10 Best Video Games Of 2018 You Didn't Play

1. Moonlighter

Analyse games in any capacity and before long you'll come across the idea of the "gameplay loop". "What is the player doing, how, for how long, and when does that feed back around again? How is interest maintained?"

Loot-grind RPGs, online shooters, arcade games, action titles with responsive combat - they're all meticulously designed to keep you bolted to the seat, but of the million and one dungeon-crawlers out there, who knew the one element they were all missing was a controllable marketplace?

Turns out, that by making all the gear you're fighting to escape with sellable, is the missing ingredient. Across four themed dungeons that are procedurally-generated, now you're not just offloading spoils to random merchants, buying items and trying again, but managing popularity, customer satisfaction and occasionally, sheer greed when it comes to parting with a particular treasure it took you hours to acquire.

Felling a boss takes on another layer of enjoyment when you can put a price on selling its innards to the local populace, and everything you make in return gets fed into the town itself, unlocking more options to delve deeper into the next dungeon.

Combined with the fact your character never needs to sleep, you'll forage all night, lay out your stall in the morning, trade all day, take a healthy profit, then feed all that back into gear, weapons and potions, so you can be a better salesperson next time around.

A simple tweak to an age-old formula, Moonlighter does everything right, and sucks up hours of your time like nothing else.