Melancholic and visually stunning, GRIS is a relaxed, watercoloured puzzle platformer perfect for the couch on a lazy sunday afternoon.

Celeste is challenging, smart and exceedingly well designed. Its movement is some of the most satisfying ever in a platformer. The great soundtrack supports a surprisingly fresh exploration of mental health, which has traditionally proved difficult in videogames.

From the maker (one person) of Papers, Please comes this brilliant shortish deduction whodunnit with terrific music, great voice acting and uniquely cool art direction. An awesome understated gem of 2018.

Classic couch co-op beat-‘em-up in the vein of Castle Crashers, with added RPG elements. Funny, cute and at times quite challenging. Would love if there were more games like Full Metal Furies.

A charming and engaging swan song from Runic games. Beautiful stylised art direction paint engaging environments and interesting puzzles.

Almost overwhelmingly opaque and seemingly esoteric, but delivered in an intriguing package that invites more playtime if only to figure out what the hell is going on.

As far as Steam releases go, Dead Cells is GOTY 2018. Absolutely the most buttery smooth controls amongst its ilk, amazing music, challenging mechanics and immense innate replayability.

A fitting and challenging musically violent rhythm game with gorgeous visual styling from one half of band Lightning Bolt & friends.

Surprisingly funny, confusing and very clever. A memorable game if you can get through some of the more tedious RPG elements.