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Downwell is a nonstop struggle against gravity and greed

“And that’s where the driving tension of Downwell comes from. After enough attempts, you’ll start to learn about the enemies and traps that fill each of the game’s themed areas, but the well’s hazards are laid out randomly at the start of each run, so there’s no way of knowing exactly what lies ahead as you plunge into the darkness. Firing your boots and controlling your descent to the point where you can actually plan a route on the fly is the key to survival, but it’s all too easy to find yourself out of ammo and plummeting into the unknown. You could always try to land and cash out your combo, but as dangerous as it is to zoom past solid ground and potentially toward ruin, the allure of seeing that little combo tally above your head tick up even higher is often powerful enough to assuage such fears.”

Mushroom 11’s clever goo-based puzzles triumph over its stiff challenges

“For all the comparisons to older games like Portal or Braid or even the similarly slime-based World Of Goo, Mushroom 11 is never anything less than its own game, with a unique approach to physics and a clear understanding of all the fun things players can accomplish with it. Its real triumph, though, is in how it coaxes players to discover all of its little tricks and quirks via level and puzzle design that never dips below being consistently, delightfully intelligent. Considering that it’s only the second game from a relatively untested team, it’s a fantastic PC debut, and one that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as other members of that aforementioned physics puzzler hall of fame.”

The Beginner’s Guide wants intimacy, but then again, we’re all so alone

“The feeling of connection might be an illusion, though, and that tension is what gives The Beginner’s Guide its strongest moments. Even as it reaches out from within its prisons, it won’t let you forget the bars. If it is a desperate desire to be known and understood, then its intentions come fraught with the same doubts as any authentic relationship. How do we even know that Wreden is telling the truth? Perhaps there is no other developer, and it’s all just an elaborate morality play—one more preachy indie game designed to get under the player’s skin.”

Panoramical puts you in control of gorgeous, living musical landscapes

“Panoramical invites players to dive into the core elements of a song and fiddle with them. Every adjustment to the song alters the environment accordingly and vice-versa. Mountains rise and form peaks as you adjust the bass. Clouds part as you tweak the synth. Lightning crashes with the snare drum. There are no princesses to save or treasures to collect—just a landscape and music. What makes this a game more than an instrument, though, is that it all funnels into a sense of play, of trying different things until you find what’s right for you.”

N++ proves you can have too much of a good thing

“Maybe N++ needs to be consumed in short jaunts—pop in for a quick platforming fix and hop out when your eyes start to bleed. The core of it, after all, is trimmed to near perfection. Its sprawl, though, invites long play sessions and the short individual stages fuel a dangerous “just one more, just one more” fervor. A quick jaunt can easily turn into twitchy marathon, and before you know it, you’re anxious and grimy and feeling like you woke up somewhere disconcerting after a long bender. Looking at the progress page after a session, that silly 3,000 percent completion number feels less like a friendly joke and more like a snarky challenge: “How much can you handle?” N++ seems to be asking. It might not be a challenge you want to meet.”

A 300-year war drags on in Double Fine’s Massive Chalice

“A hero’s death in combat is permanent, but considering how often they die of natural causes, it’s hard to get attached in the same way you might to soldiers in similar tactics games like XCOM or Fire Emblem. I wish Massive Chalice had done more to make me feel those deaths. The game’s stylized art only leaves room for some vague similarities in looks to remind me that I’ve got a family fighting together. Considering that many of my teammates were related, perhaps heroes could have mourned for a fallen sister or child. There’s bound to be some disconnect with the mortal world when you live forever, but I could have used a reminder why this war is worth spending 300 years to win.”

République explores surveillance by making you both protector and voyeur

“You play as an individual behind a security apparatus of some sort, capable of interfacing with the cameras and systems of a cloistered, dystopian boarding school. République doesn’t establish or question who you are. You could be a valiant hacker fighting for freedom or just a surveillance officer with a conscience. Either way, the game begins when a teenage girl named Hope, one of the République’s captives, turns to the camera in the corner of a room—to you—and asks for help. You become both guide and watcher, assisting Hope from afar but also observing her and her world. You get to learn about it from a position of absolute safety and absolute power. République makes our voyeurism inescapable, explicitly tying your only means of absorbing and interacting with the game’s world to the surveillance state it critiques.”

Not A Hero wants you to embrace its hyperactive hyper-violence

“In most games, the belief that you can solve all your problems with violence is only implicit. Here, it’s the central and oft-shouted conceit. Not A Hero isn’t trying to denounce that attitude, though. There’s not much bite to its criticism, and it seems to love the things it’s making fun of as much as anyone. To its more serious cousin, Hotline Miami, it would have mostly kind words. Not A Herowould tell it to stop fronting. To that end, the title, Not A Hero, isn’t a condemnation. It’s permission to stop pretending this is anything other than what it is. You want to fuck shit up? Okay, let’s do this.”

Crypt Of The NecroDancer combines intimidating influences into a friendly hybrid

“No amount of song switching can keep Crypt Of The NecroDancer from being a challenge, though. It requires careful, attentive play and won’t hesitate to punish you for not giving it what it wants. It remains a loving relative to its ultra-hard brethren like Spelunky and The Binding Of Isaac, even as it departs from them in form. But unlike its kin, NecroDancer’s style and songs encouraged me to try again every time I failed. The music is so catchy, and it feels so good to follow—why not? That’s the ultimate result of NecroDancer’s genre experimentation: an invitation. An invitation to strap on your dancin’ shoes, let the beat seep into the hole where your heart used to be, and follow the siren sound deeper and deeper into the dark.”

Broken Age is finally finished, and it was worth the bumpy journey

“That story—the one between Shay, Vella, and the worlds they’ve touched just by living in them—is sweepingly and lovingly told. The reveal of the backstory that led them to one another is not as strong. It’s surprisingly straight-faced and well-worn given the amount of creativity on display everywhere else in Broken Age. But that’s a minor point. As a complete work, Broken Age holds together tightly. The strengths of the first half—the humor, the nostalgic picture-book art style, the voice and sound direction—flow seamlessly into the second, and the second half reinforces the first with a more fully realized sense of place and even better puzzle work. And the puzzles in the first half were already pretty good.”

Boss fights are the only fights in the refreshingly restrained Titan Souls

—The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter relies on us to build a backstory from its clichés

  —There’s no gray in White Night’s black-and-white world, and that’s a problem

—The Binding Of Isaac uses body horror to tell a story of abuse and empowerment

—Apotheon’s clunky action ruins a pleasant journey through Greek myth

—Gravity Ghost is a cosmic search for security and companionship