A short (though duration will vary considerably with skill) masocore 2D platformer with Atari 2600-inspired pixel art. Progress through five areas and overcome deadly obstacles in your search for the Troof. Whatever that is.

Some obstacles are deadly due to their unpredictable nature and are clearly intended to take you by surprise, though if you have fast enough reflexes and proceed with caution you can survive many of these even the first time you encounter them. Other obstacles are more straightforward but require precision timing and positioning. Death generally doesn’t put you too far back unless you run out of the limited number of lives you have per area, in which case you must restart the area.

A game that has you walking around the physical world to find and catch Pokémon, improve and evolve them, and participate in asynchronous multiplayer battles to take control of Pokémon Gyms in real-world locations. A lot of the depth and draw comes from the real-world social interactions that emerge from multiple players in the same physical area. The dynamics of coordinating community members to defend gyms and the opportunity to meet people via a shared activity are far more interesting than the relatively shallow gameplay. As such, the game may have been at its most appealing in the months after its launch when it was pretty common to run into groups of players.

A third-person arena shooter starring busty schoolgirl ninjas armed with water guns. After four brawlers and a rhythm game, a shooter is a refreshing change of pace - but is clearly outside of the developer’s area of expertise and the experience is not up to the series’ usual level of polish.

A rhythm platformer like its two predecessors. Your character runs automatically, you avoid obstacles and collect gold by jumping, sliding, kicking or blocking at the right time, and your actions affect the music.

This third installment keeps the aesthetic from Runner2 and most of its additions (characters and skins to unlock, levels with branching paths, optional mid-level checkpoints, etc.) and adds several of its own including a double-jump and vehicle sections that control differently from standard running. Unfortunately, some of the new changes greatly damage the game’s core appeal. As a rhythm game with high challenge, strictness, and punishment, it’s important to minimize frustration and maximize flow, but Runner3 takes multiple steps backward in both of these aspects.

An interactive story wrapped in the style and presentation of a SNES RPG. Play as the same technicians from To the Moon, investigating and rewriting the memories of a dying client to grant their life’s wish. The client this time is an old man who was once the boy in A Bird Story, but the content of that game is not a prerequisite to understanding this one. Neither is To the Moon or its free DLC “minisodes”, but they would help contextualize some of the side events.

A mediocre idle game mixed with a mediocre twin-stick shooter to form something that is sometimes but not always more than the sum of its parts. The game takes place in a series of six star systems. The planets house the idle game mechanics - on each one, you can buy and upgrade buildings from a menu to generate passive income. Flying your ship between the planets is where you’ll find the twin-stick shooter gameplay - there are asteroids to mine, enemies to defeat, and a few other randomly-placed interactions like survivors to pick up and checkpoint races to run. Once you have enough money, defeat the boss to unlock the next star system and move forward.

A golf RPG with pixel art aesthetic and comedic tone. Progress through eight nine-hole courses with a huge variety of side content along the way. Golf is the main focus, and many optional challenges are contextualized drills on specific golf skills, but there are also one-shot minigames such as racing an RC car and more-developed side modes like mini golf, disc golf, and drone golf. There are also humorous story events and some adventure-game-like puzzles and fetch quests.

A spelling game with a variety of mechanical gimmicks based on the premise that you are guiding a group of survivors down through the floors of a highrise building after an apparent earthquake. Spelling is done on a grid of letter tiles by connecting adjacent tiles to form words. Like in Bookworm and other similar games, tiles that are used are removed and the tiles above drop down. In most levels, you must clear rubble tiles to get the survivor tiles to the bottom of the grid, allowing them to escape the floor and proceed downward to the next. Between levels are short dialog scenes that establish the characters, provide some weak humor, and advance the story in which it’s quickly suggested that all is not as it seems. There are also twelve extra “Chimp Challenge” levels that are disconnected from the story.

A conversational mystery game in which you play a detective robot interviewing other robots to find the truth behind recent robot disappearances. Ride the eponymous subway line and talk to the other passengers who get on and off, learning what they know and sometimes solving small puzzles to get their cooperation or help them out.

A spaceship management sim puzzle game, notable for its optional co-op and for being one of very few Wii U games to actually make good use of the gamepad screen. While the TV is occupied with the ship and its environment, the gamepad is used as the ship’s control panel allowing you to toggle and route power between various systems. You must use this to navigate a series of puzzle rooms by avoiding lethal hazards, activating switches to open doors, and getting to the exit.