A mish-mash of a bunch of things: Rust, Valheim, Diablo, Minecraft. I wish the progression was a bit less hand-holdy, but it’s fine. Really well executed, polished and satisfying.

Chess with a shotgun. Gets a bit deeper as you play, and deceptively satisfying. Cool packaging of a neat little concept and worth a look.

Combine cards into new ones, earn gold, buy card packs, start a village and survive as long as you can. Starts off chilled and cosy but can get hectic and challenging.

2.5D sidescrolling Kurosawa-inspired combat, which at times is challenging and rewarding but can also feel imprecise and frustrating. Excellent visuals and clever composition. Definitely worth a look.

Absolute gem and insane value. Despite its mechanical simplicity, Vampire Survivors allows for tonnes of variety and replayability. Fun, satisfying and addictive - stop reading and play it.

Basically a serotonin dispenser - super fun. Pachinko dungeon crawling roguelike. Will rely on enough content being added to enable huge build diversity. Crazy, almost stupid idea, but it works.

After bouncing off Fortnite the week it launched, I wrote it off for years. It was polished and fun, but I was frustratingly bad. Once they introduced Zero Build I tried again, and it’s fun as hell.

The Seumas McNally Grand Prize is the main award given at the Independent Games Festival, during the Game Developers Conference. The award is named after gamedev Seumas McNally (1979–2000), founder of Longbow Digital Arts. McNally died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma shortly after receiving the award, then just the IGF Grand Prize, in 2000 for his game Tread Marks.

Sadly not able to play this on the Steamdeck it was designed for, but can imagine it’d be a fun little demo. Its nice seeing Valve having fun with their franchises & actually making stuff. Worth a go.

So masterfully crafted, creative, confident and bold that it immediately makes the rest of the openworld genre feel dated and uninspired. A landmark achievement and a very special game. Masterpiece.