It is probably of no surprise that most games are better with friends. Competitive or co-op, being able to play something you enjoy with others is almost certainly going to enhance the experience. So it follows that attempting to provide unique experiences to accommodate multiplayer is going to draw attention to a game. Logic Artists' stealth action title, Clandestine, which has just released from on Steam, takes the stealth action genre in a different direction by allowing a co-op partner to join you. Not as another agent in the field, but as the hacker in your ear who guides you through the action.

Tin Man Games have been bringing choose-your-own-adventure gamebooks to the digital age for quite some time now. Happily, they 've been doing a stellar job too and to make the happiness a tad happier they 've decided to tackle Steve Jackson's and Ian Livingstone's classic The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain.

Horror loving adventurers have been waiting for a sequel to 2008's The Lost Crown since, uhm, 2008 obviously and though The Last Crown: Blackenrock has yet to happen they can finally rejoice. The Last Crown: Midnight Horror has been released for Windows on Steam and seems like the perfect, short, supernatural mystery they were craving.

When I saw Anamorphosis at Sense of Wonder Night earlier this year, I was instantly reminded of Museum of Simulation Technology. They're both first-person perspective puzzle games with mechanics based on optical illusions, so they do have a lot in common. Anamorphosis is based on the type of optical illusion that shares its name, wherein disjointed pieces look like a cohesive whole when seen from exactly the right angle. The goal in each level is to get to and, if necessary, make the exit gate materialize by flattening and volumizing objects in the world.

Platforming classic Manic Miner is, indeed, a 2D arena arcade game where you take on the role of Willy. Interestingly, freshly released Penarium also happens to be a 2D arena arcade game where you take on the role of Willy. And just like Manic Miner before it, this is an absolutely excellent and bonkers platformer I instantly fell in love with. A game I can see myself playing years from now. A wonderfully cheery arcade experience.

Friendship can be a strange, difficult thing to navigate. Everyone loves to have pals, but how many of your dearest friends have you left behind over the course of your life? Can you think back to someone you spent every waking moment with for years, and when that simply stopped? We choose to share our lives with people, growing more and more intimate, but then someone or something comes along and it all crumbles. Friendship is such a delicate, fragile thing, and is a major theme of Aevee Bee's We Know The Devil (WKTD), a visual novel on the difficulties, pain, and nuances surrounding that most precious aspect of our lives.

Many games tell a story; Cibele asks you to experience one. It's not a game where you watch a character live through the hardships of finding love online, but where you feel it for yourself. You are told a story, and are playing as a character, but the game's systems blur the line between character and self, asking the player to settle into main character Nina's skin for a while. To feel her insecurities and the bubbling excitement this new intimacy brings. But you can feel that something isn't right, and that there is a negativity that permeates the online flirting from your new love in this MMO landscape. YOU know this, but for now, you are her, and must live out her life, good and bad, as it unfolds. Cibele, truly, is virtual reality for the heart.

Sometimes all you need to do is make a subtle change to an existing formula to make familiar ground feel fresh. A small adjustment to a mechanic or a perspective can breathe new life into tiresome iterations and leave you with something interesting. Colour-matching falling block games have been a mainstay of gaming for seemingly forever. Anode, the recently released title from Kittehface Software, does enough to make their game stand out, and the gameplay is just as fun as is to be expected from the genre.

It's been over a week since I last mentioned an adventure game Kickstarter campaign and this, I know, is simply unacceptable. I am deeply sorry. Here's a link to the campaign of Project 37 then to hopefully appease you and to finally get some eyes on this spartan-but-intriguing campaign whose goal is a very modest $3000. The game already does look rather lovely and the reward tiers are refreshingly unique -- they do actually include C64 text adventures, rock albums and Unity assets.

After a few minutes spent walking the dangerous halls of Crowtel, you start thinking that maybe those health inspector cats are right to want to shut this place down. Giant balls of garbage, falling icicles, spiky roofs, and frog-scaring ghosts are just the beginning of the problems plaguing this hotel, and it's up to you to fix them. Well, maybe just jump around them. The place may be beyond fixing. In the meantime, you can help the cute animal tenants by singing ghosts back to death and trying to fix the toilet by chirping.

I said FIX A TOILET BY CHIRPING. And it's pay what you want. Why are you still here?