So Many Games
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Plenty of skateboard games nail what skating is all about, even if your opinion on what that actually is differs. From Tony Hawk to the Skate and Olli Olli series, there’s always a part of skateboarding culture that is perfectly translated. Skate Story doesn’t try to be any of those games and still nails that feeling too, even if you are playing as a glass demon trying to swallow the moon. Cruising around has rarely felt this good, and the surrounding atmosphere is just brilliant, from the setting to the music and everything in between.
For a series that has experienced highs and lows, Anno 117: Pax Romana is an astounding high that proves just how good the city simulation genre can be, with a near-flawless approach to gameplay, UI and visual design – the only thing holding the game back is a story lacking in weight, with the female protagonist having an interesting subplot, but the majority of the main story boiling down to a slight inconvenience in the overall experience.
A heartfelt, visually striking Metroidvania with meaningful storytelling and sharp platforming. While its boss encounters and accessibility suite fall short of its strongest ideas, Constance delivers an emotionally rich journey that’s well worth experiencing.
Possessor(s) is flash, stylish and fabulous in its presentation, but where the strong visuals and weighty soundtrack offer a glimpse of an incredible game under the surface, the mediocre pacing and unusual design choices hamper the experience. Even so, Metroidvania fans should definitely give the game their time to enjoy a compelling, well-written story.
Forestrike is a gorgeous-looking game with an innovative two-part combat system, which adds a striking sense of freshness to its roguelite form. However, the cerebral combat can feel rather slow and constrictive at times, and the game’s meticulous, mechanical complexity and harsh punishment for small mistakes might be too much for some – myself included. But those with the skill, reflexes and patience to master the intricate combat might well be swept off their feet, in more ways than one.
Morsels is like watching a Darwinistic ritual in real time of mould spores duking it out on a slice of margherita that even Pizza Rat ignored. It’s visually captivating, and there’s always a new body horror to look at. But like the food bits scattered around the levels, it grows stale run after run. There’s a bit too much fuzz that clouds up the systems, making them feel too shallow to invest much energy into.
Have you ever wanted to spend a semester at uni trying to avert the apocalypse with a bunch of friends? Then you can’t go wrong with Demonschool, as it pays homage to horror media from past to present, all the while bringing the turn-based RPG genre into modern times. You might get lured in by the gorgeous visuals, but it’s the stellar combat that will get you hooked and will keep you coming back to the game again and again.
There are few places that can match the modern history of a city like Berlin. The past century has seen regimes rise and fall in a massive way, due to which we often forget that the city was inhabited by regular people like ourselves. These are stories of victims, of those who refused to let these huge events stop their lives, of survivors. They are also tales of the beauty of the human spirit. The Berlin Apartment is a beautiful testimony to the perseverance of the people of Berlin and to human kindness itself.
A confident and compelling Early Access build with standout music, addictive loops, and engaging dungeon design. A little unfocused at times, but never enough to dull its shine. If this is the foundation, 1.0 is poised to be something special.
This cosy crafting survival game has a charming storybook art style, but its gameplay and associated systems turn it into somewhat of a slog. The fiddly inventory management, the lack of a map, the painful combat, the repetition, the less than compelling characterisation, and the general grind of it all eventually wore me down over my 14-hour playtime. However, for those who love the world enough – and there’s certainly plenty to love – and who enjoy its mode of storytelling, these elements might be much easier to forgive. Unfortunately, this wasn’t quite the case for me, and I’ll content myself with the never ending toil of my own household drudgery back in the real world.
Having not been all that good at video games for most of my life, I fell in love with games that focused on great stories, usually with interactions a bit more limited than in fully fledged RPGs and the like. It’s why I still adore series like Life is Strange and (most of) the Telltale games. AdHoc Studios takes the foundations of those games and brings them up to the next level. The polish is astounding, with perfect performances, brilliant art and music, and fantastic, thoughtful writing hidden underneath a heap of swear words. Dispatch is brilliant, and you should play it.
Gigantic swords are unwieldy and therefore unrealistic. Gigasword takes this truism to heart in the most creative way in its Metroidvania puzzles. Gigasword recalls the game design of an older time with all its fist-pumping, hard-won victories but with all its baggage too. There’s little exposition for mechanics, or they remain unexplained, leaving you to trial and error to make progress. However, smartly designed boss fights, beautifully interwoven levels, and powerful abilities make Gigasword an easy game to recommend to Metroidvania fans searching for the latest and greatest in the genre.
Windswept is a charming, nostalgic love letter to 90s platformers, packed with personality, collectables, and thoughtful mechanics. Its visuals, music, and fluid gameplay hit the sweet spot between homage and freshness. The difficulty spike in later stages may frustrate casual players like me, but for enthusiasts and completionists, it offers a rewarding challenge.
Goodnight Universe uses its innovative camera-tracking technology to continue to break the barriers between the player and the narrative, resulting in a truly immersive and emotional experience that is let down at times by the goofy turns the story takes and some frustrating timed gameplay sections. But despite its flaws, it still made me feel something I’ve never felt in a game before – unconditional love – and for that, it is a treasured and recommended experience.
Relatively minuscule nitpicks aside, consider Absolum a must-play for any fan of not only beat ‘em ups but action games in general. Its build system is masterful, offering near infinite replayability, and if 2025 is the year of fantastic parry systems in video games, Absolum stands tall with the best parries of them all. This is the follow-up to Streets of Rage 4 that I’ve been waiting half a decade for, and it just so happens to have arrived in the form of a roguelite; arcade-styled games don’t get much better than this.
Fading Serenades gracefully does not shy away from contemporary issues. It wraps the conversations we’re having daily about pollution, AI, and human connection in a candy-coated treat. The art direction, music, and general moment-to-moment play never cease to tire the player. However, optimising routes through fetch quests made the world go stale quickly.
Ball x Pit might just be the most addictive game I’ve ever played. Whether that’s a good or bad thing is up to you to decide, but I can at least attest that it did not turn me into that lizard-brained, slack-jawed caveman living purely off of instinct and the desire to watch numbers go up that other games of this ilk do. Put that quote in your accolades trailer, Devolver. I dare you.
In spite of some minor visual issues, Bye Sweet Carole manages to excel in all aspects of design, storytelling and characterisation. Gameplay is forgiving and well-paced without becoming irksome but largely plays second best to the game’s narrative prowess.
There are so many builds to try and so many ways to get points; it’s addicting, and it scratched my love of gambling without any real-world consequences. It’s been a while since I’ve gone to bed after playing a game and woken up with the itch to jump right back in. I really think that with a few tweaks and a way to permanently have its amazing music play, CloverPit could stand alongside the games that it was inspired by.
Rarely do I get so invested in an ongoing, long-running story and lore-based series like this, but the mix of interpersonal melodrama and larger-scale politics was handled immaculately here, to the point where I’ve had to fight myself from looking up what happens to certain characters on fan wikis in the hopes that I won’t be waiting too long until a hypothetical 2nd Chapter. Pair that with one of the most interesting, fluid, and fast-paced battle systems I’ve experienced in the genre, one which was constantly introducing new wrinkles and tools to play with, and you can consider me a full-on Trails fan now