14 cosy games to snuggle up with this autumn – including one where you run a bookshop
Stay cosy with these games and avoid the autumnal blues.
Autumn is the perfect time to snuggle up with a cosy game. Whether you want to run a tiny bookshop or unpack a load of boxes, there's a cosy game for that. If anything will help you get through the cold months ahead, it's the smooth-brain lo-fi chill vibes of cosy gaming. When we spoke to the developers of the upcoming cosy game Moonlight Peaks, they were keen to praise this sub-genre that is always providing good vibes. Producer Erik Kors said: "I think, during COVID, there were a lot of people that started with Animal Crossing. And don't get me wrong, it helps [game developers] if a lot people start playing a certain game genre, and I think a lot of people got introduced to gaming in that way," Game director Yannis added: "Next to that, it's fair to say that games in general provide a bit of escapism, right? And, I mean, there's a lot of awful things going on in the world, and cosy games are a good escape for that as well. So they provide some comfort, and yeah, a really nice place to be." Indeed, as the nights get longer, the weather gets colder and any evening plans start to look less appealing, you may well find yourself being drawn to quaint, calm, low-stakes games to play at home. If that’s the case, we have you covered. Here are 14 games which’ll give you a cosy autumnal feel without having to leave the house. Stardew Valley If you're into your cosy games, chances are that you've at least heard of Stardew Valley. And if you haven't already had the pleasure of playing it, prepare to say goodbye to all your spare time. In the game, you'll inherit your grandfather's old farm plot in a place called — you guessed it — Stardew Valley. It's a simple setup, and the graphics are charmingly basic too, but the gameplay loop will suck you in for days. As the official synopsis puts it, "Armed with hand-me-down tools and a few coins, you set out to begin your new life. Can you learn to live off the land and turn these overgrown fields into a thriving home?" Eric Barone, also known as Concerned Ape, is the solo developer of Stardew Valley. And while you wait for his next game, Haunted Chocolatier, it'll be well worth your time to take a trip to Stardew Valley and see for yourself what all the fuss is about. Buy Stardew Valley on Nintendo Switch (Amazon) Buy Stardew Valley on PlayStation Buy Stardew Valley on Steam Buy Stardew Valley on Xbox Buy Stardew Valley on iPhone Buy Stardew Valley on Google Play Unpacking Unpacking is a perfect example of a cosy game that goes above and beyond the call of duty to deliver a truly memorable experience. On paper, it looks like a simple task-completing game. Indeed, it gives you a series of boxes to empty and rooms to arrange, and it won't outstay its welcome. It's also something far deeper than that. As you move through the game's levels, you'll gradually piece together the story behind the boxes you're unpacking. There's love, loss and loads more to discover as you come to understand why each move has happened. Low stakes, high enjoyment – it's everything you need from a cosy game! Buy Unpacking on Switch (Amazon) Buy Unpacking on Steam Buy Unpacking on PlayStation Buy Unpacking on Xbox Tiny Bookshop Let’s face it, everyone who loves reading has had a dream about opening their own bookshop and having thoughtful conversations with likeminded customers while sharing your impeccably curated selection with the world. Well, with Tiny Bookshop, you can live that dream as you enter the fictional seaside town of Bookstonbury with your own trailer and a dream to keep the literate town afloat with your latest stock. Players can decorate their trailer however they see fit, with a remarkable number of objects open to buying in various stages of the game. And of course, you must maintain a well-stocked trailer, so it’s best to hit the newspaper listings every day and pick out the best boxes of books from all sorts of genres to make sure you’re giving the punters what they want. You’re encouraged to tailor your stock and your trailer for different locations with the main aim of selling out every day – which is surprisingly harder than you think… and the best bit is meeting the weird and wonderful residents of Bookstonbury who will come to your shop every single day and ask for recommendations. You get to scour your shelves made up of real books and a couple of fictional ones to find the right thing for them – or something a little bit different that might pique their interests. It’s easy to find yourself completely immersed in the world of Bookstonbury as you make your way through the seasons to new locations to sell your books. You get to tittle-tattle with the locals, cause a little bit of mischief with some tasks, and even get to adopt a dog, making this one for the booklovers and the gossips among us. Sign us up! Buy Tiny Bookshop on Steam Buy Tiny Bookshop on Switch A Little to the Left As the official synopsis puts it: "A Little to the Left is a cozy puzzle game that has you sort, stack, and organise household items into pleasing arrangements." There is, of course, a catch! You'll need to keep your eyes peeled for "a mischievous cat with an inclination for chaos". Even cosy games need something for the player to rally against. There are over 100 "satisfying messes to tidy" in this chilled puzzle experience. And if that sounds like your cup of tea, what are you waiting for? Buy A Little to the Left on Steam Buy A Little to the Left on Xbox Buy A Little to the Left on PlayStation Buy A Little to the Left on Switch Buy A Little to the Left on iPhone