Gloomhaven is my favorite board game, period. With that in mind, I'm notably biased in multiple directions.
Obviously, I think any form of playing Gloomhaven is going to be a good time. For instance, if you have a BG3 group or some other group of friends that wants to meet regularly to play a game, Gloomhaven is a great choice. I think the character progression mechanics are really fun to engage with, there's a shocking amount of content, unlocking new things is satisfying, etc.

The other part of my bias is that, frankly, I am always going to prefer the board game. Nothing in this beats the physical aspect for me. Personally unboxing new characters and pulling out their figurine for the first time, putting stickers on the map, opening envelopes, all while sitting at a table with your friends, that can't really be beat by a digital version in my eyes. The digital version is significantly faster both in play and in setup, and that's the only positive I can give it over the original.

Still, I'd recommend this game to anyone who enjoys turn-based tactical RPGs, board-game fan or not.

The thing that stands out to me the most about this game was it's willingness to do new things. The deckbuilding, the card based battle system, the field magnus, the fact that cards age into other cards, SP combos, the list of things this game was just willing to throw at the wall never really stops. I do think it gets a little long in the tooth towards the end, but overall this game just has a really earnest feel to it that I can't help but respect a ton.

I do wish the remastered version had left the english dub in as an option, because I do have to say that, while the QoL features added (no encounters in particular) are nice, nothing beats the original's hilariously bad English voice acting.

Extremely good fangame. If you're a Portal fan I highly recommend checking it out. Generally good puzzles, a bold attempt at a plot, and it does a lot of things that I also liked in Portal 2.

Disclaimer: I got about halfway into this game before I decided I got my fill. It's possible that lategame improves on things I mention, though from reading other reviews, I'm doubtful.
After some hours I did get my fill, and decided to stop playing prematurely. I think something that happens with a lot of Portal 2 fan-campaigns/mods is that they get stale in their puzzles after a while. Portal 1 and 2 both introduce mechanics one at a time and then start combining them together, such that over the course of an entire game you never really go too long without getting some new stimulus to process. Most fan content obviously can't do that. They use the tools that are provided in the box, and are generally designed with the knowledge that a player has already finished the main game and knows how everything works.
Portal Revolution advertises that the puzzle difficulty picks up right where Portal 2 left off, with some new mechanics added, and that playtime ranges from 5 - 7 hours. However, while the difficulty picks up where Portal 2 left off, I felt as if it also plateau'd there. The time between new mechanics made me feel as if things were getting long in the tooth before I'd even reached them. Remember, Portal 1 is 3-5 hours, potentially shorter if you already know what you're doing. Making a fangame longer than Portal 1 is truly no small feat, but I do think it points to a lack of brevity in the team, something that can often happen when a team is too passionate about its own work to have restraint.

I don't want it to sound negative, honestly the game is still fun to play. It's just that it's easier to make criticisms when the only positive things I have to say are that I enjoyed the puzzles.

An extremely common subgenre of the puzzle genre is what I'm going to call the one-mechanic genre, where all the puzzles in the game build on one mechanic from start to finish, with the end goal almost always being the same, usually getting some object from Point A to Point B. 90% of those make the same mistake for me: the mechanic gets old. There are only so many ways you can push a box, draw a line, etc. without it getting dull. I'd say Portal 2 is the best example of this type of puzzle game, and it does it effortlessly. I don't think this game has a bad puzzle, or a boring stretch, at any point in its relatively long playtime. This is helped by the antics of Wheatly and GLaDOS but, obviously, the game design itself takes most of the credit. I think the main thing is that Portal 2 adds new and interesting mechanics regularly, and always combining them with old mechanics in interesting ways. This feels like an obvious statement, of course you want to add new types of puzzles as the game goes on, but it's so hard to do this well and Portal 2, again, does it in a way that feels effortless.

I wish Valve still made games regularly, because I think their work is genuinely masterful when they do.

