October 2026

A nice simple platformer, with a neat twist on the jump mechanic. I liked how it technically had an open world to explore and find trinkets, while still having thematic levels for saving each crew member. Not a huge fan of the gravitron and speedrun achievements though

Astroneer kind of fell apart around the halfway mark. Building up the initial base on the first planet, slowly opening up the tech/industrial tree, was pretty good, but i think the multiple planets after that ruined the mechanical pacing - which is weird because that's the whole "astronaut/engineer" deal here, otherwise it's just a voxel minecraft

A great puzzle game about travelling up the Tower of Babel, where most puzzles require translating different pictographic languages in order to figure out what to actually do. I liked the methods of observing conversations and events in the world to deduce some meaning for a word, and that you can write your own notes in your personal dictionary. Part of me wishes it never validated the word meanings, just leaving you with your own journal notes (right or wrong), but i'm not entirely convinced it wouldn't be too frustrating like that

Punch Club 2 is a very straightforward sequel. Some improvements here and there over an otherwise identical layout to the first game (as well as one or two steps back). The random nature of the fights is still quite impenetrable to me, which led to tedious stretches of training stats. Could be a skill issue though

A decent puzzle platformer, with nice art and music, good set-pieces, puzzles that tickled the brain a bit, and a cute cat-monkey creature to pet every now and then. Story is alright, with some teasing mystery background elements, but the whole thing ends quite quickly, which is the nature of this genre, i guess

Another contender for top games i've played this year. Hits all the classic marks: presentation, gameplay, etc, but what really sold me was the lovely touches of detail (and humour), over and over and over again. Just a joy to explore and discover things in, Death's Door is absolutely great

I'm not sure about Dead Cells. It's a decent rogue-like, with butt-loads of additional content, but something kept feeling a bit.. sloppy.. to me ? I enjoyed my time with it, for what it was, but i'm really puzzled as to why this game has such a high rating and following. Perhaps i shouldn't have let that colour my expectations