Buy A Little to the Left on Google Play Bugsnax Created by Young Horses, the team behind Octodad: Dadliest Catch, Bugsnax rarely takes its tongue out of its cheek. If Rare had developed Pokémon in the 1990s, it might have felt like this. Playing as a hard-boiled journalist on the tail of a missing explorer, you arrive at an island occupied by critters who are halfway between, as you may well guess, a bug and a snack. There are 112 to capture and feed to others in order to progress – with punning portmanteau names like Shishkabug, Flapjackarak and Cinnasnail. Kevin Zuhn’s script has the same goofily dry humour, and its cast of muppet-adjacent characters - who you’ll have to interview to progress the story - are impeccably titled. In the course of your investigation, you’ll be happily acquainted with Texan ketchup-farmer Wambus Troubleham, obnoxious photographer Beffica Winklesnoot, and general practitioner Eggabell Batternugget. Even though Bugsnax is suffused with off-the-wall wholesomeness, there’s a morbid secret at the heart of Snaktooth Island, but we’ll leave you to uncover it. Even as the story gets darker, the action keeps its dedication to silliness. Buy Bugsnax for Nintendo Switch from the Nintendo eShop Buy Bugsnax for PS4 from Amazon Buy Bugsnax for PS5 from Amazon Buy Bugsnax for Xbox One and Series X/S from the Microsoft Store Buy Bugsnax for PC from Steam Untitled Goose Game Swans may be the property of the crown, but it’s geese who think they own the place. Untitled Goose Game invites you to step into the webbed feet of a particularly antisocial bird, a bird who can’t have a relaxing afternoon unless several others have been ruined. Heartwarming cel-shaded graphics and short musical snippets of Debussy’s piano Préludes give this one the air of a leisurely jaunt – but make no mistake, your modus operandi is to be as mean as possible. Over the length of about three hours, you’ll drop a bucket onto a punter, relocate a delicious lunch and cause a man to shatter his dartboard, to name just a few hijinks. It’s cosy and it simmers with lazy energy – but we can’t help but feel that it’s also a way to develop dark triad personality features. Rarely have we felt so morally compromised by a game as when stealing a small, confused boy’s model aeroplane and then doubling back to pinch his glasses. There’s no abuse like goose abuse. Buy Untitled Goose Game for Nintendo Switch from Amazon Buy Untitled Goose Game for PC from Steam Buy Untitled Goose Game for PS4 from Amazon Buy Untitled Goose Game for Xbox One and Series X/S from the Microsoft Store Bee Simulator If Bugsnax hasn’t fulfilled your creepy-crawly quota, there’s an even more low-tempo insect game to try. Climate change and habitat loss are famously making life hard for our humble Hymenoptera, so we’re on board with anything that gives bees a PR boost. The ‘simulator’ part of this game’s title is a tad misleading – this isn’t an intensely detailed recreation, but more of a storybook version of beehood. To call its tone ‘twee’ would be to undersell how honey-sweet it is – your character’s name is ‘Beescuit’, and no questionable pun on the word ‘bee’ is left unexploited as you island-hop from pollen source to pollen source. Some of the controls can be a bit bumbling, though, and moving up and down feels jerky at times, as though your bee’s just woken up from a long nap. The best part of the game has to be the stirring, romantic soundtrack from Mikołaj Stroiński, who worked on The Witcher 3. The whole atmosphere is unbeatable for a sunny Sunday with no commitments, perfect for a chilled barbecue. BYO-Bee. Buy Bee Simulator for Nintendo Switch from Amazon Buy Bee Simulator for PS4 from Amazon Buy Bee Simulator for Xbox One from Amazon Buy Bee Simulator for PC (Steam) from CDKeys Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker may lure you into a comparable state of unstable relaxation. On the one hand, it’s frankly adorable, inspired by Japanese hakoniwa, small boxed gardens which often have miniature figures placed inside them. On the other hand, it won’t give your brain an easy ride. If a toddler watches you play this game, twisting miniature dioramas so that a joyful cartoon mushroom can uncover their beloved stars, they might be lulled into an afternoon doze. What they’d be missing is the steam coming out of your ears as you try to reverse engineer Nintendo EAD’s intricate primary-coloured Rubik’s Cubes. Even as you put your noggin to good use, the stakes are gloriously low. Captain Toad can’t jump, nor is he very inclined to move quickly. There is no Kingdom-ending danger here, as the yelping, fluting, whistling soundtrack will assure you. Captain Toad is just a fungus who’s up for a challenge, as we all should be. Buy Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker for Nintendo Switch from Amazon Eastshade It’s a great time to raid your savings and book a flight to any country which has rolling vistas more appealing than a Morrison’s car park. If your overdraft’s a bit imperilled, though, we can heartily recommend Eastshade, which will see you becoming an itinerant painter who’s shipwrecked on an aesthetically pleasing island, occupied by a range of bawdy animal-people. The coast of Eastshade is a sedate one, and the activities it offers are as soothing as aloe vera on a sunburn: you’ll spend time crafting canvases, conversing with eccentrics, and framing your next masterpiece. The questing here has the feeling of the downtime in Majora’s Mask or the Elder Scrolls – you’ll be doing neighbourly, entirely non-stressful tasks like giving dating advice to a merchant, or painting a heroic portrait of a chicken, while wandering hallowed woods