Rivals of Aether does excellently what every fighting game should achieve: being a joy to play and watch.

The biggest issue is just the lack of overall assistance. Sands of Salazaar opens the door, pushes you through, and says “have fun!” before running away and leaving you to figure everything out on your own. Gradually realizing how things work is part of the adventure, though when some of those things include basics such as how to use skills, it’s not quite so fun. These are all issues Han-Squirrel can resolve over time, though. Until then, Sands of Salazaar’s layers and intriguing character stories more than make up for the annoyances, especially for the asking price.

All in all, Wolfstride demonstrates how great a game can be when the characters in it are full of personality, and also succeeds in presenting a combat system that’s fun and challenging, without losing simplicity. Its characters are a bunch of lovely, lowly criminals that conduct themselves kind of aimlessly through life, failing upwards more than progressing, and perhaps, under all that rubbish you can find actually nice people with complex minds and even more complicated lives. But of course, Wolfstride is, first and foremost, a game about mechas demolishing each other, and the game never lets you forget it.

It wouldn’t be fair to Mechajammer not to acknowledge everything it tries to do and bring to the table, but in a world where I’m spoiled for choice when it comes to roleplaying games, mediocre just doesn’t cut it. In its current state, mediocre is the best that Mechajammer can hope to be. On paper, Mechajmmer has everything it needs to be a sleeper hit, but in reality, the only thing it’s hitting is the very bottom of my Steam library, where games I don’t finish go to be forgotten.

Clone Drone in the Danger Zone is both good fun, but also somewhat surprising in the story it tells. There’s a lot more to it than just swinging a sword around, but even if there wasn’t, having a big old flaming sword or a giant hammer and then slashing and smashing enemy bots is more than satisfying enough to hold most people’s attention.

Overall, Heavenly Bodies is a triumphant puzzle game. Its setting and premise are novel and excellently executed. The games succinct 5-7 playtime allows the game to not overstay its welcome and the excellent theming gives sensibility to what would otherwise be wholly nonsensical mechanics. Heavenly Bodies is a welcome addition to an already vibrant indie puzzle scene.

Though survival veterans from the likes of Rust or Valheim may not be swayed, Len’s focus as a thriving island adventure, where the focus is on fighting monsters and not the slots in your pack, give it just enough of an edge to stand out, rather than stand with its predecessors. [Early Access Score = 80]

What you’re left with is a decent game, and that’s disappointing because it could have been more. For some reason, Paradox played it safe and didn’t build on its own and the game’s strengths. If you want a different take on the genre, it’s worth picking up on sale, but there are better and more interesting examples to spend your time and money on.

There is plenty of fun to be had with Hammerting. The aesthetic is delightful, and when everything works as intended, time joyfully slips away. However, the aforementioned issues frequently rear their ugly heads and immediately halt the enjoyment as you’re forced to try and work around it. Despite the full release status, it still feels like Hammerting is in Early Access since it lacks the polish of some of its peers.

On its surface, Moncage does so many things I like. Its narrative is conveyed through interaction, rather than through text or cutscenes. Its predominant mechanic is clever. It’s short. But it stands as an example of just how easily a game can be undone by only one or two critical shortcomings. There’s a world in which a few chewy brain teasers would be enough for me to overlook some one-dimensional characters–this is a puzzle game after all. One-dimensional puzzles, though, are harder to forgive.

Decent production value and acting are all this has going for it. Even so, Bloodshore is one of many projects that don’t ever have to be interactive, and unfortunately, it won’t be the last of its kind.

On one hand, there are aspects that are brilliant and can fill you with great satisfaction when every piece of the puzzle falls into place. On the other hand, when the immersion is broken by obnoxious or random ways of finding the next clue, you’ll find your enjoyment of each case diminished.

I liked Unpacking very much. It’s complicated, but it’s as simple as a peanut butter sandwich, toasted in the sandwich press that you got three apartments ago.

Tunche best serves fans and friends of dishing knuckle sandwiches together, but doesn’t synchronise its genre mashups in a way that elevates it above the many RPG-tinted beat ‘em ups stomping around out there.

Even though I don’t see myself swapping out my go-to “rainy day” games like Stardew Valley or Moonlighter for Moonglow Bay anytime soon, I’m also not ready to say that I definitely won’t. The amount of progress that the game made in just a week and a single patch has given me nothing but hope for its future, and it’s a game I’ll be keeping an eye on in the weeks to come. Moonglow Bay also supports local coop, and while I’ll always support anything that allows me to play with friends, the game feels like an almost personal experience that I didn’t ever feel the urge to invite someone to share with me. So with that, I’ll leave you with my closing thoughts of Moonglow Bay: Not bad, cod be better.

