A pool roguelite where you fire balls at dice and layer on increasingly unhinged sticker combos: poop attracts flies, spiders spin webs to catch them, and so on. The number-go-up loop is immediately compelling and the interactions deliver genuine “wait, that works?” moments, even if the depth doesn’t go too deep. Cheerfully weird, stupid at times, always fun.

Japan is a great choice for Playground Games’ latest, and the open world they’ve built around it is genuinely stunning. For someone who bounces off racing games, Horizon has always been the exception: the driving model sits firmly in the “feels brilliant, not very realistic” zone, and that’s the whole appeal. FH6 delivers another enormous, content-stuffed festival, and if you can meet it on those terms, it’s an easy good time. The formula is undeniably wearing familiar grooves though, and critics who’ve lived with every entry likely feel it more than I do - but as a tourist, it’s a blast.

Poncle takes the Vampire Survivors build fantasy and drops it into a first-person dungeon-crawling deckbuilder, and… it works really well! The one-more-run pull is intact, the synergies get proper silly, and the genre shift adds genuine decision-making rather than removing it. Easy recommendation.

Odd Dreams Digital’s debut evolutionary roguelite has you starting as a blob and eating your way toward becoming, as everything inevitably does, a crab - and it’s more compelling than it sounds. The mutation system is expressive, runs are snappy, and the carcinisation mechanic is a smart bit of design wit. For ten bucks it’s a confident, charming game.

Nintendo’s long-dormant life sim returns after 12 years, and it’s exactly as strange as you’d hope. You fill an island with Miis, watch them meet, interact, spiral… and it’s legitimately, repeatedly funny, thanks to the timing, camera cuts and Mii expressions doing real comedic work. The creative tools are just competent enough, letting you draw custom facepaint, clothes, food, pets, house exteriors and more from scratch - if you’re so inclined. In short bursts, there’s a lot to love here.

Housemarque’s follow-up to Returnal is immediately, comfortably familiar: the sound design hits within seconds, the controls are responsive, and the movement and gunplay feel just as good as you’d hope. The new world is genuinely cool, and the flexible difficulty system - no set modes, just a huge range of individual toggles - is a thoughtful idea for players who bounced off Returnal. Personally, I’d probably prefer to’ve played a game balanced around a fixed challenge - the freedom to self-adjust takes some of the edge off. Build diversity is theoretically strong, but I found something that worked, leaned into it, and the game didn’t really push back hard enough to make me reconsider. Admittedly this is more of a me-problem, and I enjoyed it to be sure, just wish it lasted longer!

Capcom’s long-awaited sci-fi action-adventure - announced in 2020, delayed indefinitely in 2023, finally here and better than expected. The primary draw is obviously the hacking-grid-while-in-combat mechanic: it sounds fiddly but works surprisingly well in practice, and the game layers in new ideas at a good clip. The dialogue is a bit on-the-nose and the story hits familiar beats, but it’s well-paced, short, and the collectables are genuinely fun to chase. After playing the demo I didn’t expect to get much more out of this, but really glad to’ve been proven wrong.

Turn-based roguelike deckbuilder where you collect a band of mercenary pieces, combining traits and relics across a dark gothic medieval world. The art is fantastic, the world is intriguing and the design is elegant - approachable on the surface, genuinely demanding underneath - with solid variety across runs. So far, a strong early access foundation with clear room to grow.

Small French team’s atmospheric dungeon crawler. Descend through procedural floors in search of the lost sun, upgrading with cursed teeth and strange items. The art direction is fresh and interesting, and the vibes throughout carry a lot of weight. Where it wobbles is arguably excessive RNG, which can make a run feel like it’s happening to you rather than because of you. Brutal, but the bones are really interesting.

Coin-pusher roguelike deckbuilder - you’ll be able to tell whether you’ll like it from five seconds of a trailer. The premise may sound thin but the execution is the real thing: stack towers, trigger combos, shake the machine, feel the dopamine hit. Great art, nice music. Very cool.