OlliOlli - $12.99 (PC, PS4, PS Vita, PS3, soon XBO/3DS/WiiU)
http://www.roll7.co.uk/#!olliolli/c1ic0
OlliOlli is a neat little arcade skating game that resolves around finding the perfect pace to survive increasingly more difficult levels while making lunatic combos and tricks, and landing them all perfectly. It's a game that took me just a little while getting used to control-wise, but then it suddenly clicked and i was flipping out 360 inward heelflips into perfect Crooked grinds into whatever like it was no thang. It's one of those games that just feels damn good to play when you get the hang of it. The game also has a healthy amount of content and challenges to overcome and the daily challenge is a godsend for those who want the grind to last forever.
Defining Moment: Grinding your way through a whole level into a perfect combo and a bonkers score in the Daily Grind for the first time.
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Scrolls - $5 (PC, Android)
https://scrolls.com/
Scrolls is one of the latest additions to the virtual card games on PC. If you have ever played a card game, you will feel right at home. What this game does differently is that when you play cards, you put the on hexes on the battlefield. The placement of units on the battlefield is very important so it gives Scrolls a feel of a board game as well. Overall the game is very strategic and deep. It has a very good balance between paying and non-paying customers. You can buy cards and card packs by gaining gold which is given to you by doing certain tasks, daily challenges, playing other players and selling cards on the market, or you can put your cards to be sold on the black market to other players. You even get a good amount of gold even if you lose a match. On the other hand, there is a limit on how much you can spend on the game and even if you do, you cant buy card packs with real money, only individual cards and some pre-made packs.
Defining Moment: Playing for an hour and realizing that you can buy 5 more packs!
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Shadowrun: Dragonfall - $14.99 (PC, Mac, Linux)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/300550/
Shadowrun: Dragonfall is a tactical, turn based RPG, set in a world of cyberpunk/magic. The game's story is the main selling point, featuring a really quite complex conspiracy cyberpunk mystery, that starts out as a tale of revenge and morphs into something much more fascinating. The characters you meet, from the rest of the team to the NPCs in the Kreuzbasar, are well written and very memorable. The theme is equally strong throughout, with great visuals of a broken down world, mixed with high tech and magic, aided by a top notch soundtrack. My personal favourite of the CRPG renaissance so far.
Defining Moment: Stepping out into the Kreuzbasar for the first time. You can practically smell the decay and grime, feel the rain washing over your face.
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Shovel Knight - $14.99 (PC, Wii U, 3DS, soon PS3/4/Vita)
http://yachtclubgames.com/shovel-knight/
Shovel Knight is a 8 bit'ish labor of love platformer, based on video game fundamentals such as exploring levels, finding secret paths and beating bosses, just like in the good old time. Superb level designs, interesting enemies and bosses, lots of secrets and optional paths, fantastic chip tune music, wonderful and tight gameplay and a bad-ass knight with a shovel. They could have made the game even harder (though you can make it harder yourself by destroying checkpoints for money) for the real 8 bit feel, especially the bosses, but overall this has definitely become one of my all time favorite platformers.
Defining Moment: Fishing a certain something back up with the fishing rod. Awesome little touch.
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Sportsfriends - $14,99 (PC, Mac, Linux, PS4, PS3)
http://sportsfriendsgame.com/
An amazing collection of local multiplayer games, that are almost always guaranteed to be a crowd favourite. Each of the games is easy enough to pick up from watching a match or two but are deceptively complex and very competitive. JS Joust has some unusual requirements in order to play (2-7 PS Move controllers and a large-ish room to play in), but the effort is definitely worth it. Joust is likely to be one of the most memorable and universally enjoyable party games you've ever encountered. Even the two secret games are hilarious fun once you figure out how to unlock them (you'll have to figure this one out by yourself). Definitely a great purchase if you have friends over from time to time.
Defining Moment: Getting into ridiculous antics while shouting at our friends.
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Sunless Sea - $18.99 (PC, Mac)
http://www.failbettergames.com/sunless/
Sunless Sea lets you explore the vast Unterzee, a sprawling expanse of ocean deep beneath the earth, surrounding a displaced London from the popular Fallen London game. It's a place where grotesque things and terrible fates await those who dare venture into the abyss. As captain, you command your vessel and crew as you discover new lands, fight dangerous enemies, upgrade your ship with better parts and new weapons. Starvation, madness, mutinous crews, and horrors beyond comprehension await out on the black waters. Maybe your crew will go mad. Maybe you'll discover some incredible fortune. Maybe you'll run out of food and need to eat your mates to survive. Great adventures and horrific misfortunes alike are out there for you to find and like Fallen London , it's all delivered through such atmospheric writing.
