A Highland Song is charming in that classic Inkle style - it's a small, personal story told non-linearly in a visually interesting world. Climb hills, find strange objects, read some maps, talk to strangers, and make it to your destination.. days too late. Until you go again and see the different way your story unfolds.

The downside to A Highland Song is that the other gameplay mechanics - the climbing/platforming, and autoscroller rhythm game - aren't particularly engaging. The climbing is a bit slow and tedious, in a world that's so easy to get lost in because of the visual similarity of the overlapping layers of hills - while the rhythm minigame feels a bit light and lacks any real sensation to nailing an action on the beat.

It's an interesting game - it's Inkle, of course it is - but not one that I felt compelled to play more of.

Botany Manor is a neat contextual puzzle solving detective game about figuring out the conditions needed to grow strange and slightly magical plants. Explore the manor, find clues and items - and pick out the important details that will teach you how your plants need to grow.

The puzzles are neat and satisfying, not overly complicated, and Botany Manor is good fun for it's 3-4 hour duration.

The only downside is that Botany Manor is simply not as polished as some other titles in this "genre" (Chants of Sennaar, Return of the Obra Dinn, The Case of the Golden Idol etc.) and feels slightly weak in that regard. It's also more expensive than those other games. It's not the first game I'd recommend in this niche, but I'm glad it exists.

The main gameplay of Midnight Suns is its card-driven, turn based combat - and that aspect of the game is enjoyable. It's not exceptional, and indie titles have pulled off smarter, more engaging systems years before (see: Fights in Tight Spaces) - but the combat of Midnight Suns is fun nevertheless.

The fights unfortunately are few and far between, especially in the opening hours of the game where - instead of attracting you with its best feature - Midnight Suns actively tries to push you away with some of the most tedious life-sim side quests imaginable.

The frequent fetch and "run to marker" quests are tedious, the characters aren't overly interesting, the classic AAA item collection and crafting is as poorly implemented as always - and unfortunately the interesting and buoyant design of the main mechanic isn't enough to keep this ship from sinking.

I'm just going to give Rift Wizard 2 it's high rating now. I've only played about an hour and I haven't even beaten a single run of this game yet - but everything that was amazing about Rift Wizard 1 in the depth and combinations of skills is there, with some new methods of progression that add to the replayability and variation between runs.

It maybe loses half a star on the original because what it gains in randomness and replayability, it loses in that pure, theorycrafting brilliance of the original - and that genius scope for theorycrafting is what made RW1 such an astoundingly good game.

Still Early Access, but just such a strong concept.

EARLY ACCESS REVIEW: Thronefall is a really neat, pocket-sized kingdom builder/tower defence game. There's a minimalism and simplicity to Thronefall that makes it really fast and snappy to play, but each wave of enemies on each of the game's miniature kingdoms still feels clever and tactical. Thronefall has all the classic decisions of the genre: balancing resources and defence, what army composition to build, and where to focus defences - but it has these decisions in a more limited decision-space that forces compromises and strategic decisions. It also looks really good, I'm a big fan of the visual style.

This is already worth playing in early access, and I can only imagine it will be at least this good still when the full release comes around.

I always thought Sudokus were rather boring puzzles - but it turns out I was just playing the wrong types of Sudoku.

The typical logic of conflicting digits in rows and columns lacked a spark that could get my brain firing, but throw in some extra rules and all of sudden conflicting sequences, variances, sums etc. add an entire new dimension to a classic puzzle.

The game has paywalled content, but the free puzzles will last you 20 hours - and if you enjoy all of that the paid content looks quite reasonably priced.

Roboquest does a great job of being fun - even though its execution of a roguelike, first-person, canyon shooter isn't maybe quite as good as you'd want it to be.

Jumping into a new run and firing away at dozens of little robots with a new type of gun each round is entertaining and the whole vibe of the game has a really playful feel. I love the concept and I think the visual style is great, the downside for me was that the upgrades felt a little slow to get going and runs didn't start to feel unique very quickly - which is what this sort of game needs to stay fresh!

Balatro is a really neat idea. All the clever, thinky fun of a roguelike deckbuilder transformed into a poker-themed puzzle. It's very similar to an earlier game Luck be a Landlord, but with significantly better visual design and polish.

Draw cards from a deck to play poker hands and score points - use the money earned to buy outrageous power ups (jokers) or upgrade individual cards. Come up with a long term strategy to aim for, build your deck and bonuses towards it and watch the mega points roll in.

It's incredible fun for a few hours - after which the novelty had somewhat worn off and the arbitrary chase for points no longer felt fun. Balatro is one of those games that really borders on being "addictive" in a problematic rather than a fun way.

But still - as a clever, polished, exciting new thing and as a game to be "solved" (by whatever your personal defintion would be) rather than played endlessly, Balatro is a gem.