Cubed3

A four-in-one deal of three amazing games and one poor game to drag it down. While Blue Reflection Quartet, for the most part, tells compelling stories about growing up, the unfortunate black sheep makes the uncomfortable camera angles of the other games impossible to write off as flukes. Despite its questionable fan service, it is hard not to fall in love, as Blue Reflection Quartet offers great characters and combat systems that will keep fans of the genre stuck to their Switch 2s through the rest of the summer.

Dosa Divas feels like an interesting proof of concept, stretched out into a full game. The ideas and early execution don’t really evolve, instead becoming worn down by the time it’s all said and done. While it doesn’t lack heart and soul, it’s unfortunately missing quite a few ingredients to make it a full course meal.

Splatoon Raiders maintains its infectious ink-shooting core but remixes it into a loot-driven, gadget-enhanced adventure RPG. It sacrifices competitive multiplayer for deeper single-player/co-op depth, customisation, and narrative focus, offering a fresh direction that complements rather than replaces the mainline games. After a trilogy of Turf Wars, it feels good to finally work together with other players on an adventure on such a grand scale. Splatoon 3 isn't going anywhere, and even Splatoon 2 is still active, making Raiders absolutely a justified experience.

At its core, T.R.A.G. blends 90s-era survival-horror-style fixed-camera exploration and puzzles with energetic beat 'em up combat featuring combos and unique character fighting styles. This hybrid creates enjoyable loops of tense building infiltration alternating with stylish melee action. Though the tank controls feel stiff, the pacing is awesome, and there's enough intrigue to drive the plot forward. The cool late-90s cyberpunk aesthetic, pre-rendered backgrounds, jazzy soundtrack, and anime-inspired characters truly give this game a nostalgic feeling that's been long gone. It’s a B-movie tale of a terrorist tower takeover that serves up over-the-top hilarity with an endearing cheesiness, and the stiff English voice acting is a legendary experience that must be heard.

Fans of 2D action games through the ages are in for a treat with Gurei. It brings back memories of those late-90s nights of Mega Man action and mixes it with modern design to create an intense and highly replayable experience. With ten final bosses and over 3.6 million routes to take, there is always something new to explore for those who are looking for a change of pace. However, after a while, the beautiful overworld that first served as a wonderful playground to learn the controls turns into a hassle.

The town you'll create in Go-Go Town! is unlikely to become your forever home, but it can easily steal a few dozen enjoyable hours before you realise "just a few more minutes" has turned into a late-night landscaping session. It lacks the personality and depth of the genre's greats, yet its relentlessly satisfying progression loop is more than enough to earn it a recommendation for anyone looking to switch their brain off and let their inner mayor - whether laid-back or hopelessly obsessive - clock in.

If one wants to play Doomsday Diner, they can easily do so and get paid for it! It is called getting a nine-to-five job. This game is repetitive and stressful. To make matters worse, the physics engine is a mess and the sole reason the game is challenging at all. Add in constant crashes and it is a perfect storm that creates a title so unentertaining that this reviewer had to take breaks to do more enjoyable tasks, such as cleaning. In short, Doomsday Diner is difficult to recommend to anyone but streamers looking for a brief game to play.

Most of Moonlight Peaks' problems are only problems if you need to find some. It is inventive enough on its own to be surprising, and makes smart use of genre conventions elsewhere. For anyone who wants to distill it into a simple description, Moonlight Peaks could sit easily among Stardew Valley, Fae Farm and Animal Crossing in the pantheon of life sims.

Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo is impressively polished, with gameplay that invites experimentation by offering multiple creative solutions instead of just one correct approach. This flexibility, paired with responsive physics and clear visual feedback, makes puzzle solving satisfying and central to the overall progression. The bouncy, chunky graphics paired with the uppity chiptune create an atmosphere that's fun, inviting, and nostalgic, without ever feeling cloying or overdone. It's the kind of game that perfectly nails what it sets out to do, while going above and beyond expectations.

Celestial Return leaves as bitter a taste as the capitalist dystopia it aims to portray. While the art, music, and story are stunning in their own right, they create an immersion-breaking mishmash that, at times, makes no sense. It feels more like the development team wanted to throw everything they found cool into a single title without considering how it would all work together. Nowhere is this clearer than in the gameplay, which, due to design oversights in the addition of more layers, leads to an extreme number of potential softlocks. In shorter games, it is fine, but in a six-hour story-driven RPG, not so much.