Taking the world established within Gold Club: Nostalgia and pivoting to the platforming genre, The Cub is a continuation of a stunning visual style and a contemplative narrative that feels more topical than ever.

Paper Trail is a perfect example of a simple but engaging mechanic done well. Its difficulty is spicy enough to make you feel like a moderate origami genius, but not so difficult that you want to throw your crudely crafted swan into the fiery pits of hell. Folding reality itself may perhaps have lent itself to a bit more metastory meat, but a chill colourful aesthetic and a nice feeling of momentum should be more than enough to sate the average puzzle fan.

A playable vacuum is enough of a sell for me. Still, the goofy premise, excellent level design and entertaining gameplay ensures that Justice Sucks will strike a chord with anyone who enjoys chasing a high score.

Bokeh Game Studio's debut horror title is a game entirely out of time with its genre contemporaries and all the more wild, compelling, and beautiful for it. Satisfying combat and a generational eye for tone and design collide in the year's strangest beast.

Crysis Trilogy Remastered brings a previously ambitious line of games into the spotlight of consoles. The "Can it run Crysis?" meme will live on in our hearts forever, but these remasters show that many things can now run the infamous shooter.

Monster Hunter Rise is a big step forward for the Monster Hunter series, both in terms of its design and the quality of its PC port. The port is nothing groundbreaking, but the MH team has done themselves proud with this, and I’m just glad to be able to play this game at a high framerate.

Nioh 3 makes minor updates to the formula that was so successful in Nioh 2 but transplants it into a time-travelling open-world adventure. Asset recycling is a little egregious, but it's a tough new Nioh outing that fans of the series will eat up.

Creating a grand interplanetary civilisation is one thing, but managing the needs and supplies of the subjects is tough work. Before We Leave makes logistics an easy, streamlined process through an intuitive UI and readability across its design. The fun lays in ironing out the kinks in your immense system and achieving a sustainable economy, all to overcome impending doom. While there is some underlying mundanity, the overwhelming joy and optimism the game extrudes from the player cannot be understated. And hey, if you grow tired of the system, you can always sabotage it from the inside to try and teach your Peeps to live free and naked.

The HD-2D Remake renaissance is, gladly, here to stay. This glowed-up pair from Dragon Quest’s origins look, sounds, and feels fantastic while balancing innovations and classic frictions.

Rain On Your Parade encourages you to take something cutesy and adorable, and find your inner evil. Drink deep of the chaos a simple rain cloud can impart on the world as you ruin weddings, start fires and bring about the extinction of the dinosaurs. At the core of it all, ruining someone’s day has never been more fun.

Not at all what any Bayonetta fan might have expected, but when freed from the expectations of the franchise, Bayonetta Origins: Cereza and the Lost Demon stands on its own two feet as a charming, worthwhile, indie-inspired puzzle adventure game.

Busting a nut-based mystery such as this one involves two parts: clever thinking and intuition. NUTS is a beautiful game, in aesthetic, design and atmosphere.

BPM: Bullets Per Minute demands its pound of flesh in terms of initial difficulty, and many will find this off-putting. But persist and you'll be rewarded with a unique roguelike rhythm-based FPS with a metal soundtrack that slaps harder than the hand of God.

Those that love Mahokenshi will adore the fully realised blend of deck-building and digital board game, but will forget the threadbare mythological Southeast Asian theming.

Dandy Ace is solid roguelike that should appeal to fans of the genre. It’s a shame the story can’t be as magical as its setting and appearance, but at the very least the combat is engaging and the option to play your way is a welcome addition. If you’re willing to invest some time, there’s much to discover within.

This sequel to an already-decent entry in the Atelier franchise makes improvements in just about every area, giving fans good reason to reunite with Ryza and pals for another alchemy-filled adventure.

Smart puzzle design, stylish visuals, and a charming story make Midnight Girl a great option for those wanting an intriguing adventure experience.

It is very easy to get swept up by the plastic fantastic iconic imagery of the Hot Wheels franchise, with a clear dedication to true-to-life model cars, this game is a lot of fun if you don’t take it too seriously. Overall I enjoyed my time playing as multiple different vehicles, including bikes, however, my inner child may have found it repetitive outside of the custom building content. This game is sure to bring smiles to many small gamers’ faces as they zoom around the tracks, and I truly believe that is where this game will shine – with its intended audience, children.

Hell Is Us has a unique tone and setting that complements a deep combat system and exploration puzzle elements, but its complex layout and crisscrossing sidequests may have you begging for a map that the game proudly withholds.

Don't Forget Me is a highly polished short story hindered by its forgettable pixel art style, but its short length plays to its strengths. Highly recommended for fans of the cyberpunk genre, and for anybody keen to have their morality tickled.

With a heaping of exploration, a pinch of turn-based JRPG and wonderful visual novel finish, Haven takes its varied inspirations and bakes them into something sweet, layered and extremely satisfying.

Flaws and all, Ghostbusters has always been one of my favourites, but its video game history has been spotty at best. Luckily, Spirits Unleashed is easily one of the best iterations of the brand, an engaging multiplayer experience that both makes you really feel like a Ghostbuster but makes the task of being bad guy just as fun if not more so. It isn’t perfect, nothing across the history of busting ghosts has ever been, but the inclusion of bots and hopefully some future content updates means this isn’t going to die an unfortunate early death and become just another entry in Tobin’s Spirit Guide.

Pragmata is a surprisingly great homage to late-2000s survival horror and platforming classics with enough identity and sauce to shoot for the moon.

Grime packs a mean punch in both its platforming and combat, with a visual design that's worth writing home about. Its mediocre Metroidvania aspects are what keep it from being a must-play, however.

Oddworld: Soulstorm isn't without its issues, but the good far outweighs the bad. Its crafting system will prove controversial, but it is an overall boon to the game. A visual treat through and through that hits its stride after the first few levels.

I’ve already fired up a new save file just to get a taste of those first few hours where the way I ran my mascot business really mattered, and to re-experience the joy of immersing myself in Kaso-Machi and all of the strange and wonderful folks living there. There’s just something so oddly wonderful about this work, an unmistakably scrappy “indie” texture that permeates the piece. Go in expecting not to roleplay a savvy manager and talent agent, but to cosplay one in a world where a guy can be made of road signs and an asexual ex-yakuza can be hit on by a Tetris block.

Botworld Odyssey is the perfect creature-collecting game for all ages at any level of expertise, thanks to its fun and simple gameplay. Despite its repetitive nature, it has an abundance of Bots, enemies, biomes, quests, and game modes for players to experience for hours on end. Most of all, it has an interesting story that you can uncover at your leisure with no need to rush.

Focusing on having fun above all else, Riders Republic’s excellent open world, great disciplines and a huge amount of variation will keep you shredding snow and blasting through berms for a long time.