adorned with butterflies. Eastshade is gaming as aftercare, guaranteed to lower your heart rate. If you’ve had one too many ciders at sports day, then daubing a portrait of a woman with the head of a deer might be the only thing you can deal with. Buy Eastshade for Xbox One and Series X/S from the Microsoft Store Buy Eastshade for PS4 and PS5 from the PlayStation Store Buy Eastshade for PC from Steam Chibi-Robo The release of the Switch 2 and its accompanying online GameCube library has prodded a few undervalued classics back into the gaming public’s consciousness, not the least of which is the bonsai-sized android simulator Chibi-Robo. At 10 centimetres tall, the titular robo is a half-pint-sized hero with a plug on his tail that will need the occasional charge to restore full vim and vigour. The story places this metal housekeeping droid to look after the young girl of a family, a little like if Robin Williams's Bicentennial Man were shrunk to pocket-sized proportions. In this case, your owner Jenny is a rather eccentric girl who only speaks in ribbits – and while this isn’t a work of gritty social realism, there is a little thematic complexity to the story as the Sanderson family’s ‘moolah’ problems become clear. To begin to sort out their issues, you’ll have to make do with what you kind find on the floor – a toothbrush, a spoon, a dog tag. It might be too hot to do your real chores – but in this case, it can be incredible fun to deal with someone else’s. Spyro 2 (Spyro Reignited) There’s a Saturday morning nostalgia about this game, with its mild cartoon peril and heady surreal mixture of spelunking mice, nonchalant fauns and bumbling monks. It’s a sort of gentle fever-dream, so don’t expect everything to make sense. Why does the amply-winged Spyro need to learn to climb ladders? No, this is a place beyond rationality. Summer Forest, the first hub world, is a demi-paradise, where sheep spring, waterways tumble on, and your dragonfly assistant Spark can, against all the logic of the food chain, eat as many frogs as they like. Calming exterior aside, Spyro 2 will occasionally test your mettle, like when it impels you to charge into several gyrating hula girls in a row. You might think that the dragon’s name comes from fire – ‘pyro’. But this is a game that you can put on to steady yourself, a dragon world where nothing can go too wrong – so maybe it’s more like the Spanish ‘espiro’ – to breathe. Buy Spyro Reignited Trilogy (Steam key) from CDKeys Buy Spyro Reignited Trilogy for Xbox One and Series X/S from CDKeys Buy Spyro Reignited Trilogy for PS4 from Amazon Bear and Breakfast Bear and Breakfast certainly subscribes to the cutesy model of ursine life. The title gives a big clue as to the game’s setup – you control Hank, a bear with insomnia who comes into possession of a B&B via a creepy shark he meets in the woods. This is a management game that’s laid-back, even when you start to operate a small chain of wooden establishments. It’s not too open-ended, with a clear linear story which sends you on a raft of errands – like helping Charlotte, a witch who’s also a crocodile, who’s run out of charcoal lilies for her pickle juice. ‘Humans are wack,’ says Will the drunk bird, ‘I read it in a magazine’. Even so, they have disposable income, and if you’re serious about acquiring the bear necessities then you’ll need to run a tight ship as a hotelier. And all of it is very enjoyable, but why they didn’t choose the title ‘BearBnB’, we may never know. Buy Bear and Breakfast (Steam key) from CDkeys Buy Bear and Breakfast for Nintendo Switch from Amazon Buy Bear and Breakfast for PS4 from the PlayStation Store Dave the Diver As the weather gets colder, many of us yearn for a sunny beach. Dave the Diver is the next best thing – probably the most respectable ‘pixellated scuba diving/sushi bar simulator’ in the business. The setting is the Blue Hole, a mystifying patch of water which morphs its contents and geography every time you come back for air. In these diving sections, you’ll have to collect fish for the evening’s service – via the most satisfying harpoon gameplay ever created – as well as constructing underwater firearms, investigating the civilisation of the Sea People and hoovering up bits and bobs for eclectic characters. By night, Dave is a sushi server at Bancho’s diner – carefully sloshing green tea into the cups of expectant customers, building a tempting menu and choosing which stools go with which lamps for optimum profit. This waterlogged game is filled with lapping waves, charming dialogue and shirts which might have been rejected from Miami Vice for being ‘too loud’. If you're missing the ocean, this is the place to jump in, head-first. Buy Dave the Diver: Anniversary Edition for Nintendo Switch from Amazon Buy Dave the Diver: Deluxe Edition for PC (Steam) from CDKeys Buy Dave the Diver for PS4 and PS5 from the PlayStation Store Spiritfarer A ‘psychopomp’ is the name for a mythological role which has existed in many cultures – it means someone who’s a spiritual guide to the afterlife. Anubis; the Valkyries; Heibai Wuchang – all of these figures offer to hold your metaphorical hand and lead you to the next world after your clogs are popped. If this sounds a bit too morbid to be classified as ‘cosy’, you’ve not come across Spiritfarer yet. In this award-winning effort from Thunder Lotus Games, you and your delightful pet cat inherit the role of metaphysical ferrymaster from Charon. As you go, you’ll invite departed spirits aboard your boat, each with their own backstory to unravel and characterful minigame to unlock. In charting the far corners of the sea and tweaking your boat, the gameplay settles into a well-realised genre combo of platformer and city builder. The art direction is sumptuous – warming, charming and redolent of your favourite animation from childhood. More than anything, Spiritfarer feels like an emotionally nourishing game – it’s like a long hug at a funeral, encouraging the player to embrace loss and to find the love behind grief. Buy Spiritfarer: Farewell Edition for PC (Steam) from CDKeys Buy Spiritfarer for PS4 from Amazon Buy Spiritfarer for Nintendo Switch from Amazon Buy Spiritfarer for Xbox One and Series X/S from the Microsoft Store Check out more of our Gaming coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