At first glance this is an Among Us clone, but while it's inspiration is clear, I definitely think this game has its own identity. I think the main point of separation is that this game does not have a separation between the talking phase and the roaming phase. Talking is always open via proximity chat, killing is possible anywhere, and so on. The other major point is that any side can kill at any time. The defectors (impostors) are as capable of doing any of the tasks the cultists (crewmates) are doing, meaning it's impossible to truly verify someone as innocent. The only way to determine if someone is a defector is if, in your judgement, it seems they are acting against the cult's interest, and/or if the dead players (defectors included, mind you) seem to be signaling to them via lights and possessions, which are quite difficult to read given that you do not know the allegiance of any given ghost.
This goes into some of the problems I have with this game, the main one being that I think in the game's current state, it's not really a Social Deduction game. In this game, you're rather unlikely to have large discussions with the group about who the killer is, since the game is designed for everyone to be busy doing their tasks, and there's no dedicated talking phase unless the players decide to do one themselves (all while the Defector resurrection timer ticks down.) It's much more likely that you will simply figure out who the defectors are when they start attacking you. Defectors have their own private communication channels, but the only use of this I ever found was to coordinate kills/ghost moves, not to set up any elaborate lies, alibis, or other ruses.
The other point I'd make is that I dislike this game's combat. It's top-down WASD movement with left click for a light attack and right click for a big one. The controls feel rather cumbersome (especially if you're trying to use push-to-talk at the same time). Defectors have no combat advantage other than potentially getting the first strike, and even then, there's nothing really stopping a particularly paranoid cultist from doing that instead. The combat also has friendly fire, meaning any attempts at ganging up on someone, using possessed bats to assist an ally, etc. can easily backfire if your ally just walks to close to your target to get a swing of their own in. Worst of all, the combat is prone to stunlocking via the strong attack, making it feel like a more unsatisfying version of an instakill. All's this to say that the process of killing another player in this game feels less like a Social Deduction game's kill button and more like Minecraft Hunger Games combat.
I think the game has potential, and definitely hits the "fun with friends for a couple hours" spot, but it does not hold up to Among Us for me. Still, this is getting updates, so it's worth keeping an eye on.

Loop Hero does things that I like but overall doesn't do enough to keep me interested for the playtime it seems to expect. Loop Hero is strange in that it's an idle game that wants to be an base-building, deck-building, tower defense roguelite RPG. (Yes, those are all in the game.) You do missions for the purpose of grinding base-building materials. Building things in your base provides new tiles to put in your deck, new character class options, things like that. The "deckbuilding" works in the sense that across a standard run you draw tiles that you can place to affect that given loop's terrain, such as villages that provide healing (but spawn bandits), mountains that increase your max HP as you place them down in the distance, things that increase your walk speed while you're near them, etc. There's some strategy here in terms of whether you want to prioritize tiles that put you in danger for better equipment or whether you'd prefer things that give more materials, but I personally found myself using one setup on every run without much issue, only changing it when I get new things to play with. With all this tile placement and equipment upgrading while in a run, Loop Hero expects you to provide player input reasonably often, and not only that, but it often requires at least some semblance of thought in terms of positioning of tiles and even more thought in terms of choosing between two pieces of equipment of the same rough value when they provide different passive bonuses. In this regard I'd say it does a poor job at actually being an idle game, because you really can't go for more than a few seconds without the game needing your input for something. The game does have settings for automatic pauses, so it's not merciless in this regard. However, this stream of choices is the only real gameplay that occurs during the loop, making it still rather dull to play if you don't have anything else going on. Full disclosure, idle games aren't usually my cup of tea anyways, so I could be off base. I got this for free of Epic and just decided to check it out, and since I had a boring class this semester, this game ended up being played for about 2 hours a week for a couple months, which is more time than I would've given it outside of this circumstances. The only reason I'm considering this game finished (dropped) is that the class is out and I don't see myself returning to this now that I'm likely able to use my time on engaging things.
And honestly, despite all my words about how this game is a messy conglomeration of genres that doesn't know what it wants to be, it's still playable and fun. The sole issue I have with the game is that it's way too grindy. For a game with gameplay as simple-yet-demanding as this, it goes on for an extremely long time. Grinding materials takes forever even when you're not dying in runs, and if you are dying in runs, it just takes even longer because the game severely punishes you for dying or even for retreating while not at your campfire (the loop point). The simplicity of the gameplay means that you end up doing the exact same activity for a very long period of time, which would be fine if this was just something that runs in your background for you to check in on now and then, but since it requires continuous engagement to play this game, it just feels like you're doing busywork for about 30-40 hours. Great if, for example, you have an extremely boring remote job where you need to look awake but do barely any actual work, but otherwise I would consider something that's either more idle or more engaging.

