It’s that time of year again. Everything is winding down, the nights have drawn in, and people are looking longingly at January when we can start this whole hideous charade of life again.

But people are also making game of the year lists. That sounds like a lot of fun to me, but also not the sort of thing that AppSpy would be. Because we’re not normal. We’re the rebels, we’re out there, fighting the good fight in the only way we know how.

I mean I’m probably going to do one of those as well, but I also thought we could have a look back over each month of the last 12 in turn and remind you of some of the ace games that came out.

So without further ado, let’s look back at January 2016. Long before any of the horrible things that ruined this year had started to happen.

Pocket Mortys

Who would have thought that one of the best games of the start of the year would be a tie-in that basically riffs on Pokemon until Pokemon is all like - oh, no, please stop riffing on me, it’s getting a bit weird now.

But that’s what Pocket Mortys is. Run around fighting and collecting different Mortys, levelling them up, and working through a series of challenges that are rich with humour and excitement. It’s not quite as good as Pokemon, but it’s getting there.

Crashlands

Oh Crashlands. Beautiful, massive, slightly bonkers Crashlands. It’s a survival game set in space and it’s designed from the ground up for mobile. Which is great, because it’s a mobile game.

Forage, build, and fight your way through an enormous environment, learning more and more as you go. This one’s really quite special, and it started the year off with a lovely lovely bang. And a crash. Dammit I should have gone for crash first.

Lost in Harmony

A sad, narrative-driven, endless runner with rhythm action overtoness shouldn’t be as good as this. In fact it shouldn’t be good at all. But Lost in Harmony proved us all wrong by being absolutely brilliant.

It’s a game that’s been regularly updated with content throughout the year as well. So if you’re coming to it fresh right now then you’re going to find a massive and massively entertaining experience that’s unlike anything else on the App Store.