Whitewater Wipeout
In surfing lingo ‘cranking’ means the waves are good: it’s hard not to think the term inspired the concept of this disposable score-chaser from Giles Goddard and team. Winding the arm turns your board as you try to complete as many stunts as possible before the wave, breaking across the screen from right to left, catches up. It’s deceptively tricky: combining crank turns with D-pad controls (hold up to gain more air or left and right to spin faster) feels a little like rubbing your head while patting your stomach. But the dramatic freeze-frame you get from nailing a triple-360 makes all those wipeouts worthwhile.
Lost Your Marbles
An offbeat narrative adventure about a cheerful young girl called Prota, who – thanks to an incident involving an experimental device – can only make decisions by rolling a marble around mazes you tilt by gently twisting the crank. Within these courses are lightbulbs representing the various options, the third hit determining her final choice. This bizarre premise leads to a series of gently surreal exchanges: since the more outlandish choices are harder to miss, you’re likely to end up illustrating a missing-pet poster with a picture of its backside, or trying to tempt it home with a cactus-flavoured treat.
Casual Birder
This diverting adventure has the look and feel of a Game Boy-era RPG, although instead of battling monsters your job is to take snaps of birds – defying a gang of twitchers who don’t take kindly to newcomers more challenging when it comes to the – pardon us – flightier subjects, while filling out your album proves absorbing, not least in a world where woodpeckers are known as Bonker-Bellied Treetappers.
