Visceral, satisfying combat, sublime art, great sound/music and a good challenge. Relatively unforgiving but ultimately very rewarding. An extraordinarily cinematic, violently masterful blast.

The actual gameplay is amazing; clever, frantic, elegant, demanding & creative. Unfortunately for me it was punctuated by insufferable characters and dialog (which is thankfully now skippable). Cool, but didn’t get the hype.

Great example of how to faithfully refine a predecessor. Lots of charm, tonnes to do and a sensational level of variation and dynamics. Movement still feels a bit rigid to my taste, but that’s OK.

Vampire Survivors + SNKRX. Really clever, solving some problems other games in neighbouring genres suffer from. Not a huge fan of the art and stuff, but it doesn’t really matter.

A really fun balance of roguelike dungeon crawling and Animal Crossing colony sim inside a slick package of stunning art and great music. Bit buggy at launch, but still great and ripe for expansion.

Pretty special game. Great art and music delivers a really unique concept. A good example of the strength of the medium, where gameplay is married to the narrative nicely. Super cool.

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.

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.

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.