Rochard understands the peace of mind found in a sealed room. Like Portal, it offers bursts of purity in its puzzle design, and a calming, implicit reassurance that each area has a clean start and solution. It may not exude ambition in every moment, but Rochard's quiet, deliberately delineated approach offers a sublime break from the mental overhead that accompanies the year's bigger games and their sprawling quests.

That simplicity -- or focus, rather -- extends to burly protagonist John Rochard, a down-to-earth space miner armed with an anti-gravity lifting tool and a quaint selection of backwater metaphors (you're right to assume that "tighter than a frog's butt" means very tight indeed). While an unexpected discovery on a barren asteroid leads to a vague galactic threat, you get the feeling he's more worried about its effect on his pension. And as a special bonus, he's proof that the voice of Duke Nukem managed to find a good game in 2011 after all.