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.

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

A respectable idea (‘shooter souls’), but ultimately falls very short, feeling very derivative, clunky, repetitive and… just not very fun.

More of the same from the quality reboot trilogy. Unsurprisingly, this one steps up the visuals and adds a couple of mechanics, but is likely the weakest as far as plot goes. Still a good game though.

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 somewhat underwhelming remaster of one of the best videogames ever made. Not bad by any means, but probably deserved a full remake - if anything at all. If it’s the only copy you can get your hands on, it’s still incredible.

A timeless masterpiece gets a modern, tasteful cosmetic uplift. Shadow of the Colossus is understated, beautiful, charming and inspired. It’s an adventure you’ll never forget - must play.

All of the learnings from DS through BB are here, and as a final instalment to the franchise is a remarkably rounded love letter to its fans. Almost certainly the most accessible Souls game.