I can conceptually understand why people like this game. From my perspective, Stardew Valley is a matrix of progression bars from top to bottom. Every aspect of the game feels like you're accomplishing something, from raising your profits, to completing bundles, to raising friendship meters, to getting through the mines, filling up the museum, even harvesting a single crop, it's all Something meaningful, something to make you feel both like you're getting valuable work done but also that there's always more work to be done.
What I can't comprehend at all is how people find this game "cozy". The second you wake up the clock is ticking, NPCs, stores, even the fish are on their schedules, you have to manage your crops, and make sure you set up automation so that you don't spend TOO much time on your crops, and try to get as much of a season's exclusive items as possible so that you can get the community center going without having to wait an extra year, and get back from the mines to Clint's Forge before 4:00, and make sure your energy doesn't get too low too early in the day (and have food ready if you think it will), and...
When I play this game I feel like I need to have a spreadsheet open just to track what things are worth doing, but the thing is, everything is worth doing, and I have no time at all to do it, so this relaxing, comfy, chill game is more akin to the experience of eternally feeling like I'm not accomplishing enough with the limited time I have available in a given day, season, year, play session.
I'm not saying the game is bad. I would ordinarily consider it a good thing to have a game with this much content, to make it feel like everything you're doing is relevant, all while maintaining a comfy atmosphere. It's just that when the game, journalists, and fans all act as if this is a relaxing farming game it drives me a little bit insane, because I think it failed completely in this regard and is at best a game that satirically presents itself with that aesthetic when that couldn't be further from the truth.

I mean, it's not bad, but I guess I just expect something a little more engaging from the Layton series. Big positives are the soundtrack and the one Shop minigame. As far as the plot goes, I don't exactly have high expectations for Layton plots because I understand that the games are for kids and that Unwound Future is too good to expect its quality every time, but this game's plot specifically spends a lot of time on the culrpit's identity, which is one of the most obvious plot twists in video games, instead of actually focusing on any of the more interesting mysteries around the culprit's means and motive. As far as puzzles go, I was actually rather disappointed by this game's puzzles. I noticed a particular trend in the puzzle design of this game, and they came up so often that I started referring to them as "intern puzzles". The formula is that there's some story problem laid out to make for the mechanics of a puzzle. Something like "This ant has to cross over a matrix of overlapping pencils to reach the other side, which single pencil can you pick up to give him a clear path?" And then there'll be a complicated matrix of overlapping pencils, 6 of which are colored. So you'll spend a few minutes tracing the potential paths the ant can go down, which ways get cut off, what would happen if you removed a pencil that was obstructing, what would happen if you moved a pencil to lift something on top of it, what would happen if you placed a pencil down elsewhere to serve as a bridge, etc. And then after a while you realize the ant is sitting on top of a colored pencil and that the answer is to lift that one up and just place it on the other side. Basically, the solution is to not engage with the puzzle created at all and to instead engage with the story that the puzzle is framed with. The first time you see this it's cute, a humorous little gotcha, but when it starts to feel like 10-20% of the puzzles in the game do variants of this trick, the game starts to feel a bit hollow. That's not to say there aren't any good puzzles, in fact I'd say the 3DS's hardware was used well on a number of them, but I guess they felt a bit... lazy? Like a "we've been doing this for 5 games" mentality.