An RPG with retro aesthetics and an intricately strategic turn-based combat system. Recruit a diverse cast of teammates, explore sci-fi environments, and battle your way through uncovering and thwarting a sinister plot. The Sega Saturn-like visuals and music by HyperDuck SoundWorks are both appealing and put to good use, and the UI is carefully crafted to give you all the information you need to navigate battle without being overwhelming.

An exploration and survival game with building and space sim elements. Explore procedurally-generated alien worlds, scan the wildlife, and collect resources and artifacts. Craft technology and upgrades, build a base, and trade with aliens. Fight space pirates, command fleets of ships, and investigate the galaxy’s mysteries.

It’s a very ambitious game that constantly gets in its own way. Most of the gameplay is not particularly refined or compelling, but the real problems are the places where the design actively damages what would be enjoyable about the game. The spacious and often beautiful landscapes are made for relaxed exploration, but that’s rendered impossible by a tiny inventory and the constant need to refuel the equipment that enables your exploration. Your space suit’s two types of life support, your multi-tool’s two types of mining beam, and your ship’s three types of engines all take different fuels and are always running out.

A short exploration game set on a procedurally-generated island with minimal interactivity. Walk around and look at pixelated landscapes, plants, and animals, the latter of which usually flee from your approach. Passing near certain stones will cause them to emit white lights and during the night phase of the day/night cycle you can find a circle of these lights which allows you to advance to the next season. Once you’ve seen all four seasons, the game ends.

A cooperative puzzle game about defusing time bombs. One player (the “defuser”) can see and manipulate the bomb, while another (the “expert”) can read the manual that indicates how to defuse it. The players must communicate clearly and efficiently to correctly defuse the bomb before time runs out. The simple controls (and fact that the expert isn’t using a game system at all) make it approachable for inexperienced gamers and the asymmetric multiplayer means more players are likely to enjoy at least one of the available roles.

An Old West-themed comedic RPG with monochrome stick-figure art and surprisingly good music and sound effects. Pick your class (Cow Puncher, Beanslinger, or Snake Oiler), get a horse and a “pardner” (a combat teammate who is also tied to a major sidequest), and head out west to seek your fortune. Along the way, run into various random encounters and episodic sidequests featuring combat, puzzles, and a lot of humor. The game is warm and safe, with no game overs or permanent fail states and always warning you clearly before you do anything irrevocable, and whatever you do will probably be funny.

A sprawlingly-large open-world action RPG with a ton of things to do, all of which are loaded with backstory and world-building. The game’s aesthetic, fascinating world, deep lore, and mechanical variety combine to create a feeling I haven’t experienced since quitting World of Warcraft.

Set in a universe created and fleshed out by fantasy writer R.A. Salvatore, Amalur casts the player as the first person to become free of the threads of fate that bind the world and everyone in it. As such, you are uniquely positioned to thwart destiny and avert disasters - providing an excellent reason why you are the only one who can accomplish tasks ranging from small-scale side quests like saving individuals from preordained deaths all the way up to reversing the tide of the main story’s war.

A game featuring a modified three-dimensional variant of Picross. Instead of a grid made of squares to selectively fill in to reveal an image, the player is presented with a rectangular prism made of cubes to selectively chip away to reveal an object. The clues work differently as well - not every row or column has clues, and each clue is a single number indicating how many cubes should be left in that row or column. The number is presented alone if the cubes are contiguous, circled if they are in exactly two contiguous groups, or in a square if they are in three or more contiguous groups.

A simple puzzle game in which you place dots in hex cells so that each line of hexes adds to the specified total. For example, a row of two hexes may be marked with a total of four which may mean each hex needs two dots or one needs three dots while the other needs one dot. Ambiguous situations are resolved by finding the solution that satisfies all marked totals simultaneously - once all hexes are correctly filled, the puzzle is solved.

The Switch installment of a long-running series of tennis games starring Super Mario characters. While the core tennis gameplay is quite solid, as one would expect from a Nintendo title that’s been iterating for several console generations, what little there is on top is a mixed bag and probably not enough to satisfy those who play alone.

A game about surviving and escaping a collapsing city on an artificial island. Gameplay includes elements of 3D platformers, adventure games, survival games, and even dating sims.

Gameplay is split into a series of areas you must navigate and survive. Debris, damaged buildings, and uneven terrain present obstacles to get around, while earthquake aftershocks and newly-falling debris present threats to avoid. Usually you’re just trying to get through to the next area, but occasionally the story will lead you to other goals such as helping survivors or finding a missing dog. Reaching your objective is sometimes just a matter of sufficient exploration, but it can also involve basic platforming challenges or inventory-based puzzles such as getting a fire extinguisher to put out a fire blocking your path.

A game modeled after classic JRPGs, but using them as a jumping off point rather than something to slavishly recreate. The mechanics start with Chrono Trigger as a base and the story premise is reminiscent of Final Fantasy X, but I Am Setsuna goes in its own direction and has its own strong identity. The result is a game that - while flawed and small in scale - feels like it comes from an alternate world where Squaresoft never stopped making these kinds of games.

A deceptively simple wingsuit game. Glide through procedurally-generated mountainscapes and score points by passing near surfaces and through narrow gaps. Each run continues until you crash against a surface, but you can immediately restart. While it only takes a few minutes to get a sense for everything the game has to offer, it’s a game you can keep playing for a very long time.

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.