5 most iconic fathers in video game history
As boys grow to men they look upwards for guidance. "What we become," said Umberto Eco, "depends on what our fathers teach us… when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.’ In a hectic world, kids pick up wisdom wherever they can find it. For those lucky enough to know and get along with their fathers, it’s become a rite of passage to sit on the arm of the sofa with a Mad Catz Player 2 controller. How can you step into Mario’s shoes without first doing an apprenticeship as Luigi or (god forbid) Toad? The idea of gaming as an outlet for father-son bonding has crept into the stories themselves – in time for Father’s Day, we thought we’d examine five very different fathers in the world of gaming, to see how they measure up… Bowser - the Super Mario series Work-life balance is one of the greatest obstacles in modern fatherhood, and Bowser is one of the most industrious malign lizards in the business. As well as his executive position in the kidnapping-and-pillaging industry, he has a range of aerobic hobbies, from tennis to basketball. Even with such a packed calendar, he’s still found time to pass down his love of destruction to his prolific offspring. His first seven children are the Koopalings (including the musically-inspired Iggy, Lemmy and Ludwig – another hobby?), although their parentage has been disputed in later years. Bowser Jr is now presented as Bowser’s only child – he’s certainly the favourite, at any rate. Junior often appears in a floating clown car equipped with a cannon (presumably bought with his father’s largesse) and uses a magic paintbrush which can use graffiti to summon portals. The apple doesn’t fall far from the fire-breathing lizard; Junior is every bit as inclined to cause trouble as his father, and he’s probably even a bit cleverer to boot. When he appeared as the main villain in Super Mario Sunshine he disguised himself as a shadowy version of Mario, which hoodwinked the authorities in a way we’ve rarely seen from Papa Bowser.. Some dads are vicious in the workplace, but when they come home they’re as sweet as a Peach Melba. We can’t endorse Bowser’s moral compass, but he’s doing something right: you have to concede that he’s built a rich and meaningful life while mentoring the next generation of villainy. Octodad - Octodad: Dadliest Catch Imposter syndrome is hiding behind every milestone in life, ready to whack you round the head. And as you gaze down at your new child in the delivery suite – the miracle of life swaddled in a muslin blanket – you might well think: ‘Wait... am I in charge now?’ Octodad is not a dad, but he is pulling out all the stops to pretend to be one. That’s not just a metaphor for emotional unreadiness. He is literally an octopus in a three-piece suit, attempting to pass for a human father while concealing his true identity from his spouse, children, and tentacle-phobic society. Fatherhood is for most of us a process of trial and terror, and rarely has that been better reflected than when piloting a flailing orange cephalopod down a wedding aisle. From getting the lawn trimmed to shimmying through supermarket freezers, Octodad’s great paternal triumph isn’t that he gets it all right – but that he gives it a damn good go. He might live a life of inky deception, but he does, at the end of the day, bring little Tommy his chocolate breakfast cereal. View Green Video on the source website Lots of dads feel they’re not doing well. A 2016 study by Leach et al. found that up to 18 per cent of new fathers experience anxiety severe enough to meet the threshold for a clinical disorder. Controlling a fraudulent mollusc might not seem an obvious path to catharsis, but Octodad: Dadliest Catch is oddly therapeutic. The game’s slapstick anarchy provokes genuine laughter, and tucked underneath the absurd visuals is one of the most sharply-written video game scripts ever. In the end what matters about Octodad’s charade isn't his deceit, but the sheer effort he puts in. After all, his daughter Stacy reveals that she knew the truth all along, and loved him just the same. Perhaps that’s a relatable version of fatherhood – about showing up, sometimes with your tentacles tangled, but with your heart firmly in the right place. Kratos - God of War (2018) There’s no right or wrong way to bond with your son: some rent fishing rods, others bury an axe into a dark elf’s frontal lobe. That’s the thing about male relationships: even as we begin to open up more as a society, men are often most comfortable hanging out when they’re doing a shared activity, a common goal – perhaps climbing a mountain to scatter a loved one’s ashes, say. Once we’re busy together, we can begin to talk. Kratos, a widower and retired god, is not a naturally communicative father. As he free-climbs crevasses, tosses Norse pillars aside and duels a dragon from inside its mouth, most of his communication with his son Atreus is limited to the syllable ‘boy’. Where Atreus is sensitive – learned in other languages and open