Beautiful Desolation may have some gorgeous pre-rendered backgrounds, but its impenetrable plot, two-dimensional characters, maddening indirect quests, and cryptic puzzles make it very hard to recommend to anyone but diehard fans of obtuse point-and-click adventures.
Pathway is a serviceable roguelite built around the fun idea of tailing Nazis across the desert in a jeep. However it lacks personality, character and narrative worth getting invested in. Its combat will satisfy for a time but quickly becomes too familiar for genre fans, and too dull for anyone else to jump aboard.
Biomutant is an ambitious animal populated open-world with so much to do most players could spend 60-70 hours exploring without seeing everything. However, size is its downfall. The player will get lost, and bogged down in the morass of thousands of side quests, thousands of superfluous items, before they realise there’s not much plot to hang it all from. Add a number of glitches at launch, no lock-on in combat, and a narrator that will drive many players to distraction, and sadly Biomutant does not live up to its lofty ambitions.
Retro Machina is a charming and well-constructed Metroidvania about a little robot who dares to question its existence. The beautiful graphics and crumbling art deco world will impress, and its fun but challenging combat and robot slaving puzzles will keep many players satisfied for the entirety of its 10-hour run time.
Though it’s pretty derivative, Devil Slayer Raksasi is a notable take on the roguelike. Its directly overhead camera perspective is novel but serves really to draw you too far out of the action, and its randomly earned drops leave it straddling the line between roguelite and roguelike. The real problem is that most of its other elements have been seen before and in better games.
Lasting a few fun hours, Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion is a simple but effective Zelda-like adventure in a colourful veggie-filled dystopia. However, this salad dodger’s gameplay is derivative of dozens of other better games, and it doesn’t really do anything to explore its novel concept.
On the surface Poison Control looks to be cut from the same cloth as Persona, brimming with cute characters, witty script and changing hearts. But under the poison mires you need to clear and the poor shooting, the gameplay lacks polish and chokes on repetition, and the story often descends into caricature and mishandles a sexual assault. Its style is really only skin deep.
With a fun addictive gameplay loop, Astro Aqua Kitty is often a purr-fect sequel. It features expanded level design and enhancements over the original. If you liked the first, you’ll like this, but seven out of ten cats would say it’s missing anything to truly make it memorable, rather than just a quirky shmup.
Narita Boy is a feat of imagination, one of the most conceptually interesting games I’ve ever played. The retro world of the Digital Kingdom – its pixelart, design and art direction – are some of the most eye-catchingly beautiful ever committed to code. Its soundtrack is mesmerising, truly special synthwave. Narita Boy ends up more than the sum of its parts, going beyond the source code to deliver a game that should take its place alongside the greatest indies.
A unique and complex gem, Spacebase Startopia is an engaging and constantly interesting take on the management genre. The Sims in space is selling it very short, because it is much much more. On console however, it’s intricacy and scope are its undoing, causing severe slowdown, frame-rate issues and regular crashes. Its campaign is a fun set of tests, but free mode (just running your station without parameters) is easy to get completely engrossed in.
Kaze and the Wild Masks bounces right into that 2D platforming void left by Rayman. It’s full of vibrant level design, challenging and varied gameplay, ambidextrous ears, and lovely pixelart that will satisfy even the most demanding players. There’s not a lot left to do after you’re done, but the experience is a good one. Perhaps we’ve found a new platforming mascot?
What Synergia lacks in play, confining its players to a single advance-dialogue action, it makes up for in engrossing characters and story. Its cyberpunk world, lore, mysteries and soundtrack will draw you in, even if the central android/human love story is problematic and its ending very abrupt.
A satisfying reimagining of the classic ice-block puzzle with ninja and a revenge narrative, Red Ronin adds a slew of interesting takes on a formula thought exhausted. It’s tightly designed and demands your concentration. Revenge is a dish best served ice cold.
While its lack of any narrative and tangible reward is a shame, Curse of the Dead Gods is a strong and well-crafted roguelite experience with a meaty soulslike combat system, and a remarkable number of mechanics and systems all working seamlessly together.
With its anime-trope-filled story, and starkly unbalanced combat and upgrades, Metal Unit is a passable roguelite in a genre where there are far better options.
Redout Space Assault feels like two games; an enjoyable arcade shooter on rails, and a free-movement space-sim with no exploration. Glitches, unbalanced difficulty, and a lack of any worthwhile story weigh down what could have been much better.
Gods Will Fall should have been so much more fun. An average action-adventure with a few roguelike elements, it’s combat is both fiddly and too simplistic to engage. Its Gods fail to inspire, and its world lacks tangible reward, while hurting the player with its high-stakes warrior loss mechanic.
Ys IX Monstrum Nox may come from an established franchise, but it treads the line of least resistance, trying to be as safe as possible. While its painfully slow narrative ends strongly, combat remains its strongest asset. It takes no risks, ending up as an almost cookie-cutter version of the previous title in a different setting.
Project Starship X is a well put together retro shmup with tons of style. It’s simple and hones its small selection of moves into well-handled and white knuckle sections of gameplay. However it’s also relatively short, and lacks any real depth unless you’re a score-chaser.
For a game about spirits, Sense: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story is pretty soulless. A by-the-numbers backtracking horror game in the vein of Clock Tower, it’s structure and content feel lacklustre and a little disappointing if you went in expecting cyberpunk themes.