Release Date: 05/04/2019, updated in 2021
Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch and Xbox One
Skill Rating: 7+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person, Open World, Pixels and Weather
A Short Hike is an adventure traversal game where you play the penguin-like character Claire, who needs to climb a mountain in a beautiful national park to receive an important phone call. Presented in cute pixel graphics, the game invites you to...
Release Date: 02/11/2021
Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and iOS
Skill Rating: 9+ year-olds
Components: 2D Overhead, Blocks, Hand-Made and Pixels
Unpacking is a meditative puzzle game where you unpack belongings into a series of spaces, each representing a stage in life. You get to know the owner of the objects by their possessions and circumstances. To finish a level you need to work out where...
Release Date: 09/09/2021, updated in 2022
Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One
Components: 2D Side-On and Hand-Made
Webbed is a running and jumping game with a twist - you play a spider who can make webs, swing, climb and all the while creating music as she goes. It follows the story of our happy little spider on an adventure to save her boyfriend from a big dumb...
Release Date: 11/04/2016, updated in 2018
Out Now: PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox X|S
Skill Rating: 10+ year-olds
Components: 3D First-Person, Day and Night and Open World
Subnautica is an open-world adventure where you explore the ocean on an alien planet after crashlanding. You collect resources and fight creatures to survive. This enables you to establish an underwater base, gain new craft and equipment and explore...
Release Date: 11/12/2020
Out Now: Apple TV, Mac, PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and iOS
Skill Rating: 5+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person and Cartoon
Alba: A Wildlife Adventure is an adventure game where you play as a young girl who starts a wildlife conservation club. Play involves exploring the island, using the bird song you hear to find and photograph all manner of real-world birds. It stands out...
Release Date: 14/03/2012, updated in 2019
Out Now: PC, PS3, PS4 and iOS
Skill Rating: 11+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person and Open World
Journey is an adventure game set in a desert. Exploring the eerie sandscape, you discover a world abandoned by the race that created it. The sense of space and scale evokes feelings of aloneness and being lost. But then the game pairs you with other...
Release Date: 05/10/2021
Skill Rating: 8+ year-olds
Components: 3D Third-Person, Cartoon and Hand-Made
Rainbow Billy: The Curse of the Leviathan is a role-play adventure where you save the world from colourless darkness. Unusually, battles are won through listening and conversation rather than traditional attacks. It combines the excitement and strategy...
Release Date: 26/02/2016, updated in 2018
Out Now: Amazon Fire, Android, Mac, PC, PS Vita, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and iOS
Components: 2D Overhead, Day and Night, Grid, Open World and Pixels
Stardew Valley looks like a farming simulator. That’s partly what it is, but you also develop relationships with the other townsfolk and delve deep into the mines. Its quirky labyrinthine attention to detail is inviting for young players to try their...
Release Date: 19/07/2022, updated in 2023
Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox X|S
Stray is an adventure traversal game about a cat lost in a futuristic city where robots live. You guide your feline friend in and out of buildings, across roads and generally poke your nose in to see what is going on.
Release Date: 28/08/2018
Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One
Components: 3D Third-Person
Rocket League is a sports action game where you drive futuristic cars to score goals with an oversized football. It's a game that sounds ridiculous but is actually a huge amount of fun to play and requires a lot of expertise. What's not obvious from the...
Release Date: 19/11/2020
Out Now: PS5
Skill Rating: 6+ year-olds
Astro's Playroom is a running and jumping game that launched with the PlayStation 5. It not only showcases the PS5's new DualSense controller but offers a loveable adventure with novel interactions and considerable substance.
Release Date: 08/11/2019, updated in 2020
Components: 2D Side-On, 3D Third-Person and Cartoon
New Super Lucky's Tale is a running and jumping game where you play a fox on a quest to recover pages from a magical book that will save his world. Play is action-oriented but the islands and characters are full of quirky characters and treasures. It...