to the world – Kratos is hard-boiled, cynical and single-minded. A real friction exists between them, as Atreus is encouraged to grow up fast, to become more ruthless with his bow, while having just lost his mother and without knowing the truth about his godly lineage. Read more: Changing the game: How gaming levelled up into a multi-billion dollar industry bigger than film and TV Every Doctor Who video game, ranked from worst to best It takes a serious illness striking Atreus to break our hero’s chiselled facade – a moment which voice actor Christopher Judge portrays perfectly. Kratos doesn’t change emotionally on a dime, but his voice does start to wobble, and he’s compelled to tell his son the truth about his godhood. Scrap by scrap, Kratos's ties with his son become much stronger than those with his father (Zeus himself). That’s a noble goal to aim for. Some of God of War’s rapturous praise might show that we still have a way to go when it comes to video game narratives - a good portion of the dialogue is over-explanatory, and the story of Kratos’s emotional thawing is not a revolutionary one. But it’s still affecting, accomplished storytelling, and by the end of the tale the truth is clear: neither can reach the summit without the other. Norman - Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald Where are all the fathers in Pokémon? Most of them, we must presume, got the training bug early and never returned. In most entries of the series your player character has been raised by a very lenient single mum, who’s been content to chuck you out into the world of animal capture as a fresh-faced 10-year-old. There is one memorable father in the Pokéverse, though – Norman. Some dads will teach you how to tie your shoes, or do more keepy-uppies. Norman teaches you to throw a Pokéball, and then crushes your under-levelled team with a swipe from his Slaking. He’s not the first major battle you’ll face in Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire – in fact, he won’t battle you until you have four gym badges – but he is one of the game’s first real tests. Suffice to say, this is a parent who’s happier to dunk on your pets than one who’ll just roll over and let you win. His Spinda will try to confuse you, his Linoone will use the Belly Drum move to boost its attacking might, and the couch potato Slaking itself will do its best to frustrate you by recovering from any damage you inflict. If you make it through this gauntlet you’ll get the Balance Badge, which sounds right up any Centrist Dad’s street. "I can’t believe it," he says simply, when you’ve finally knocked the stuffing out of his team. You might think that his most important gift to you is that you can now use the move Surf outside of battle. Really, though, it’s self-reliance. After besting your own dad, you’re ready to foil Team Aqua/Magma’s diabolical plan and get back in time for your 11th birthday party. John Marston - Red Dead Redemption An orphaned street urchin, taken in by a gang which later turns on itself, John Marston has been through a lot, and certainly has the scars to prove it. He may have a no-nonsense drawl and the quickest pistol-hand in New Austin, but a world-weary vulnerability fills our protagonist as he fights to take back his kidnapped wife and son. In the brief calm of life on the ranch in the game’s opening, we see a father trying to teach his son how to live well, even if how to live well isn’t clear to himself. As Marston follows and eliminates his old gang members at the bidding of the Bureau of Investigation, his titular search for redemption becomes less about atoning for his past and more about the rescuing of his legacy. John is determined that his son Jack mustn’t follow in his footsteps, but walk a new path entirely, to leave the Wild West’s thorniest frontiers even as they recede into the past anyway. After John’s odyssey forces him to pay the ultimate price for his family, at the game’s denouement, Jack picks up the revolver and kills Edgar Ross – successfully avenging his father. And so a different kind of damage is done – the junior Marston has entered the dark world of moral compromise and outlawry from which John had tried to save him. Even so, there’s a reason that Red Dead Redemption is remembered for its reckoning of what fatherhood means. We can respect John’s mission for his son’s life to supersede his own, and the lengths of self-sacrifice – in this case actual self-sacrifice – that he’s willing to go to protect his boy. Who knows, maybe Jack will even escape the cycle, and find, at last, real redemption. Which of these fathers rings true for you? From interrogating Draugr with your fists, to making your Mudkip follow a gruelling training regimen, the opportunities to test the paternal bond in the world of games are plentiful. And all fathers have been sons once – so even if you’ve now progressed to the Player 1 controller, don’t forget to include a disc with your Father’s Day card. Check out more of our Gaming coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
Every Doctor Who video game, ranked from worst to best