These puzzles are the bite-sized, whimsical charm that propel Where Cards Fall, but it could still do with cutting the fat off its mind-boggling puzzles. Each time you’ve completed one of them, you’ll be introduced to an unskippable and largely non-interactive cutscene on some pivotal memory of the teenage protagonist, which feels like an obligatory and unnecessary inclusion after a while. My attention wanes, and I’m quite ready to move on from whatever larger-than-life dramatics, tenderness and awkwardness of the protagonist’s teenage years.

Ultimately, the only flaw was the sensation of wanting more of The Sundew. While its length can feel underwhelming, it is still an achievement since it’s developed by one person, which is even more admirable after seeing the quality of the final product. The fact that the game left me craving for more adventures like this speaks volumes of the developer’s dedication, as well as a testament to the beautifully presented cyberpunk adventure of The Sundew.

The neatest trick that Midnight Protocol pulled is that even if it probably does not depict hacking in the most realistic or accurate manner, it still encapsulates the fascination that most of us have around hacking.

Though the process of playing it can occasionally drift into tedium, it’s worth working through the repetition to see the game to its eventual conclusion. In Grotto your choices matter. But they matter in the same way your choices matter in the real world: in ways you can’t see in the moment and may never see at all.

Between its inspired sonics and literally off-the-wall goofiness, Heartless Dark is an admirable effort I wish I could recommend without reservation, but without knowing how reliably it will run, I can only hope it gets better in time. For now at least, proceed with caution.

Overall, Astria Ascending feels like a missed opportunity. Despite these issues, the game does right by its art direction and world-building, but the fundamental gameplay drags the whole experience down towards mundanity. Having to wait for the seven enemies in front of you to status lock you to death isn’t challenging and engaging combat; it’s tedious. Jumping through dungeons hoping to find a doorway that leads to the next area isn’t interesting trial-and-error exploration; it’s dreadful. In the JRPG marketplace that’s filled with all sorts of storytelling quirks and eccentricities, tedium is simply no longer acceptable.

Freebird games have always been funny in a gentle way that doesn’t clash with the games’ tender yet challenging emotional core. In Impostor Factory, the team has taken a big swing by including full-on horror, as well as a complex meta-story involving the nature of science and time itself. And the humor is both slapstick and risky, letting players release tension as they explore the gore and mind-bending moral conundrums posed by the game’s story. The boxing cat and the sentient rice cooker are a welcome bonus.

I love bad games. But The Good Life doesn’t fall into this category of bad-fun, it’s simply too much of a mess. Did anyone say no to anything in the course of refining the core concept of this game? Probably not. Is it even fun? I still don’t know because even after 8 to 10 hours, I feel stuck between a begrudging sense of sunk-cost fallacy and possible Stockholm syndrome as someone who also once faced ruinous debt and an unwanted move. Honestly, there’s no such thing as a good life unless you have paws, eat garbage and can pee freely in public, but you don’t need to play this game to know that.

I like Into the Pit a fair bit. The graphical style is nice, the combat is incredibly fluid, and the mechanics there are easy to understand, but also have a noticeable effect when spawning new dungeons. However, I also found it to be a little bit too easy for the most part. The game requires a lot of runs in order to rescue more villagers and max out your character, and it doesn’t do quite enough to keep you drawn in versus other similar games.

Ultimately. I can’t say I expected much from AAA Clock. It ticks off the necessary features, bringing a functional clock to the Switch with some nice cosmetic touches, but after a tedious run of the Retro Game, I’m ready to clock out.

The Plane Effect is a fine and even beautiful mechanical object, but it doesn’t quite have a soul. It is a shame perhaps, because with a bit less open space, without the spectres who are never quite made substantial, I think that the automaton might have been enough, regardless of whether or not there was a ghost in the machine.

At its core, Gloomhaven is a deep tactical experience that’s immensely satisfying once you get to grips with its layers upon layers of systems. It also includes multiple options to vary the difficulty, so newer players don’t feel overly punished by making mistakes, whilst strategy aficionados can dial up the challenge to match their ability.

Even while the gorgeous alien botany is alluring and forms the artistic backbone of this curious little game, I found myself wanting more options—perhaps a narrative mode for players focused on the world and its strange inhabitants—and a change of pace.