A 2D action RPG Metroidvania that feels like it’s set in an animated movie, because it basically is. Play as the amnesiac Dust exploring varied environments and fighting monsters to find answers and help people out along the way.

While not everyone likes the art style (which is somewhere between Vanillaware and The Secret of NIMH) I found it beautiful. The smooth-flowing animation is even more impressive due to it holding up perfectly during the game’s very fluid combo-based combat. HyperDuck Soundworks provides a beautiful soundtrack and the voice acting is always at least passable and features a couple of standout performances, particularly that of main character Dust. The story and its delivery are solid, with some likable characters and intriguing mysteries that have good payoffs.

A short and simple retro-styled game that feels like an essentialized homage to Zelda dungeons. As any of three shrine maidens, progress through a series of four levels defeating enemies and solving simple puzzles to reach and cleanse four gates which also act as save points. Once you’ve cleansed all four, fight a boss and proceed to the next level.

A life sim that casts you primarily as a farmer growing crops and raising livestock but also features fishing, cooking, crafting, mining, combat, and romanceable NPCs. The game is heavily influenced by the old Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons games, and is presented in a similar three-quarters overhead pixel-art style. While your farm is evaluated after three in-game years, the game is open-ended and you can continue playing and tackle whatever goals you like in whatever order you like.

A puzzle game tasking the player with writing simple programs to manipulate numbers. Eleven different programming commands are available as building blocks for conquering forty one increasingly-complex challenges. Most puzzles also have optional goals to optimize your program’s line count and execution time. The experience is lightly wrapped in a shallow but ironic story that has your program executed by a human office worker doing pointless work to climb a corporate ladder.

A bite-sized pixel-art underwater Metroidvania starring a squid. Swim to explore your environment, get new abilities, and do favors for sea urchins. It’s a solid foundation that feels more like a proof of concept than a finished game, clocking in at about an hour and leaving most of its ideas undeveloped.

A Musou game set in a crossover Fire Emblem world, featuring a few original characters and many from previous games - mostly Awakening, Fates, and Shadow Dragon. As is standard for Musou crossover games, elements from the franchise have been incorporated into the standard large-scale hack-and-slash gameplay - and Fire Emblem turns out to be a shockingly good fit, resulting in easily the mechanically-best Musou gameplay I’ve ever experienced.

A video game adaptation of a mathematical picture-drawing puzzle that plays like if Picross took a few steps toward Minesweeper.

As with Picross, you have a rectangular grid where some squares are meant to be colored in to reveal a picture. Unlike Picross, here the clues are numbers from zero to nine found in some of the squares, indicating how many of the immediately-surrounding squares (plus the clue square itself) should be filled in. A nine means to fill in the entire three-by-three section, while a zero means all of those squares are blank instead. By starting with the zeroes and nines (or sixes along the grid’s edge, or fours in its corners) and spreading to adjacent clues (a three next to a nine, for example, means the remaining six squares in the three’s area should be blank) you gradually fill in or blank out every square in the grid and reveal the image.

A spin-off of the Senran Kagura series that presents a short and simple visual novel about face-of-the-series Asuka exploring her feelings and confessing her love for the player character. This is accomplished via a series of sexually-charged vignettes in which the player massages Asuka in simple minigames to unlock her emotions. There’s also DLC to add four other characters (Yumi, Murasaki, Ryōna, and Yomi) and more cosmetic options for the series staple dress-up and diorama modes. Unfortunately, the game fails on almost every level.

A 2D retro-styled Metroidvania in a well-developed world with platforming puzzles and varied combat that both make full use of your ever-growing toolset. The mechanics are satisfying and the storytelling is compelling, but the game doesn’t respect the player’s time quite as much as I’d like.

Your main tools are your wrench, which can thwack enemies or turn bolts to activate mechanisms, and your stun gun, which can blast enemies or open certain barriers. Both receive upgrades through the course of the game, granting new abilities used both for combat and for puzzle-based exploration. As a result, the action stays fresh and varied and tests you on many different mechanical skills.