Defining Moment: Leaving the welcoming lights of London and the surrounding isles behind and venturing into the suffocating darkness for the first time, no idea of what discoveries and dangers await.
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Super Time Force Ultra - $14.99 (PC, X1, 360, soon PS4)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/250700/
Super Time Force Ultra is as mechanically smart as its story is delightfully cheesy and self aware. It takes the foundation of a side-scrolling shooter and adds brilliantly executed time manipulation, allowing you to rewind after each death and fight alongside your previous character, compiling your firepower and potentially even saving your former life. It runs on complicated concepts, yet they're somehow immediately understandable and engaging, only becoming more involved and elaborate as you go along. In terms of raw entertainment there are few games that came anywhere near as close throughout the year.
Defining Moment: When the mechanics finally "click" and you execute an absurd series of rewinds and character swaps to cause unbelievable amounts of chaos and finish a level in seconds flat.
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Super Win the Game -
Free Prequel/ $12,99 (PC, Mac, Linux)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/310700/
Super Win The Game is a great homage to old school Metroidvania games, from great retro music to emulated CRT graphics this game goes out of the way to make you feel like you're playing those old games. The world is big, with a lot of places to explore but at the same time the dev managed to make it compact, not overwhelming you with tons of near identical screens. You are never really lost because every area is designed in a very distinct way. Platforming, while tricky in some parts, is never really hardcore and should be no problem even for beginners. Super Win the Game is a little masterpiece. Managing to pull off feeling very "NES" while being extremely playable and keeping things fresh till the end.
Defining Moment: Realizing that retro games dont necessarily need to feel outdate and can still be pretty great experiences.
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The Banner Saga - €19,99 (PC, Mac, soon PS4/XBO)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/237990/
http://www.gog.com/game/the_banner_saga
The Banner Saga is a story-driven tactical role-playing game inspired by Norse mythology. In this collapsing world you are a powerless man who have a task to lead your people to safety. Every decision you make in travel and conversation has significant consequences and can affect outcome of your story. Will you let group of bandits to join your caravan? The world of Banner Saga is filled with beautiful and stunning hand-painted landscapes. Despite simple combat design, positioning, tactical thinking, good understanding of characters and enemies are required to achieve a great triumph in Banner Saga.
Defining Moment: Making a decision that should make thing better but it turns out to be the worst decision.
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The Floor Is Jelly - $9.99 (PC, Mac)
http://thefloorisjelly.com
The Floor Is Jelly is set in a weird abstract world where everything from the ground to water is made of the titular substance. On the surface, The Floor Is Jelly is a standard platformer, as you jump across gaps, avoid dangerous spikes, and wall-jump up narrow tunnels. But it's the game's artstyle and fluid environments that make it something special. A vibrant world constantly in motion, affected by your every movement, that can act as a trampoline and boost you to great heights or mold to let you bounce around spikes. From flower switches that bloom in the rain to rotating levels and dimension swapping, The Floor Is Jelly builds on its core gameplay and unique world to deliver a fun and wonderfully artistic platformer.
Defining Moment: Is it really a defining moment when the entire game is continually impresses? Every time you see the world react and bounce and wobble with every hop and run, it's always so visually cool and doesn't get old to watch
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The Journey Down Chapter 2 - $10,99 ($14,99 as Bundle with both Chapters) (PC, Mac, Linux)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/262850/
The Journey Down is a wonderfully afro-infused adventure, with Chapter Two giving it a great noir detective vibe reminiscent of the second chapter of Grim Fandango. The jazzy soundtrack of the late Simon D'Souza has been amazingly carried on by Jamie Salisbury and has been recorded with a full orchestra. The original voice cast is as colourful as before and is joined by newcomers dripping with character. The puzzles offer entertainment and light challenge while the story gives a simple yet endearing motivation throughout.
Defining Moment: Delving into the really thick and marvellously executed atmosphere.
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The Talos Principle - Free Demo / $40 (PC, soon PS4)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/257510/
The Talos Principle came out of nowhere to deliver a lengthy (20+ hours) puzzle adventure that might not have a unique setting or mechanics but is all about brain-twisting levels that test your spatial cognition skills. On top of that is an ambiguous tale of man-machine musings, religious dogma, existentialism, and hackers through a computer text adventure with enough levity to balance against such heady subject matter. It’s surprising how eloquent and concise the godlike Elohim narrator is, only ever speaking in relation to your progress in the game. Head-scratching because of both elements in the best possible way. It’s a mystery worth figuring out.