Release Date: 25/06/2013, updated in 2017
Out Now: Mac, PC, PS Vita, PS4, Switch and Xbox One
Components: 2D Side-On and Pixels
TowerFall Ascension is a running, jumping and archery game where each player selects a pixelated knight and fights to eliminate opponents by shooting them with arrows or jumping on their heads. Play is about quick reactions and second-guessing what your...
Release Date: 12/11/2020, updated in 2022
Components: 3D First-Person, Cartoon and Day and Night
Bugsnax is a whimsical adventure where you track, trick, catch and eat anthropomorphic food in all shapes and sizes. But as you do, you literally become what you eat. It's silly puzzling fun from the creators of [link to game/Octodad+Dadliest+Catch...
Release Date: 05/04/2022
Out Now: PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox X|S
Components: 3D Third-Person, Blocks and Cartoon
Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga is the latest in a series of Star Wars-themed games where you run, jump, break and build worlds made of Lego. You work your way through all nine of the Star Wars films unlocking new locations and characters as you go...
Release Date: 21/03/2017, updated in 2019
Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4 and Switch
Skill Rating: 3+ year-olds
Everything is an unusual game that simulates a world where you can become any object. It sounds strange and not much fun, but the enjoyment is in discovering how small or how big a thing you can become. From tiny atoms to whole planets and everything in...
Release Date: 26/05/2020
Components: 3D Third-Person and Blocks
Minecraft Dungeons is an action-adventure game that takes place in the Minecraft universe. You explore various dungeons to complete missions and collect new gear by exploring and finding treasure chests, or by defeating enemies...
Release Date: 02/11/2016, updated in 2018
Abzu is an adventure in a lush underwater world. You descend into the heart of the ocean to find ancient secrets and encounter majestic creatures. This combines the beautiful weightlessness of diving with an ancient story of finding meaning and your...
Release Date: 12/02/2009
Out Now: PC, PS Vita, PS3, PS4 and iOS
Components: 3D First-Person, Open World and Weather
Flower is a traversal collecting game where you control the breeze blowing across fields of grass and blow petals into other flowers to make them bloom. Flower is simple and single-purpose in evoking the feeling of the wind. What starts as an awkward...
Release Date: 29/09/2017, updated in 2019
Components: 2D Side-On, Cartoon and Hand-Made
Cuphead is a running, jumping and shooting game that looks like an old Mickey Mouse cartoon. You play on your own or with someone else and work across the screen, jumping gaps, shooting enemies and avoiding projectiles.
Release Date: 06/01/2015
Out Now: Android, Mac, PC, PS4, Switch and iOS
Components: 2D Overhead and Grid
Mini Metro is a sequencing strategy game where you create an ordered, efficient underground train system. It sounds like hard work, but the simple Tube-map visuals, calm music, and streamlined interactions make this relaxing, like sudoku. Dip your toe...
Release Date: 10/06/2021, updated in 2021
Out Now: Mac, PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox X|S
Components: 3D Third-Person and Hand-Made
Chicory: A Colorful Tale is an adventure where you play an everyday dog thrust into the role of wielding a magic brush. The world starts black and white but you colour it in with your paintbrush to solve puzzles and help your animal friends. It looks...
Release Date: 24/08/2021
Components: 2D Side-On and Cartoon
Hoa is an adventure game where you walk and jump through a hand-painted world as the mysterious main character. You solve environmental puzzles and meet magical creatures while trying to find your way back home. It's unusual because of its handcrafted...
Release Date: 21/11/2019, updated in 2023
Components: 3D Third-Person, Blocks and Open World
The Touryst is a puzzle-based adventure, where you seek to unlock the mysteries of an archipelago of sun-drenched islands. That's if you want to, because the adventure can wait if you'd rather soak up the sun and make the most of your time away by...
Release Date: 19/02/2015, updated in 2018
Out Now: Android, Apple TV, Mac, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and iOS
Skill Rating: 4+ year-olds
Components: 2D Side-On, Day and Night and Weather
The Alto Collection is a series of games including Alto's Odyssey and Alto's Adventure. Both are action traversal games where you explore beautiful mountains, dunes and canyons on a snowboarding journey full of serenity and secrets. All you have to...
