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We may be more used to slaying monsters than befriending them in our games, but then again, there's much that enthrallingly different about Sea Of Solitude, the forthcoming explore-'em-up from Berlin-based Jo-Mei Games. It's a single-player adventure that takes place in a submerged fantasy world that looks more like a watercolour than a typical sandbox game; if you've played ThatGameCompany's absorbing PlayStation 3 title Journey, you'll recognise the soft-focus, dreamlike atmosphere Jo-Mei has managed to create.

The game's protagonist is Kay, a young girl who sails around a seemingly deserted sunked metropolis. According to Jo-Mei's creative head Cornelia Geppert, Kay's loneliness and isolation is want to turn her into a monster: "The story is about finding out what happened to her," Geppert says. "And working out how to turn her back into a human being."

As Kay traverses the world in her little boat, she'll encounter other monsters: one looks like a huge black whale; another resembles a giant bird of prey, perched menacingly on the remains of a building jutting out of the sea. Each one of these monsters, Geppert continues, was once a human, too: they're also suffering from different kinds of loneliness. Kate's - and the player's - task is to progress the story by finding out what happened to them, and how they can be returned to their human form.

The presence of Kate and her boat will change the weather systems around each monster, so if one of them's surrounded by rain and fog, say, then Kate's approach will replace it with rays of sunshine. As problems are solved and monsters are transformed, the water level will also drop, revealing a bit more of the city beneath the waves.

It's already a beautiful-looking game, inspired, Geppert says, by an affection for Japanese culture: Konami's classic Silent Hill series, and the meditative animation of Studio Ghibli and its legendary filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. Plenty of artists and designers in the West have been inspired by those very things, but we can't think of another game that puts Miyazaki and Silent Hill together; the result is a gentle fantasy with streaks of intensity and foreboding.

At this early stage, we can't speak for the game's mechanics - there are puzzles and action, we're told, but we don't yet know how they'll pan out - but in terms of design and subject matter, Sea Of Solitude certainly looks unique. "When human beings get too lonely," reads the game's website, "they turn into monsters." That sounds like a wonderful concept for a game to us. You can follow the game's progress at seaofsolitude.com

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In terms of graphics and sound, Battlefront is difficult to fault: it offers a veritable toy box of characters, weapons and craft from the Star Wars saga, all rendered in loving detail. Want to know what it might feel like to be Darth Vader, striding about on Hoth, Force-choking Rebels? Battlefront had you covered.

Not everything was rosy in EA DICE's shooter, though: many rightly criticised the game for feeling a little simplistic, particularly compared to the previous Battlefront games, while the transitions from on-foot action to vehicular combat - which triggered a loading screen - also felt like a step backwards compared to the earlier games' seamless integration. Couple all this with a lack of single-player campaign and paucity of content at launch, and you're left with a game with visual grandeur but little depth beneath the surface.

Next year, however, will see the launch of Battlefront 2, and in a recent interview with Eurogamer, EA DICE producer Paul Keslin speaks candidly about the responses his studios' received from players.

"The reception was mixed," Keslin admits. "We've been listening to a lot of the feedback since launch and even post-launch as we've been adding new things. We've announced the next game that's coming out - those are things we'll look to tackle in the future. We can't always get everything in the current game, but in the future we want to hit those things and give the fans what they're after."

Indeed, Keslin adds that the recent chunks of DLC made for the current Battlefront have been engineered, in part, as a response to player feedback; the Death Star and Rogue One add-ons, for example, have speeded up the transitions between combat types, so hopping into an X-Wing, say, now triggers a cut-scene rather than a loading screen. The updates also added a smattering of narrative to the multiplayer action - something Keslin hints might be a sign of things to come in Battlefront 2.

"Myself, as a Star Wars fan, I want story, I want narrative, I want something I can play that immerses me in that world but gives me something to follow and chase," Keslin says. "That's actually what inspired us with the Death Star DLC and this - how we do add a bit of narrative to the multiplayer game? We know that players want that, we're not able to give them a fully-fledged campaign post-launch for Battlefront, but how can we scratch that itch a bit? It's been received okay - I think some people appreciate it. We're trying to address as many things as we can."

Aesthetically, Battlefront gave EA DICE a strong platform. What the studio arguably needs to do now is build on the things it got right in the first game, with its accessibility joined by more tactical depth, improved vehicular combat and a greater variety of content at launch. Get that right, and maybe the Force will be strong with Battlefront 2 when it arrives next autumn.

If you can't wait until the release of Sea Of Solitude to get your monster fix, then you could check out Gigantic, a multiplayer shooter with a big twist: its teams of regular-sized, gun-toting playable characters are joined by huge, powerful monsters that wade into battle when they're powered up. Gigantic's developer is headed up by a former Blizzard designer, and it shows: the game's colourful, varied heroes bear a passing resemblance to those in this year's MOBA juggernaut, Overwatch. Having the five-on-five shooting action complemented by giant monsters - flying dragons, lumbering lizard-type things - is a neat idea and, if Gigantic can get the user base it needs, could separate it out from the free-to-play shooter crowd.

Gigantic is in open beta now, and available from Steam.