We’re often asked how we determine what goes into the Play section, given the increased volume of games released nowadays, particularly around this time of year. Fourteen reviews might be a little more than we manage in an average issue, but it’s around half the number of new titles that launch on Steam every day. The process isn’t an exact science, and we don’t want to get too insidebaseball about it, but there are a few basic guidelines we tend to follow.
Obviously there are the games for which regular readers are rightly expecting a verdict in these pages: the first four releases featured in this issue (each of which earns a different score; if you’ve resisted reading ahead, see how many you can guess) being prime examples. Beyond that, it’s largely a case of spotlighting smaller games that catch our eye – this month including Saturnalia, Signalis, Dome Keeper and Paradise Marsh – which might otherwise struggle for attention but which fully deserve appraisal. There’s an element of timing involved, too: early-arriving code invariably improves a game’s chances of being featured.