Release Date: 15/01/2019, updated in 2019
Components: 3D Third-Person, Cartoon, Day and Night and Open World
My Time At Portia is an adventure role-play game set after civilization has been destroyed, and humans are emerging from underground to rebuild society. By gathering resources, crafting and building you slowly gain the tools to collect food, store...
Release Date: 31/01/2023
Out Now: PC, PS4 and PS5
Season: A Letter to the Future is a narrative adventure about a young woman sent out from her secluded community to explore the world for the first time. She is tasked with documenting life in a local valley before a mysterious cataclysm washes...
Release Date: 13/08/2020
Components: 2D Overhead and Cartoon
Boomerang Fu is a fighting game where you control small food-like characters. Using your boomerang the aim is to slice the other players with ranged or melee attacks. You can use a large range of power-ups such as explosive boomerangs, disguises and...
Release Date: 26/08/2019, updated in 2020
Knights And Bikes! is a hand-painted adventure in a fictional late-eighties British Isles. You work together as Nessa and Demelza who explore its coast on bikes to find treasure, mystery and trouble. There’s fighting with frisbees, water balloons,...
Release Date: 11/12/2018, updated in 2023
Outer Wilds is an exploration space mystery about a solar system trapped in an endless time loop. After 20 minutes of game time, you must start again – but each time brings a new opportunity to learn how you ended up on the planet and solve the...
Release Date: 23/01/2018, updated in 2023
Celeste is a platform game that requires players to use jumping and climbing moves to ascend an increasingly challenging two-dimensional mountain. You play Madeline, who is haunted by self-doubt at the scale of the task at hand. She presses on but is...
Release Date: 04/04/2017
Out Now: 3DS and 2DS, PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One
Components: 3D Third-Person, Blocks, Cartoon and Open World
Lego City: Undercover offers an open world to explore. While most Lego games have an open-world element in at least some areas, this one keeps play open throughout so that children can enjoy exploring at their own pace.
Release Date: 13/06/2023
Dordogne is a narrative adventure where you play as Mimi, a 32-year-old woman who returns to the house of her recently deceased grandmother. You explore the house and area to find letters and puzzles that bring back memories of the past.
Release Date: 17/11/2011, updated in 2022
Out Now: DS, PC, PS3, PS4, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox X|S
Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is a role-play game and an expanded version of the DS game Ni no Kuni: Dominion of the Dark Djinn. In it, you play a young boy who travels between worlds and battles enemies in an attempt to save his mother. It...
Release Date: 26/03/2021
Balan Wonderworld is a running, jumping and exploration game. It draws on classic 3D platform games but with simpler controls and a more laid-back challenge. Like Mario Odyssey, much of the gameplay revolves around getting temporary abilities (here it...
Release Date: 22/10/2019
Components: 3D Third-Person, Cartoon and Open World
Lonely Mountains Downhill is a racing game where you traverse a mountain on a bike. Make your way through thick forests, narrow trails and wild rivers. Race, jump, slide and try not to crash all the way from the peak to the valley. You choose your route...
Release Date: 29/07/2021
Omno is a running, jumping and surfing game where you explore an ancient fantastical world. As you explore you meet all manner of strange and wonderful lifeforms, from cute critters to enigmatic giants. It stands out for the approachable collectibility...
Release Date: 16/02/2018
Fe is a platform-traversal game where you play a fox in a magical fairy tale forest. The world extends in front of you in stylised form, with trees, mountains and streams glistening with sparkles of life. You run, jump, climb and dip your paws in every...
Release Date: 23/06/2006
Out Now: PS Vita, PS4 and PSP
LocoRoco is a traversal puzzle game in a world of plants and creatures to investigate. The novelty, besides the character’s singing and cute aesthetic, is that you control the game with just two buttons, tilting and bumping your characters through...
Release Date: 04/12/2020, updated in 2022
Submerged Hidden Depths is an adventure game where you sail, climb and explore the ruins of a sunken world. With light puzzle-solving and no combat, you discover a drowned city, crumbling skyscrapers and deserted villages. It's the sequel to the first...