Nintendo Life eShop Selects December 2018

With 2018's Game of the Year awards now well and truly handed out, it's time to return to our usual, monthly Nintendo Life eShop Selects. Don't worry December, we hadn't forgotten about you!

These awards aim to celebrate the best of Nintendo's digital store, giving some love and attention to the games that could so easily be missed in the Switch's ever-growing library.

So, let's get started! Here are the best Switch eShop games of December 2018!

Honourable Mentions:

While these titles didn't quite make our top three this month, they're still certainly worth checking out.

3. Katamari Damacy REROLL (Switch eShop)

Jumping straight into third place this month is the weird and wonderful Katamari Damacy REROLL. Originally released on PlayStation 2 back in 2004, this one offers a genuinely bizarre experience that is unlike anything else out there. We awarded the strange blend of puzzle and platforming action a 9/10 in our review, saying that the "Switch edition is easily the best way to play it outside of blowing the dust off your old PS2". A must-play in our eyes, and hopefully in yours, too.

2. Everspace - Stellar Edition (Switch eShop)

Narrowly beating Katamari to second place, though, is Everspace - Stellar Edition. This solitary, roguelike space-combat hit has you constantly weighing the cost of exploring against running away before being spotted by enemy forces, and there's a jolly good time to be had when doing so. We gave this one an 8/10 in our review, noting that the Switch port "does a cracking job of preserving the full experience on a handheld". Give it a whirl!

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Everspace - Stellar Edition
Everspace - Stellar Edition

1. GRIS (Switch eShop)

And now for the one you've all been waiting for: our favourite eShop game of December 2018 is the utterly beautiful GRIS. Winning us over with its gorgeous visuals and heart-wrenching score, and staying firmly in our minds ever since, GRIS is one of those games that you simply have to experience. We awarded it a 9/10 in our review, with its relatively short length being pretty much the only thing standing in the way of it being considered pure perfection. We said, "Gris absolutely should be put in that same family as Journey, Inside and other modern classics, because nothing else we’ve ever played has looked or felt so beautiful."

What was your favourite eShop game last month? (142 votes)

  1. GRIS30%
  2. Everspace - Stellar Edition13%
  3. Katamari Damacy REROLL15%
  4. Firewatch10%
  5. Guacamelee! 210%
  6. Kingdom Two Crowns2%
  7. Aaero: Complete Edition2%
  8. Rival Megagun  0%
  9. Football Manager 2019 Touch4%
  10. Rock Boshers DX: Director's Cut1%
  11. Battle Princess Madelyn2%
  12. Sundered: Eldritch Edition1%
  13. Something else (comment below)10%

Please login to vote in this poll.

How we decide our eShop Selects top three: As we reach the end of every month, the Nintendo Life staff vote on their favourite titles from a list of games selected by the editorial team. To qualify for this list, these games must have been released primarily as a digital Nintendo Switch eShop title in that particular month, and must have been reviewed on Nintendo Life; we select the qualifying games based on their review scores.

Staff are then asked to vote for three games that they think deserve to sit right at the very top of that list; first choice gets 3 points, second choice gets 2 points, and third choice gets 1 point. These votes are then tallied to create a top three list, with the overall winner taking that month's top prize.