Gorogoa. A game in which the screen is divided into four panels, and you drag them around and use the overlaps between panels and scenes to solve puzzles. Really hard to describe, and a total mindfuck at times. Very cool. Got it on the Switch which it is perfect for, easy to pick up and try out a small solution brainwave and then put down again. Also gorgous artwork for when it’s docked.

Slay the Spire: This indie early-access game has recently taken part of the card-game streaming community by storm (though it seems to have been a somewhat short storm) - enough to drive it up quite far up the Steam charts for a week. It’s basically catnip for nerds like me. The game’s one-sentence description would be ‘roguelike combat Dominion’. You crawl deeper into a dungeon – well, in this case, ascend a spire – and when your life total runs out or you beat the final boss, your game ends and you start anew. The battles are an asymmetrical contest between your character, who plays attacks and defences from a deck of cards that you build from card rewards, and one or more enemy monsters that signal their intent. You choose one of currently two classes at the get-go, and then spiral into one of several significantly different builds depending on the card and relic (passive buffs) rewards you accrue. Crucially, your life total is persistent between battles, making managing your resources a long-term task.

There’s been several previous entries in this genre that I’ve all loved to some degree, from the ancient Microprose Shandalar Magic the Gathering game, to Dream Quest and Monster Slayers more recently, with Hearthstone’s Kobolds dungeon crawl (designed by Dream Quest’s Peter Whalen) being the most high-profile. Each game brings something interesting and unique to the table. In the case of Slay the Spire I think one of the smartest innovations is that the opponents are nto playing a deck - they simply select one of several possible attacks, buffs, debuffs and the like. This removes the common annoyance of having to suffer through the opponent’s turn as they play a bunch of cards, and opens up a separate avenue for design (e.g. some opponents have a fixed play pattern that allows the player to anticipate).

They are Billions: A combination of tower defence, survival game and semi-passive RTS (like the old Settlers games). Gigantic zombie hordes come and attack your settlement at fixed time points. You are trying to build up a strong enough ramshackle postapocalyptic colony to fend off the attacks. An interesting blend of various genres that works well and makes for compelling Twitch viewing. I haven’t played this myself yet but it looks interesting, and not as fiddly as many other survival sims such as Rimworld or at the most extreme Dwarf Fortress.

Aragami: I recently played this with a friend. You (and your optional co-op partner) play as a shadowy spirit of revenge, resembling a classic dark ninja character. You’ve been summoned by a girl, dressed all in white, in order to enact revenge on the warriors of light who have murdered her people. We haven’t finished the campaign yet - it seems to be signalling some plot twist to come concerning your identity, but overall it’s not a very plot-heavy game.

There’s several things I find interesting about Aragami. First, being a co-op sneaking game makes it a rare bird. Stealth games tend to be solitary affairs, after all the fantasy of being Batman lurking in the shadows is rather spoiled if there’s another person in the shadows there with you, treading on your cloak, obstructing your sightlines and going “sor-ry” in that tone designed that seems precision-designed to set your teeth on edge. But I digress. The only other cooperative stealth action game I can think of that took itself seriously at all was Splinter Cell, and there I believe the cooperative action was restricted to the multiplayer, with teams of mercenaries and spies pitted against each other. Anyway, in Aragami it works very well. Being both rather headstrong players, I and my buddy would tend to each set off in opposite directions, marking enemies for each other and taking out targets of opportunity, and occasionally meet organically, often in the nick of time to save the other from getting spotted. There’s a point system to let you buy skill, which was especially interesting in the early game when a scarcity of points made us specialise in different aspects, encouraging more team play. For example, I bought the ability to make corpses disappear, earning me the nickname ‘Mr. Wolf’.

I also give Aragami a lot of credit for coming up with what feels like a both interesting and balanced version of the blink mechanic. Often blinking can feel either overpowered (many singleplayer games, e.g. Dishonored) or have an annoyingly restrictive cooldown (most multiplayer games, especially Dotalikes). In Aragami you can blink as much as you want in principle, but a) you can only blink into darkness, and b) it costs some of your shadow power which only recharges in especially dark spots. This means that in principle you can blink really quickly across the level if you’re accurate and the shadows are lined up just right. It also means that an error of judgement can leave you stranded without enough juice to get out of danger again.

Awesome Games Done Quick: A good time as always. Look up your favourite game in the list and see somebody break it over their knee, all in the name of charity. Some awkward nerds but they’ve been getting better at keeping the really unsavoury types out.

Nintendo Labo: Build toys from cardboard (critters, a fishing rod, a piano) and use your Switch to make them work. I love everything about this idea. Especially the fact that there’s minimal plastic involved. The included software and games also look fascinating.