While Slay the Princess – The Pristine Cut is not a particularly long or complex game, it utilises everything in its arsenal incredibly well. It is packed with finely designed details which build into a wonderfully compelling game that makes excellent use of its tortuous pathways to make you feel as if your choices make a genuine impact.
Teslagrad 2 builds on already interesting mechanics to suit a beautiful new setting in a way that definitely pays off – and looks gorgeous doing it.
Duck Souls+ is simple, but it excels at what it does. It’s inexpensive and adorable. There are few key ingredients that it takes to make a good platformer and Duck Souls+ has them all.
With a lot of similarly styled games on the market right now, the vastness and the creativity of Chasm makes for a really fun take on a popular theme.
The story is fantastically tropey when it comes to the post-apocalyptic genre, which is admittedly getting a bit over-saturated in the contemporary pop culture market. But it is still a lot of fun and the thirty year anniversary of the inspiration behind it is definitely worth celebrating.
Motorcycle Mechanic Simulator has modest ambitions but between awkward controls and repetitive gameplay, it is just too bland and arduous to meet them.
Hell Pie has the beginnings of an entertaining game with a silly sense of humour and classic platformer action, which has sadly been scuppered on the Switch by a glitch that crashes the game as soon as you hit the second level.
The simplicity of Tiki Brawl is reflected in its low price. But it's still somewhat disappointing compared to the studio's other games.
The Stone of Madness has all the elements required for a fantastic stealth puzzle game – a gorgeous settng, an intriguing story, vibrant characters – but is sadly let down by bugs that cause it crash consistently in one place, leaving the otherwise absorbing story incomplete.
Rose and Camellia Collection offers a glimpse into an intriguing yet tragically under-developed world that has moments of great humour, but teases a much better game than it is. It is brief, inconsistent, and relies on its one unique (and undeniably fun) mechanic far too much to feel complete.
Despite great ideas at its foundation, Roller Drama has limited sports management features, minigames that drag and a mysterious dystopian setting that gets glossed over all too often.
The Suicide of Rachel Foster is well constructed when it comes to design and mechanics, but is let down if you stop to examine the plot for a moment. The deeper into the game you get, the more it feels like it's trying to shock rather than effectively engage with serious topics.
Freddy Spaghetti 2 has tidied up the bugs that wrecked its predecessor, but the mechanics don't live up to the potential for fun and silliness in the concept.
Leftovers KO! showcases some very fun art of foodstuffs dealing with a fierce blow. It's a fine little time-killer, but otherwise doesn't have much going for it to make it stand out from the crowd of other novelty fighting games.
One Last Breath is an ambitious game set in an artfully creepy world, with some great ideas in its foundation that unfortunately don't shine through as well as they could in its mechanics or storytelling.
Pokemon Scarlet and Violet is an imaginative reinvention of the iconic Pokemon adventure, with a heart wrenching story and a real sense of soul, which is let down by sloppy mechanics, half-fulfilled ideas and disappointingly common cut corners.
A sanitized retelling of the legend of Zorro with simple controls and an innocent sense of humor that largely achieves its goals as a companion game to the new cartoon.
Rotund Rebound is an ambitious sequel that retains its cute style and rapid pace, but gets somewhat lost in its new features.
Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are fine enough remakes for reliving some memories and sharing them with the next generation. But beneath the glow of nostalgia, there's a carelessness about their build that makes them fall short of expectations.
Virtuous Western is a quick, easy puzzle game with an 8-bit cowboy aesthetic and a speed run mode, but not much else to make it stand out from the wealth of similar games.