E3 - COUNT'S CASTLE

How do make your Battle Royale game stand out? If you're Media Tonic you have it play just like a Japanese game show. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout puts you in charge of one of many colourful little blobs, each tasked with the incomprehensible desire to pour themselves into a kaleidoscopic meat grinder. Beat Takeshi would be proud.

E3 - OOZE

Who doesn't want to slime around massive Goth-industrial laboratories pulling blubbery humans into their hungry maw? Carrion offers players the chance to take control of an enormous bacterial infection, thrashing and crashing around, gorging itself on anything that isn't nailed down. Phobia Game Studio's upcoming release immediately looks set to deliver on the game I dearly wanted to play when eyeing up Mega Drive clunker The Ooze in some ancient copy of Mean Machines Sega.

Downwell - GUN BOOTS

Do you enjoy plummeting down bottomless 8-bit pits, firing deadly plasma out of your feet? If you do, Ojiro Fumoto's Downwell released this week on Steam and iOS! It's great. Douglas Wilson's article over on Polygon regarding his time as a beta tester is a good primer for the app, full of the kind of detailed thoughts and feelings you'd typically expect from a retrospective.

E3 2015 - DEVOLVE

Devolver Digital were at Sony's E3 conference last night showing off their 2016 catalogue. Ronin looks like an 8-bit Capcom explorer such as Bionic Commando but with Tenchu: Stealth Assassins executions and flash animation polish. Eitr reminds me of EA's The Immortal with added Dark Souls contrariness. Mother Russia Bleeds is my favourite, a Streets of Rage side-scroller filtered through Eternal Champions' Overkill fatalities and a general sense of alcoholic despair. Finally, Crossing Souls has the same pastel coloured crush as umpteen licensed SNES games and cut-scenes straight out of 90s conveyor belt animation.