How appropriate

It’s perhaps fitting that, as we celebrate a trip back to Monkey Island, there’s a distinctly point-and-click flavour to this issue’s Play section. No fewer than seven games are at the very least adjacent to the genre, if not quite belonging to it – a happy accident of scheduling, we’re sure, as opposed to a weary craving for something that taxes our brains rather than our (slightly) waning reflexes.

Or is it? Perhaps this is, in fact, a wider trend towards more cerebral fare, at least within the indie space. Either way, we’re feasting: joining Ron Gilbert’s bright, nostalgia-soaked return is a point-and-click adventure of a much darker hue in The

Excavation Of Hob’s Barrow. Neither of those games, in truth, is likely to have you stuck on its puzzles for too long, so if you’re seeking something that demands you keep a notepad handy, we can point you in the direction of Riley & Rochelle, where you must figure out the chronology of a romance between two star-crossed celebs while nodding along to a convincingly ’90s-themed soundtrack. The Case

Of The Golden Idol, meanwhile, presents you with a succession of murders to solve, and would really rather you didn’t rely on its in-built hint system, thank you very much. Wayward Strand, which casts you as a young girl spending her school holidays at a nursing home, is thoughtful in a different way, inviting us to ruminate on how we use the time we have left in a story that targets the heart more than the head.

But fear not, action fans: there’s some handy counterprogramming in the form of Metal: Hellsinger, a rhythm-shooter that (temporarily at least) makes us see the appeal of the moshpit. And to bring us full circle to the subject of colourful, slightly safe sequels, there’s Splatoon 3, in which you fight not like a cow but a human-cephalopod hybrid. As some of our colleagues in the gaming press may attest, our reflexes haven’t entirely atrophied yet.