Defining Moment: The interviews in the text adventure and when you realise there are others trying to subvert the system.
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The Vanishing of Ethan Carter - $19,99 (PC, soon PS4)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/258520/
Ethan's adventure is not particularly long. But the game is always presenting you with something beautiful to look at, something suspicious to chew on, or some puzzle to solve. It even changes up the mechanics here and there to help keep things feeling fresh, avoiding too much repetition in the more game-y mechanics. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter is meant to be taken slowly, absorbed like a good book dripping with detail. The ending may not exactly be the most surprising and some may find themselves a little disappointed. But the journey towards it is full of heart and imagination. Much in the way that Ethan Carter himself is.
Defining Moment: Finding out what your supernatural abilities do and how they help you progressing the story.
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This War of Mine - $19,99 (Pc, Mac, Linux)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/282070/
This War of Mine explored the horrors of war from a perspective not portrayed in the medium till now and delivered one of the most tense, gripping, and bleak experiences we played this year in a survival/roguelike/stealth package. A gutted war-torn city, all pencil-sketched shadows and ruined structures, reeking of desperation and hopelessness, as explosions thunder and flash ceaselessly outside. Overall, This War of Mine was just one hell of an engrossing, compelling, and atmospheric experience.
Defining Moment: Realizing that you actions do matter. Not just at that moment when you are just trying to survive, but also over time as guilt and depression erodes your characters' will to endure.
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Towerfall Ascension - $14,99 (PS4, PC, Mac, Linux)
http://www.towerfall-game.com/
A Multiplayer arena game with powerups, tight controls and a lot of variety to stay interesting for a long time to come. Towerfall Ascension is an essential game to have if you have friends around from time to time. Rarely, have I witnessed a game turning doubters into believers this quickly as with Towerfall. Casual, Hardcore, whatever, it literally doesnt matter. Towerfalls charme, easy to grasp controls and gratifying mechanics gets them all and is guaranteed to turn a room of 4 into an hysterically laughing pit of fun, even people who do not like MP or pixel games. If you need one game to try with people who wouldnt usually try these kind of games, try Towerfall.
Defining Moment: Jumping towards an opponent, shooting all your arrows, missing ALL of them and then standing defenslessly in front of him before you get he gets an easy kill on you and the room bursts into laughter.
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Transistor - $19.99 (PC, PS4)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/237930/
Transistor is sublime mechanical ingenuity, nonlinear storytelling and world building, wrapped in a gorgeous presentation backed by an absolutely astonishing soundtrack. It rewards experimentation and player curiosity, unwrapping at a deliberate pace as it constantly gives you new tools to play with and things to discover. It's a monumental step up from Bastion in terms of scope, but retains the impeccable vision Supergiant Games' has become known for.
Defining Moment: Finding a new function combination you didn't realize was possible and watching the game open up anew again and again.
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TRI: Of Friendship and Madness - $14,99 (PC, Mac, Linux)
http://store.steampowered.com/app/293660/
Tri is a very very good game. It is a puzzle-exploration game. In each level there is a locked teleporter, which require three keys to open. Your task in each is the find the keys, find the teleporter and continue to the next level. Off course things do get more complicated as you go along. Tri is yet another game that can be added to the list of already excellent first person puzzle games like Portal and Q.U.B.E. It introduces a new gameplay mechanic that’s original and one that works surprisingly well, even in puzzle format. The mysterious atmosphere makes you want to keep playing and the increasingly difficult puzzles are(mostly) fun to solve. All in all this is a great game for puzzle enthusiasts.
Defining Moment: Exploring the effects the rather unique puzzle mechanic.
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Ultimate Space Commando - $9,99 (PC)
http://www.desura.com/games/ultimate-space-commando-usc
It is hard to find an Indie game in the genre that has as well thought out mechanics as USC. It is a turn-based squad strategy game and unlike comparable games, has enough depth, diversity in missions and possibilities to always keep you on your toes. A game that requires using the different items at skills to be successful. There are some easier modes, but the game truly shines as a complex tactical challenge. The game will fully release this february and if the campaign structure of Fallout Tactics or Jagged Alliance is something you loved and yearned for, this is a game you should keep an eye on.
Defining Moment: Moving your engineer to a hackable door, only to notice that the empty space around the corner wasnt quite as empty, teaching you to always stay in the safety of the squad.
So glad to finally have this out.
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