Defensive brawler Way of the Passive Fist is out now

Way of the Passive Fist is a different breed of beat 'em up. Most single-player brawlers are all about rolling through levels like a wrecking ball and chaining together flashy attacks, but Household Games' indie fighter is all about defence. You parry and dodge your opponents' blows, tiring them out until you can simply nudge them over nonchalantly. It's out today, and might be worth checking out.

You'll be fighting large groups of enemies, but they'll face you one at a time, giving you plenty of opportunity to patiently block their combos as you watch their stamina bar deplete. If you time your parries and dodges just right you'll build up your own combo meter, which you can spend to fight back. Your rebuttals range from punches to a 'Super Attack' that kills any enemies in sight.

You play as The Wanderer, setting out to save Zircon V, an old mining colony. The game has both story and arcade modes as well as deep difficult customisation, so you can play with lots of sliders until it's as easy, or as hard, as you want it to be.

It's certainly different, and could be one for players that like fighting games but not the button mashing that comes with them. The aesthetic is straight out of the 90s, which will instantly appeal to some.

It's $15/£11.39 on Steam and the Humble Store, if you're interested.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.