For little more than a fancy new plastic fiver, RunGunJumpGun is really worth picking up if it’s a genre you get on well with. Levels may be short, but there’s a lot of them and the challenge more than makes up for their length. You do have to be a glutton for punishment to get the most out of the game, and even then the constant cycle of failing and retrying a level can get a little dull after a while.
For a game that’s so simple, Reigns is very easy to get absorbed in. Your kingdom evolves in a much more subtle way than your traditional management sim, but also in a more meaningful way. While there’s a lack of variety in cards that tend to crop up, there’s also enough depth and variety in general to keep you going for quite some time.
I'd love to be able to give Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter a stronger review, but it simply isn't possible. The story is solid, if a little unusual for a Sherlock Holmes tale, and the collection of mechanics and mini-games that could easily feel thrown together actually work well together, leaving you guessing about what comes next.
In terms of those new mechanics, there’s a few new concepts to deal with. One of these is a twist on an element introduced in the Japanese section of the main game, where a high speed train from outside of your main network would arrive from the side of the screen, forcing you to work quickly to deliver it to the right station. The DLC version, however, features a huge train that barrels across the screen, serving only to wipe out any of your trains that lie in its path.
Ultimately Kingdom is a game that's easy to love. Combining exploration, micromanagement and strategy in a way that continually feels personal and intimate is no easy task, but it achieves it by forcing you to do everything yourself. While simplicity is the key to the game's mechanics, keeping everything on a very human scale is probably at the core of how it makes you feel. Very few strategy or management games manage to present things on a street level scale, but Kingdom does it perfectly and it's all the better for it.
Even if Prison Architect didn't come with a thought provoking, if short, campaign, it'd be easy to recommend to anyone with an interest in management sims. That addition not only brings some depth to the game, but it also serves as one of the most enjoyable and comprehensive tutorials I've ever played in a game.
Issues with the sound design aside, Lumino City is truly wonderful. The writing sparkles, puzzles are well put together and fun while requiring you to work for the solution just the right amount, and the visuals really do feel special. With a length that comes in somewhere in the eight to ten hour range, depending largely on how good you are at solving puzzles, it's of a length that will leave you wanting more, although I fear it may take State of Play quite a while to craft something like this again.