Nobody plays games like the Time Lords. They did invent four-dimensional chess, after all. And they’ve seen our human tech advance: Doctor Who’s 1963 debut predates the invention of the handheld calculator and the computer mouse. For as long as video games have been popular, the Doctor’s been foiling science-fictive malcontents in pixelated form. When the TARDIS doors are flung open, the show might occasionally drop you on the Planet of the Wobbly Scenery, and the Doctor’s ventures in the world of gaming haven’t always been world beaters. That being said, with the TV show ending its current run this weekend, it's the perfect time to dive into the wider world of Doctor Who spin-off material like this. We set ourselves a mission: to hear the BBC Micro’s cassettes whir, to clamp our faces into a VR headset, to try each of the Doctor’s console and PC adventures (no phone or flash games this time). Let’s dive into the Vortex… 14. Doctor Who and the Mines of Terror (1985) Many of the best Doctor Who serials were filmed in unglamorous quarries, and Mines of Terror honours this subterranean heritage by plunging the Sixth Doctor deep underground, where the Master’s busy extracting Heatonite, a substance which will further his domination of the universe. Unfortunately, this digital Colin Baker doesn’t control like a man with any great urgency to spoil the Master’s fun – his ambling and leaping is rather half-hearted. The game also has the habit of reporting your method of death back to you, which is somewhat humiliating when you keep getting killed by an egg. Released initially on the BBC Micro, Mines of Terror required some tinkering, as you had to install an extra ROM chip to have enough memory to play. It’s worth a go if you fancy meeting the Doctor’s robotic cat Splinx – an addition to the lore which Russell T Davies can surely ignore no longer. Unfortunately, the overall experience has aged about as well as the Face of Boe. 13. Doctor Who: Return to Earth (2010) Must we return to earth so soon? Apparently so. This game was part of a deal between the BBC and Nintendo to bring the Doc to the Wii, and it ranks among his more questionable odysseys. In Return to Earth, the Eleventh Doctor and Amy are bound to investigate the SS Lucy Grey, a spaceship that’s been abandoned near Jupiter. The dynamic duo must collect crystals from talking bollards, and fire these crystals at circles of various colours – and that’s about it. The Cybermen and Daleks fulfil their contractual obligations, but the main villain this time is the camera controls, which are determined to demoralise the Doctor enough that he turns the TV off. In this game’s favour, it was released alongside a Wii remote designed to look like Matt Smith’s sonic screwdriver, which may come to be seen as the high water mark of human ingenuity. As for the game itself, it’s more like Return to Shop. 12. Doctor Who: Evacuation Earth (2010) On (psychic) paper, a puzzle game should be right up the Doctor’s street. Released alongside Return to Earth, this DS entry is set several hundred years earlier, as our planet, cohabited of course with the Silurians, is in the process being abandoned – threatened by powerful solar flares. Although set in the Professor Layton mould, the puzzles are too easy and not particularly Whovian – you’ll have to spot the difference between pills and locate a lady’s favourite fish, for example. There’s a reason you’ll rarely turn to BBC One on a Saturday night to find Ncuti Gatwa rotating arrows for ten minutes. And DS must stand for ‘Dalek Suppression’, because we don’t hear from the evil pepper pots until far too late in proceedings for our liking. The cartoony graphics spread across two screens are relatively handsome, though, and there’s also some pleasant teatime dialogue from Oli Smith - Amy is looking forward to visiting the exotic world of Larkhead Streaked, which turns out to be the Lake District. Still, not the Doctor’s best, so perhaps one for completionists only. 11. Doctor Who: The First Adventure (1985) We’re back to the BBC Micro, and must begin by offering plaudits for this incredibly accurately titled game. This is where it all began. Like a TARDIS with a working chameleon circuit, The First Adventure is able to mimic several things around it: in this case, '80s arcade classics like Space Invaders, Galaxian and Pac-Man, although none quite measure up to the originals. The Doctor even takes over where Frogger left off. In the midst of busy rocket-ships in a garish cityscape, you’ll have to help him cross the road – he is well over a thousand years old, after all. Your mission this time is to rebuild the Key of Time and return it to the centre of the universe, for reasons which are above our paygrade. The awkward controls found here, like pressing the colon button to go up, never caught on; and underbaked gameplay pushes this game down the list. The game does open with an 8-bit version of Ron Grainer and Delia Derbyshire’s iconic theme tune, though, and there’s enough retro charm to make this worth a glance. 10. Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock (2012) Doctor Who: The Eternity Clock is technically a platformer, in the way that the Weeping Angels are technically pleasant sculptures and Harold Saxon is a technically a respected political figure. The Doctor moves slowly again, and the controls are floatier than Lady Cassandra in a force 10 gale. You’ll spend a lot of your time pushing crates, using pipes as monkey bars and waiting for River Song to give you a leg up. Brain-teasing is also on offer in this 2.5D release for PC, PS3 and PSVita - you can choose from easy, medium and hard puzzles, though as we repeatedly aligned radio waves and rotated circular images, it began to feel like The Eternity Clock might have been a design philosophy as well as a name. The Eternity Clock might be worth a punt if you’re a super-fan, though – the game sounds luscious with Murray Gold’s music slathered all over it, and there’s top drawer voice acting from Matt Smith and Alex Kingston. 