Early access games get a bad rap. Sure there are lots of cash grabs that will never be finished, but at the core early access can be an awesome way to engage with games and developers in a more substantial way. I’d always recommend caution when jumping into early access games, as the contents of the projects may shift during development but dismissing them out-of-hand is really limiting.

Not all of this week’s games are in early access, but the ones in here are certainly worthy of your time and money. Check this week’s recommendations out:

All Walls Must Fall

Games have been trying cyberpunk for about as long as they’ve been a thing. Unpopular opinion: They’ve never really nailed it until recently. All Walls Must Fall looks to take a hard cyberpunk approach and play it straight. You’re not going to find the silly charm of Read Only Memories or the hacking puzzles of Gunpoint. What you will find is super deep squad tactics in the vein of XCOM.

All Walls Must Fall takes place in a future Berlin where the cold war never ended. The full campaign isn’t finished yet (the game is still in early access) but it’s got a ton of promise. While the early access tag may throw some more sensitive players, there’s a good chunk of content already there to love.

Cute Fruit

Let’s pivot for a second, instead of serious cyberpunk RPGs, let’s talk about the cutest version of solitaire to exist. Friends of itch.io, Happy Snake Games have released a new mobile game and sweet baby whales is it adorable. Continuing the tradition laid out by Happy Snake’s previous outing, Morning Post: Cute Fruit is designed to be as pleasant as possible. All of the visual assets look at home in a Microsoft Paint window, and every element of the game has a smile on it.

I’ll avoid talking too much about the mechanics of the game here, but know that under the cute exterior there are puzzles abound. Unfortunately, there isn’t an option for fans of Apple products, but Cute Fruit is pay what you want for Android users now.

Heartbeat

Pokemon is already a cute game. Heartbeat is somehow cuter. These two sentences were all I needed to get excited about Heartbeat. Beyond how adorable the game is you’ll find a fully featured RPG, a huge swath of content, and really smart mechanic design. To top it all off, this is only a demo. That’s right this is a 13 hour long demo.

If none of this sells you, there’s more content to come down the line with the game’s full release. As it sits Heartbeat is one of my favorite projects that we’ve been able to feature here. I seriously can’t recommend this game highly enough.