A returning classic, a Love Island send-up and an answer to the age-old question: can you fry eggs atop Mount Everest? The year’s best games that might have passed you by

• More on the best culture of 2024

PS4/5, Xbox, PC, Nintendo Switch
Taiwanese studio Red Candle Games broke through in 2019 with the first-person horror game, Devotion. Its follow-up, Nine Sols, is less grungy but no less distinct, a robust 2D action-platformer with an exquisite “taopunk” aesthetic. This vivid sci-fi world feels as if it is constructed as much from bamboo and jade as steel and microchips. Lewis Gordon