As you progress you’ll upgrade your character, The Knight, with charms that change your playstyle: one damages foes anytime you get hurt, another lets you fire energy from your sword when at full health.

You’ll battle 28 bosses and visit varied locales, from grand greenhouses to snowy planes being dusted by the ashes of a long-dead being. When you travel through them, they’ll connect to a familiar space in a way that instantly makes sense, and feels just right. The map feels endless, and even late in the game you’ll stumble on whole huge areas you never know existed. As you jump and slash through it you’ll slowly unpick the lore of this bug-inhabited world, and realise its story runs far deeper than you initially expected.

Hollow Knight is an underground labyrinth of secrets: burrow in and you’ll be lost in its lofty caverns, tight tunnels, and beautiful, ruined cities, and you won’t want to find the way out. Each time you play you can feel yourself improving, and your first properly good goal – not one where you’ve accidentally tapped it in with your bumper – is a memorable moment. If you want, you can switch it entirely to a game of hockey, with a puck instead of a ball. You can team up with a squad and really dive into the tactics, rotating goalkeepers and trying to score the perfect team goal. You can gather some friends on a sofa and set up a casual 1v1 tournament, with bonus scores for the flashiest goals. The great thing about Rocket League is that it’s fun at both of these levels. But as you get to grips with the controls, it turns into an aerial acrobatic show with front flip assists, mid-air twirls and last-second winners. Rocket League is, to the beginner, a fast arcade sport where vehicles slam into each other at 100 mph and occasionally bundle the ball into the net. Football, but with cars: it’s that simple, and that complicated.

Good games for free to play