9. Doctor Who: Top Trumps (2008) Rarely has a game been so encompassed by its title. There’s no false advertising: it would be churlish to deny that this is Doctor Who, and ridiculous to argue that it’s not Top Trumps. There’s little more than that here, but it’s still quite a fun blast-from-the-past to try. The cards, featuring Captain Jack, Judoon Captain, and The Hoix (?), are drawn from seasons 1 and 3 of the revived show; rather curiously, this was the only game released during the high water mark of David Tennant’s New Who. You’ll get bonuses and power-ups for winning several cards in a row, and you can even upgrade your cards’ stats. We’d have appreciated an in-depth story mode as well, and just like playing with the real deck, you’ll quickly learn which of the cards have the best attributes, which gives this a limited lifespan. Come to think of it, this may be the only video game in which Harriet Jones’ height plays a decisive role, at a respectable 1.7 metres. Doesn’t she look tall-ish? We also learn that the Slitheen have a miserably low courage rating of 51, presumably as their gastric problems have affected their confidence. Is it good? Is it bad? Look, it’s Doctor Who: Top Trumps. 8. Doctor Who: The Edge of Time / The Edge of Reality (2019 - 2021) Built by alumni from the cutting edge Sony London studio, The Edge of Time saw the Doctor’s first foray into the dimension of Virtual Reality. The Edge of Reality is an adaptation which followed a year later and discarded the VR element, adding new levels and expanding some of the existing ones. Fittingly for a game built around immersion, the settings here are engrossing, from grimy chalk-scratched walls to rosily-lit spaceship interiors. VR effects in The Edge of Time are a mixed bag, though; on the one hand the controls can be fiddly, with even simple tasks like grabbing paintings failing to trigger at times. On the other hand, meeting the Weeping Angels in a cellar is a good way to test if either of your hearts are still working – though luckily there’s no blink detection system. Jodie Whittaker delivers the Thirteenth Doctor’s lines with panache, but she’s mainly absent from proceedings, and as such the story often feels like it could do with a kick up the Plasmavores. Of these two, The Edge of Time is the one you’ll want to get hold of if you need some time-hopping suspense. 7. Doctor Who: Destiny of the Doctors (1997) We’ve never heard the Doctor accompanied by a '90s breakbeat dance soundtrack before, and we may never again. Destiny of the Doctors on the PC was the second game to come out while the show was out of action, with only Paul McGann’s brief dandyish appearance in an American pilot episode to tide us over. This game’s a real curiosity which demonstrates that nobody’s quite cracked how the Doctor should play as a video game hero. In Destiny of the Doctors, developers Studio Fish opted for a first-person shooter in the style of Quake. Notably, however, they subtracted the shooting, although you can canonically blow Autons’ heads off by tuning a radio to BBC Radio 1. We have time for this game. The low polygon set-dressing makes exploring the darkened interior of the TARDIS a genuinely skin-crawling affair, and it’s stuffed with incredible voice performances from a pantheon of Who actors like Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy. You’ll even be taunted by full motion video of Anthony Ainley’s Master winking at you on the Underground, and maybe that’s what we’ve all been missing in our lives. 6. Doctor Who: The Adventure Games (2010-2011) Released on PC and Mac, The Adventure Games are some of the more successful experiments in the digital Whoniverse. Styled as interactive episodes, these are penned by experienced hands: Phil Ford, who co-wrote The Waters of Mars, and James Moran. While the stories are involving, taking you from dystopian London to an underwater headquarters, the gameplay’s a little more suspect, with slightly wonky stealth sections where Amy follows rather reluctantly behind. There’s the standard-issue rudimentary puzzling, too, like matching shapes to open encrypted doors. Unusually for a Doctor Who game, the voice acting is a bit hit-and-miss as well – it occasionally sounds like different takes of Matt Smith have been spliced together. The last episode is easily the best – The Gunpowder Plot finds the TARDIS team in Jacobean London by night. This playable setting is a treat, with Guy Fawkes and the Sontarans living up to their billing, and a far larger environment than the preceding four episodes – the expanded cast of voiced NPCs make this feel closer to the ensembles of the Doctor’s best television mysteries. 5. Doctor Who: Dalek Attack (1992) When New Who was barely a sparkle in Russell T Davies’s eye, fans who were jonesing for a Gallifreyan fix had to make do with Dalek Attack for the PC. Luckily, from the pixel-art comic panels to fighting double-headed dragons in the sewers, this side-scroller is a blast. The Doctor is having a quick break from pacifism - the sonic screwdriver acts as a submachine gun, which is riotous fun but a bit out of character. His globe-trotting platforming quest takes him through the universe’s most luxurious tourist spots: Paris, Tokyo and, um, Skaro. By default you’ll play as Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor, but you can also choose Tom Baker or Patrick Troughton, and a two player mode adds either Ace or the Brigadier to make this a sterling cast for Classic Who devotees. Controlling the Fourth Doctor as he flings himself from London Underground signs and throws grenades at Daleks is certainly engaging. Still, we can’t help feel that it’s the Daleks who should be doing the shooting. Actually, why isn’t there a game where you play as a Dalek? Perhaps a friendly one. BBC, let’s talk. 4. Doctor Who: The Lonely Assassins (2021) We’re pointing the sonic screwdriver at our own