Dave Ozzy

Sign of the Sojourner really is worth picking up for the surrounding exploration and setting stuff - it’s that good - but you might want to zone out for the card-gaming.

There aren’t many games that let you headbutt a ninja out of an open door, before turning to roundhouse a fireman into a bathtub, but Fights in Tight Spaces is that game, and it lets you live out your action movie fantasies. Part deck-building card game, part turn-based battler, and part Jason Bourne, it’s a pile-up of genres. Needless to say, when we were offered the opportunity to interview the founder of Ground Shatter Games and brawn behind Fights in Tight Spaces, we grabbed it with both hands and suplexed it.

There is no guarantee that you will enjoy Spooky Chase on Xbox. It’s an acquired taste that demands that you’re patient, focused, have the reactions of a grasshopper, and are willing to persist with the same level over and over again. Its randomness means you can’t rely on muscle memory, so tie your pad round your wrists, as it might go for a skydive out of the window. But come to terms with what Spooky Chase wants from you, and it’ll create great moments.

Doodle God gets an unheavenly makeover today, with the launch of Doodle Devil: 3volution. First released on mobile and PC back in 2017, it’s been remastered for console with a spruce to the graphics, console-friendly controls, and some extra minigames - and it’s out now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch.

3 out of 10: Season One on the Xbox is good enough to dodge a too-on-the-nose 3 out of 10, and even a 3 out of 5. As a ‘playable sitcom’ it excels at the sitcom bit, delivering laughs that wouldn’t be out of place in a top-tier comedy. Where it falls down is the ‘playable’ bit, offering a 50% hit-rate on its minigames that will often have you reaching for the welcome skip button. But even when it misses, 3 out of 10 has always got something to say and will tickle a rib or two.

We were sidewinded by Steven Universe: Unleash the Light on Xbox. We came into it without any experience of Save the Light, and had unfounded assumptions that this was a My First RPG that would be as dull as dishwater. What we got was something in the way of Costume Quest 1 and 2: a witty, elegant little turn-based RPG that surprised every time that we thought it would dive into monotony.

Checking out trailers or screenies for Fights in Tight Spaces, you’d be forgiven for seeing it as a composite of different games. There’s SUPERHOT of course, not only in the way it looks - like a fight in an Ikea catalogue - but in the way it slows down frantic combat to a step-by-step. There’s John Wick too, and more specifically John Wick Hex. Hex searched for a way to make the incredibly fluid brawling of John Wick work in a turn-based tactical game. Fights in Tight Spaces has similar aims.

Doodle Devil: 3volution on the Xbox falls foul of the same problems that have plagued Doodle games since the beginning of creation. Progress begins well, with elements mixing logically and a fun flourish when you get a pairing right. But then the pattern sets in, and you’re painstakingly combining every element with every other element, with the emphasis on ‘pain’.

We really, really want to be proved wrong about Warrior Boy, but the trailer and screenshots look leagues away from ‘promising’. This is a third-person action-adventure game in the same vein as Maximo or the recent Effie, casting you as a lowly boy who finds a magical gem that gives him similarly magical powers, before he is ambushed by goblin raiders. You get hit by an arrow, stuffed in a chest, and your adventure truly begins. Warrior Boy is out today on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S.

Good gravy, is it really time for another hidden object game? We must be in some kind of golden age, as Portal of Evil: Stolen Runes is the third released in the past thirty days. What makes Portal of Evil: Stolen Runes so different from your common-or-garden hidden object game, though, is that it’s not from ubiquitous publisher Artifex Mundi. This one is an 8floor joint, and it’s out now on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S, joining previous releases on PS4, PS5 and PC.

Sometimes, less is more. When it comes to hidden object games, it’s hard to find one that focuses solely on the hide-and-seeking, rather than overblown tales of necromancers stealing your second-cousin for a blood ritual. Rarer still is a hidden object game that can be played with all of the family, stripped back to pretty pictures and things to find within them. Onto the stage comes Under Leaves, which launches today on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S to join previous releases on Nintendo Switch and PC.

There was a time when you couldn’t move for 3D platformers. Now? Eh, not so much, and that’s a shame. We’d pay a few bob to have another Banjo Kazooie or Mario 64 to wander around, and we’d even settle for a Gex or Croc. Mail Mole clearly has a love for that same era of gaming, as every level is a love letter to that period. Mail Mole is out now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5, Switch and PC.

You can probably close your eyes and imagine it: what if you mapped the gameplay of Bomberman onto the dungeons of Legend of Zelda, while also handing the main character a pickaxe for close combat shenanigans? What you’re picturing there, if you’ve done it right, will be astonishingly similar to what you get in Cave Bad, the latest from indie publishing giants eastasiasoft. Cave Bad is out now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PS4, PS5 and Nintendo Switch.

Late to the shores of Xbox, after having a stint on the Switch, PC and mobile, we won’t hold it against it: we are, after all, big fans of any games that let us swash our buckles and buccan our ears. Under the Jolly Roger is out now.

Mail Mole on Xbox does the job of offering a ‘00s-era platformer - nothing more, nothing less. There’s no innovation here, not even capitalising on the fact that you’re a mole, and you may well groan at the landslide of cliches. But as we came to the end of Mail Mole, we kind of dug it. Aside from the odd control molehill, Mail Mole is a smooth ride and it may well scratch an itch that you forgot you had.