle game, Match Village might be what you’re after. It suffers from having very little identity of its own and it gets a bit repetitive once you’ve worked out the basic flow, but I’d imagine at this price point people are willing to accept a game that will only provide a temporary and quickly forgotten engagement.

I agree with the sentiment of Limited Run Games on Plumbers Don’t Wear Ties: Definitive Edition. We shouldn’t only preserve and make accessible the good games from gaming history. The bad stuff has its place too, at least in the context of the medium as an art form. But this is also a product, and taken in that context I have a really hard time recommending this. The game itself is as awful as advertised, and while there has been a good effort made here to provide a lot of extra material, I didn’t come away from this with any real insight into how this whole mess happened or even really why we should care about it specifically. There’s probably a story here, but it’s one this release doesn’t do a good job of telling.

Contra: Operation Galuga is a really good run-and-gun action game, one worthy of the name it bears even if it feels somewhat crushed under it at times. I think it’s a Contra game that Contra fans will enjoy, and we don’t see those all that often anymore. The biggest problems here are specific to this version, with an inconsistent framerate that never gets as high as you would like and input lag that makes an already tough game harder in the worst possible way. If all you have is a Switch, there is still some enjoyment to be had here, but those with literally any other option should probably exercise it.

For its low asking price, I have no complaints with Summerhouse, barring a minor controller-related issue I ran into on Steam Deck. Barring that, it plays great on the system, and looks gorgeous on the Steam Deck OLED. I hope it does come to iPad in the future as well as this is something I’d love installed on every device I own. If you’ve wanted to build your own nostalgic dream house or just play around with a creative interactive toy, Summerhouse is for you.

Yearly sports games are always hard to recommend without caveats given how they sometimes don’t change much between releases, but Visual Concepts has gotten to a stage where the WWE 2K games are really good for the most part. WWE 2K24 has a few issues on Steam Deck holding it back, but is otherwise a very good portable wrestling experience. It is worth grabbing if you skipped the last few games for sure.