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 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.

The historic grandfather of 3D shooters, paving the way for a genre that would come to dominate the industry. I remember playing this with my brother, and he’d always make it harder by refusing to shoot the dogs.

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.