Andrew Donovan
Fe's best moments are built around its narrative themes of the connectedness of the natural world, but its platforming and open-world ambitions can't compete with recent titans in those genres.
Into the Breach borrows confidently from FTL's successes, but differentiates itself as a tight, highly replayable tactics game built around avoiding non-combatant casualties and collateral damage.
CHUCHEL aims to be a mostly comedic turn for Amanita Design and succeeds due to a winning combination of idiosyncratic aesthetic choices and streamlined point-and-click mechanics.
Orwell: Ignorance is Strength approaches the relevance to which it aspires, but not until late in its final act.
Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition is the definitive Warriors game, but The Legend of Zelda gets nothing out of this relationship.
Little Nightmares is a lean experience that plays out like a creepy Germanic fairy tale rendered in a beautiful, but unsettling approximation a stop-motion film.
Mario Tennis Aces is the definitive series entry. Camelot has firmly established what it means to Mario-ize an already solid tennis foundation.
The Path of Motus is a competent, sometimes fun indie game with a naive take on the nature of bullying.
Donut County is a singular experience that transcends its simple, but potent core mechanic thanks to its idiosyncratic humor, clever gameplay twists, and a gleeful sense of what makes swallowing the world into a hole so cathartic.
Two Point Hospital follows through on its lofty goals of bringing an old favorite into a new era, and in doing so, it has eclipsed many of its genre contemporaries and predecessors alike.
Light Fingers fills a gap in the Switch's library, offering a charming and exclusive indie couch co-op game. With a bit of word of mouth, it has the potential to become a sleeper hit.
Starlink: Battle for Atlas preserves some of the complexity that makes deep space sims so rewarding by striking a healthy between fidelity and delight; a complicated toys-to-life scheme may dampen the experience for some, however.
By hewing close to genre origins, both visually and thematically (though not without some genuine innovations of his own), Lucas Pope has delivered one of the best games of the year, and certainly one of the best murder mystery games of all time.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses brings the tactical and emotional goods to the Nintendo Switch; despite some rough spots, this entry is a series best.