With no words, Fire: Ungh's Quest provides a relatable hero in a quirky puzzle adventure. The imagery is playful and well rendered, and the audio is good with both sound effects and music. Playability is better in handheld mode than docked, but it's worth a go either way for those who like puzzlers.
Space Commander: War and Trade can be enjoyable for genre enthusiasts and people who really like some commerce mixed into their space-sim adventures. For the more action-oriented player, however, this one can become a bit of a grind. Good effort, but not what I would call a must-have game.
As a grid-based, first-person, action/adventure RPG, Vaporum: Lockdown offers plenty of gameplay elements to keep you busy. The dungeon-crawling game play is straightforward and not overly complicated, despite a good number of puzzles sprinkled in. In short, this is a solid prequel to the original Vaporum. Have fun exploring.
All things considered, Rip Them Off is a good, unique tower defense game with a comically cynical viewpoint. It has a limited number of levels, but it is also not very expensive, making it an ironically good deal considering the subject matter.
If you're down with OCD, (yeah, you know me,) Faircroft's Antiques: Home for Christmas Collector's Edition will keep you staring at the screen for a while. It may feel a little more appropriate around Christmas time, but fans of hidden object games will find it plays well enough any time.
If you are new to this series or simulation strategy games in general, expect to spend a couple of hours just in the tutorials of Romance of the Three Kingdoms XIV: Diplomacy and Strategy Expansion Pack. The gameplay is complex, but not overly convoluted. As you gain experience and get familiar with the available options and the general flow, it becomes a satisfying adventure.
Disjunction is an action/arcade RPG with an effective emphasis on stealth combat-you can't just stroll through shooting people. The look and feel of the game are slightly nostalgic, and there is some variety with the three characters you get to play. If you like sneaking around, this one is a fun option.
Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of The Forest offers adventure and visual novels fans a slow buildup of character development, interpersonal relations, and plot, then a really quick finish with an anticlimactic ending that left me wondering, "Was that it?" Its saving grace is that you play through more than once to see where you can take the decisions and how your character will end up.
Kingdom Tales 2 is almost the exact same thing as its predecessor, making it a decent simulation strategy game regardless of whether you played the original. There's no real incentive to play both, but fans of the genre will find enjoyment in at least one of them.
If you like resource management sims, Kingdom Tales is a fun game that's safe for any age. For those who are even mildly down with OCD (yeah, you know me), it can be a compelling exercise in keeping all the wheels spinning and playing all the levels to the end.
I have played a few card-style games (IRL and digital), and DungeonTop is a pretty good option. If you are in the mood for a more casual dungeon crawl, this is a fun game.
SYNTHETIK: Ultimate provides a good old-fashioned shoot-'em-all with plenty of tactical difficulty. There are enough levels, avatar classes, and weapons to keep a gamer busy for a fair number of hours. The game could stand some controls and training improvement, but it is a worthy action/arcade entry.
Star Renegades is a highly replayable puzzle/strategy RPG with a couple of interesting twists and loads of play time. Although the path through the game is linear, the rougelite features keep things from being overly repetitive. This is a good value and a solid entry for the Nintendo Switch.
Unhatched is sometimes a bit odd and repetitive (it may take a few passes to get your card play order squared away), but there is some fun to be had in this puzzle adventure card game.
Ramp Car Jumping is a physics-based puzzler that lacks creativity and longevity. It provides a couple hours of silly fun for one or two players on the Nintendo Switch, but it never feels like more than a free-to-play mobile title.
Tennis World Tour 2 is a complex sports sim that features some real nuances of playing tennis. Unfortunately, that results in convoluted controls with little instruction on how to use them. It'll keep hard-core sports gamers busy for a while, but is not a very good option for casual tennis fans.
With over 100 levels to battle through, plenty of loot to collect, numerous bosses to take down and even some prisoners to rescue, Barbearian will keep even the most seasoned of adventurers very busy and highly entertained for quite some time. Besides, who doesn't like hacking at sword-wielding skeletons?
Foregone is a good 2D action platformer, and worth a play-through. I've played many games that are easy to put down when the review is done, but Foregone is staying in my rotation for a while.
Great Conquerer: Rome may not be the best tactical sim out there, but it's a solid game that's fun to play. It offers plenty of tasks to perform, places to see, enemies to kill, and territories to conquer, placing its strategy gaming value well above the asking price.
If you really want to try your hand at captaining a Ship of the Line, go ahead and give Her Majesty's Ship a try. But because of the game's focus on frustrating micromanagement, you may want to keep a weather-eye on the horizon for something better.