rules here, as we said we’d exclude mobile games, and admittedly The Lonely Assassins is a game whose storytelling takes place entirely on a mobile phone. We’re giving ourselves a pass, though, as it was released on the Switch and PC, too. The concept of The Lonely Assassins is compelling. You, the player, have got hold of the phone of one Larry Nightingale, AKA the bloke from the video shop in fan favourite episode Blink. As you tap through the phone’s abilities, like examining an order from a department store or hacking surveillance cameras, you’ll dig further into the mystery of why Larry disappeared. Choosing text messages to send to suspicious characters doesn’t make for an all-action affair, but the writing is often amusing - several moments got a laugh from us, including one email detailing an incident with a chicken parmesan salad. Often, the Doctor’s role is as an intergalactic detective, and The Lonely Assassins scratches that itch, with a gratifying feeling as you advance through the intricate plot. It’s a real one-off, and worth a play. 3. Doctor Who and the Warlord (1985) Let’s hop back in time again – if you’re wondering how long ago 1985 was, then we’ll remind you that Doctor Who and the Warlord came on two-sides of a cassette tape. It’s from a genre you’ll rarely see these days – an all-text adventure. Back in the '80s, this game was marketed as something that would train you as part of the BBC Computer Literacy Project, although we don’t know if repeatedly typing ‘GO WEST’ counts as a transferable skill. The text is relayed in second person. As an unnamed companion of the Doctor, you awake after a devastating battle on the planet Quantain, and your first expedition is to wander an irradiated desert to find a sonic lance – the adventure never gets less bizarre from there. View Green Video on the source website Graham Williams guides the story with genuinely well-crafted prose, painting pictures in a ‘pall of smoke’ and ‘battle scarred fields’ where ‘wounded space troopers stumble past you, unseeing’. There are no graphics to speak of aside from your imagination. Some parts of the game show their age – Doctor Who and the Warlord is particularly unforgiving, offering instant death for seemingly innocuous choices like picking up coins. And of course, a text-only game might not quicken your pulse - there’s a reason the Daleks don’t shout ‘EXTRAPOLATE’. Even so, this is an adventure put together with a huge amount of heart and wit, and it deserves to be near the top. 2. Doctor Who: The Runaway (2019-2020) In The Runaway, the Thirteenth Doctor made another venture into Virtual Reality, and this is our favourite of the two, even if it’s much shorter. The Runaway is far and away the best looking game in this list: the art direction here is magnificent, as is the fluidity of the Doc’s animation, as she pivots across the TARDIS like a veritable ball of energy. In fact, a literal ball of energy takes centrestage in this story - that’s Volta, a lovably whistling and anxious teenager running away from their own planet. Concerningly, the Volta has the ability to turn into a black hole when stressed, so the Doctor tries to calm them down by guiding a meditation session. Reuniting Volta with their family quickly becomes a breathtaking ride. Some might argue that a game of under 20 minutes is closer to a tech demo, but The Runaway is put together with real care and artistry – and it does exactly what it sets out to do. Like The Edge of Time, this feels like a blueprint for future Doctor Who games, and we’d love to see a longer story with a style this gorgeous. 1. Doctor Who: LEGO Dimensions (2015) Deciding which of the Doctor’s regenerations count is a matter of debate. When the Tenth Doctor shot his life force into a severed arm, did this use up one of his regenerations? (The answer is yes, but it’s complicated.) The debate rages too with the Doc’s video games. LEGO Dimensions is a toy-to-life project, where themed expansions are unlocked by real-life LEGO sets. So if this Doctor Who game is just an expansion, should we count it? We should - because it’s the slickest Who game made so far. Everything including the kitchen sink is here: the Dalek Emperor, the First Doctor, Captain Jack singing to a bemused group of the Ood… The TARDIS’ time travelling abilities are also used as a gameplay mechanic for once – in order to remove a forcefield from embattled London in 2025, you’ll need to travel back to the same level in 2015 and the Victorian era. Naturally, everything is made of LEGO bricks – there’s more plastic here than an Auton’s recycling bin, but that doesn’t take the shine off this copious celebration of Doctor Who history. You can even ride a LEGO K9 and use his laser nose to blast intergalactic ruffians, which we’re pretty sure was the whole point of inventing video games. In addition to romping gameplay, you’ll get to experience Peter Capaldi delivering lines like ‘Davros: not so much a bad penny as a mad penny‘ as though it’s something Shakespeare wrote (when he wasn’t fighting the Carrionites). The downside, as with a few entries on this list, is that this one’s hard to get hold of these days, unless you have a trustworthy LEGO dealer. It’s worth getting your mitts on Doctor Who: LEGO Dimensions if you can, though. For now it’s the Doctor Who game. The definite article, you might say. Read more: Doctor Who favourites Karen Gillan and Arthur Darvill confirmed for Unleashed anniversary special Doctor Who Wish World Easter egg revealed after 'new' Omega dialogue Will there be a Doctor Who season 16? Latest news and updates Check out more of our Gaming coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.