Alice Bell - Jank

04 Apr 2026 By Alice Bell Podcast

Total Playtime: MrBeast Big Naturals

Plus: mining sexual tension

Total Playtime is a Patreon-supported podcast about videogames, hosted by Alice Bell, Jon Hicks, Brendan Caldwell and Nate Crowley. Jank has partnered with them and we'll be posting new episodes each week.

This week we have fun (for a given value of fun) discussing Epic's mass layoffs. They got rid of a thousand actual people, for what I think are very vague reasons, i.e. Fortnite is somehow not making enough money. This seems like an impossible circumstance. Fortnite is basically a printing press that produces sheets of dollar bills with Tim Sweeney's face on.

Total Playtime: MrBeast Big Naturals

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Maybe he should stop trying to make a shop that most people don't use because its UI is still really bad and annoying. Why isn't there a half decent way to sort the games I have? Why does the application act like me asking it to order my game library in order of purchase is a task of the same difficulty as God asking Abraham to, like, seriously murk Isaac?

We also discuss Sony's dynamic price testing, which sees the return of a much beloved beans metaphor. This, in turn, leads to an extended

16 Mar 2026 By Alice Bell Reviews

Esoteric Ebb review

A smart, funny puzzle game in RPG clothing

I have heard Esoteric Ebb described as Discworld Elysium, which is useful to give you an initial sketch. It's a tale of political intrigue amongst rival factions in a city about to boil over, as you, a hapless detective, find yourself in the middle of an investigation that could change everything. But, crucially, it's all fantasy themed and it's really funny. It's not as funny as Pratchett, mind you. But I'm monstrously protective of the man and his work, and am tempted to dock points from anything where people draw a comparison, out of spite. So maybe it is as funny as him; it's certainly much funnier than most games that try to be funny at all.

You're gallivanting around Norvik, a place with a map larger than you'd think, art more beautiful than you asked for, and a soundtrack better than you, you lowly sinner, deserve. Norvik is a human city days away from its first ever election. An already fraught situation was enfraughtened further when a local tea shop exploded. It was a) the meeting point for local radicals and b) on land that belongs to the city's goblins. Because, oh yes, Norvik was founded on goblin land,

12 Mar 2026 By Alice Bell Podcast

Total Playtime: Henry Rollins Pirate Accountant Simulator

Let's play Simulation Simulator

Total Playtime is a Patreon-supported podcast about videogames, hosted by Alice Bell, Jon Hicks, Brendan Caldwell and Nate Crowley. Jank has partnered with them and we'll be posting new episodes each week.

Once again we find ourselves in a situation where I, Alice, was not there to record this episode, but am here to write the description for it. I can call Jonty a big smelly poohead and there's nothing he can do about it! Haha! You should have come up with a Podcast Post Editing Simulator, Jonty. That's the theme this week: coming up with pastimes to make simulation games about, but which have not already been simulated by ambitious and fast-moving developers. It turns out there are a lot of sim games.

Total Playtime: Henry Rollins Pirate Accountant Sim

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Nevertheless, the lads were able to come up with several concepts, as follows:

Philosophy Professor Simulator
Henry Rollins Pirate Accountant Simulator
Lin Manuel Miranda's Bin Man Hell Uganda
Left Wing Roid Monster Olympics (not the name Nate actually gave it but I feel mine is more evocative and not open to a lawsuit from Andy Samburg)
Local Election Sim
Museum Attendant Simulator

20 Feb 2026 By Alice Bell Bits

Creature Kitchen is a fireside menace about making bigfoot breakfast

The way to a monster's heart is through its stomach(s)

Failbetter Games have described their upcoming eldritch-garden-'em-up Mandrake as having 'fireside menace'. This is a description I find pleasing, and I'm keen to blow oxygen on the flame of that term before something I find nauseating like "fluffy spookems" or "nightlight-slop" catches instead. This is most especially in light (that of a flickering, unreliable torch) of playing Creature Kitchen. It's a new-ish game where I threw PB&J sandwiches at a raccoon with the calculating expression of Jane Goodall observing a favourite gorilla.

In Creature Kitchen you materialise outside a small log cabin and use subtle video game context clues, such as written instructions, to divine that your job is to feed the titular creatures that live there. In the beginning these are recognisable, if Wednesday Addams-adjacent critters, like the aforementioned raccoon, a raven, a mouse.

You prepare meals by bish-bash-boshing ingredients in your oven, and throw them at the cryptid in question, in a paper lunch bag. When they're pleased, they provide keys to open locked cupboards or rooms elsewhere. The whole house is a strange puzzle cabinet, and it all makes sense in context, because the context also covers an infinite pantry with a poltergeist, a