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506 games released in 2024 and reviewed here, best first.
506 reviews
A jumpless precision platformer built entirely around potion-propelled momentum, whose genuinely novel movement system and rewarding mastery curve earn real praise from genre fans, undercut by a large, specific set of technical complaints — a hard 60fps cap, no ultrawide support, and window-locking issues — that patch history suggests went largely unaddressed after the game's first couple of months.
6 / 10
A short, monochromatic Phoenix Wright-style visual novel spin-off set in the Staffer Case universe, following a man trapped in a cycle of death and resurrection while a supernatural conspiracy unfolds, whose atmosphere and premise earn genuine affection tempered by a near-universal agreement that it's a brief, modest addition best enjoyed by fans of the original rather than a substantial standalone experience.
6 / 10
Ubisoft's first open-world Star Wars game delivers genuinely praised atmosphere and world-building as scoundrel Kay Vess, undercut by a real, consistently repeated "Ubisoft formula fatigue" complaint about an empty, on-rails open world, a specific, reproducible manual cloud-save failure that has cost multiple reviewers dozens of hours of progress, and a patch cadence that this review can confirm effectively stopped in mid-2025 even as bug reports continued well into 2026.
6 / 10
A dash-focused pixel-art action roguelite that turns evasion itself into offense, drawing inevitable comparisons to Wizard of Legend that its own review base says it doesn't survive, compounded by thin content and a developer who appears to have stopped patching two months after launch.
6 / 10
A pixel-art love letter to 1980s and 1990s slasher movies that nails its genre homage and gore-soaked presentation while offering barely more interactivity than a walking simulator, best understood as a horror movie for gamers rather than a horror game.
6 / 10
A genuinely novel mashup of Tetris-style block placement and Slay the Spire-style deckbuilding, cheap and strategically satisfying in short bursts — undercut by a detailed, credible criticism that its "roguelike" node sequence and bosses are mostly fixed rather than randomized, and no updates since its first week.
6 / 10
A ground-up remake of Chilla's Art's cult job-sim horror game, widely praised by the studio's own dedicated fanbase as one of its strongest entries yet, undercut by genuinely severe optimisation problems that leave a game this small demanding surprisingly serious hardware to run smoothly.
6 / 10
A NZ$4.49 duck-themed incremental whose own store page promises offline income and careful balance — and whose players report an "extremely slow" AFK system and upgrade costs that hit a flat "MAX" wall well before the 15-achievement list is done.
6 / 10
A third-person survival-horror shooter that paired a genuinely strong, well-received opening chapter with deep character customization, only for its long-awaited second chapter to land as a widely criticised step backward in pacing and enemy design that has visibly split its own fanbase.
6 / 10
A grim, pagan-folklore 2D adventure/visual-novel hybrid about a village of children performing dark rituals, whose striking art and world-building earn passionate devotion, tempered by a consistent negative-review theme describing tedious pacing, unresolved plot threads, and a good ending some reviewers found effectively impossible to reach without outside help.
6 / 10
A gorgeous, sprawling sci-fi metroidvania with genuinely creative traversal abilities, held back by a review sample that repeatedly and specifically argues its map, backtracking, and combat variety don't earn the length the game demands of them.
6 / 10
A character-driven RPG set in 1905 Warsaw about a demon-commanding thaumaturge investigating his father's death against the backdrop of Rasputin's rise, whose striking setting, writing, and voice acting win real devotion, tempered by a remarkably consistent complaint, echoed even by many admirers, that its investigation and combat systems offer little genuine challenge or player agency.
6 / 10
A short, PS1-styled psychological horror game about a lone worker rationing breath at a remote mountain train station, whose oppressive atmosphere and sound design earn real admiration, tempered by a sharply split reception over its thin, abruptly-ending story and a specific, repeated set of softlock and save-system bugs that cost some players their entire playthrough.
6 / 10
A cheap, cheerfully-written Early Access merchant RPG whose title promises trading and whose actual difficulty curve punishes it — this review's full read of every English-language negative review finds a consistent, two-year-old complaint that carrying trade goods is what gets a caravan killed, alongside a smaller but serious cluster of reports of full system crashes.
6 / 10
A solo-developed arcade snowboarding game explicitly channeling SSX and 1080°, whose core feel and nostalgia earn deep, emotional praise from genre veterans, tempered by a large, specific negative-review consensus that the Early Access content roster remains thin, and by a directly confirmed roughly six-month development gap in late 2024 and early 2025 that several reviewers characterized as abandonment before support resumed.
6 / 10
Motion Twin's lightning-fast co-op roguelite from the creators of Dead Cells, nearly two years into an Early Access run that has seen the developer visibly respond to community backlash (removing a widely hated "sudden death" co-op mechanic), while solo players, value-for-money and content depth remain real, recurring points of contention.
6 / 10
A solo-developed roguelike deckbuilder that replaces cards with a spellbook and a randomly generated puzzle board of linkable gems, whose genuinely fresh core concept and charming presentation earn real devotion, tempered by a remarkably consistent complaint — echoed even by many positive reviewers — that the board's randomness can leave players punished through no fault of their own, especially at higher difficulty tiers.
6 / 10
WayForward turns Atari's 1982 classic Yar's Revenge into a metroidvania starring hacker Emi Kimura, pairing genuinely inventive shoot-em-up hacking minigames with vibrant art and voice acting — undercut, by near-unanimous agreement among both critics and players, by dialogue widely described as painfully unfunny, and a metroidvania structure with much of its exploration and secret-finding stripped out.
6 / 10
A solo-developer survival RPG that stacks base building, faction reputation, dungeon crawling and an 11-category weapon system onto an escalating chain of islands — an enormous feature list for the price, but one that remains almost entirely unreviewed nearly two years after launch.
5.8 / 10
A gorgeous isometric jungle escape built for js13k 2024, judged 19th of the whole field for graphics — but its core "mishap" twist confused most of the competition's own judges, and the game is nearly silent throughout.
5.8 / 10
A NZ$4.49 pond-tycoon idler from Inner Realm Studios — the same solo developer's first game, made a year before Lumberjacked — checked against a thin but fully-read corpus of 77 Steam reviews, its achievement-completion curve, and the studio's own later fishing game, which one reviewer names directly as the better version of this idea.
5.8 / 10
A NZ$4.49 Cookie Clicker-style incremental from EagleEye Games, checked against every single English Steam review it has — all 53, positive and negative — plus its own achievement-completion curve and vote-weighted community tags, which rank it an Idler and an Incremental well ahead of the official "Simulation" genre label.
5.7 / 10
The first legal English release of a genuine 1995 horror pioneer, widely described by reviewers as an emulated ROM with a launcher rather than a true remaster — a specific, obtrusive cutscene-unlock popup and missing audio settings draw the sharpest complaints, though this review confirmed the developer rapidly patched several launch-crash issues within weeks.
5.7 / 10
A backpacking adventure RPG about hiking after a lost brother through gorgeous, hand-crafted landscapes — undercut badly enough by bugs and janky controls that even many of its own fans hedge their recommendation.
5.5 / 10
