Brendan Caldwell

03 Jun 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Character Select

Thumper beetle vs SkiFree Yeti

Let endless battle persevere

Welcome to season one of Character Select. How many seasons will there be? Only one person knows the answer, and he is on paternity leave.

This week's hyperfictional showdown is as much thought experiment as battle for survival. Step this way, unstoppable force, let me introduce you to my good friend, immovable object. It's the Beetle from Thumper versus the Yeti from SkiFree. One of them will never stop hunting you and always kills its quarry. The other is a rhythmically violent intradimensional insect capable of passing through realms of consciousness at the speed of thought. This is the Large Hadron Collider of "who'd win" scenarios. The laws of physics hang in the balance. It's now or it is never now. Select your character!

The case for the Beetle from Thumper

Have you seen somebody perform a perfect run in Thumper? It is like watching a migraine achieve sentience and launch into space. There is no species on this planet that can compete with this... thing. I briefly thought about putting Sonic the Hedgehog into this fight against the Yeti, but the blue bozo is always stopping to refuel on chilli dogs or talk to a small creature. The Beetle

27 May 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Character Select

Dog vs Cat

Let endless battle endure

Welcome to season one of Character Select. How many seasons will there be? Some mysteries deserve never to be revealed.

Ah, now we're suckin' diesel. It is a conflict that has raged for as long as humanity has had a gristly bit of mammoth salami they did not want to eat. Who will get the scraps: man's best friend, or best frenemy? One is known for boundless enthusiasm, strength, loyalty, and also for going "bee-woop-dee-boop" while battering gasmasked dorks. The other is known for putting small dead rodents in your slippers, and rescuing an entire city of robots from an endless night. This will be a tragic fight, because in another world, at another time, Dog and Cat would have been inseparable pals. But not here and not now. This is Dog from Half-Life 2 versus the Cat from Stray. It's now or it is never now. Select your character!

The case for Dog from Half-Life 2

He can lift a car and he can throw a car. That's got to count for a lot. He once jumped on top of an alien tripod and tore the top of its skull off, as if he was dismantling a cheap chew

20 May 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Character Select

Stardew Valley vs The Flood

Let endless battle persist

Welcome to season one of Character Select. How many seasons will there be? This question will never be satisfactorily answered.

It's likely many of your beloved friends will die in this episode of Character Select, but don't worry. Because they'll come back as horrible bloated infectomorphs with an aggressive desire for violence and no concern for their own bodily well-being. Yay! How will Stardew Valley's farmers fare when facing off against the unflappable parasitic alien species of the Halo series? I cannot in good conscience put my money on anyone but Pam. However, one thing is clear: whoever loses, every member of the Jank audience wins. It's now or it is never now. Select your character!

The case for the Flood

The Flood's figurehead is a giant Audrey II lookalike who speaks in trochaic heptameter. It doesn't do this in some effort to communicate more effectively with humanity. It just likes poetic verse. Also it wants to eat you and everyone you know. The Flood have been so tenacious as a galactic infection that many past civilisations concluded the only solution is mass suicide. The average zomboflood is dextrous enough to use a rocket launcher and leap thirty meters until

13 May 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Character Select

The Xenomorph vs Octodad

Let endless battle continue

Welcome to season one of Character Select. How many seasons will there be? That's for me to know and you to never find out.

Last week we introduced the concept of this gladiatorial column, so if you missed that go brush up and see who came out victorious in the debut brawl between the harried cop from Disco Elysium and gruff-voiced policerogue Max Payne. This time, we are going full asymmetry by pitting a ferocious and terrifying extraterrestrial creature against an ordinary family man with nothing unusual about him whatsoever. I never said this would be fair.

It's now or it is never now. Select your character!

The case for the Xenomorph

Well, its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility, for one thing. It also has acid for blood, two sets of jaws, and a razor sharp tail almost as hazardous as that little bit of plastic left behind when you tear the bottle lid off a European Pepsi. Life-threatening. The xenomorph seems to sleep a lot, like a cat, but it is also in a permanent bad mood, like a cat. If I ever meet a xenomorph, I will auto-expire on the spot to save everyone

12 May 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Bits

Shhh! No magic in the library

Also there's a sleeping child and I don't want to wake them

Magical librarians arrive neither early nor late, but precisely when they mean to. In my case, that is just as my partner and I have had a baby. If all videogames are fundamentally about cleaning up, Librarian: Tidy Up The Arcane Library is an exemplar of the form. Soothing, distracting, and only as demanding as washing up some dishes or emptying the nappy bin for the third time in a week. This is the perfect level of cosy semi-commitment my brain can handle at the moment.

Before I bore you with all the details about my beautiful newborn and how she is the most perfect thing ever to have shit itself on planet earth, I will explain this sim that has been helping to keep me calm the last few days. You wake up in a single-room library of magical tomes, but every book has been catapulted from the shelves and lies strewn across the floor. A tricksy fairy is to blame (aren't they always). The books are now sprinkled on steps, scattered into crannies, and piled up on tables. You've been locked in this room by Merlin, who demands that you clean up the place. You must put

06 May 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Character Select

Max Payne vs Harry Du Bois

Let endless battle commence

Welcome to season one of Character Select. How many seasons will there be? Shut up, you don't even know the rules yet.

Character Select is that thing you do with your mates when you sit around the TV watching a bad movie and one of you has a sudden attack of stonerbrain and asks: "Who would win: The Hulk or The Meg?" Except we're doing it for PC game characters and our match-ups will be funnier.

On top of pitting two videogame characters against one another in an unspecified yet likely violent form of competition, we'll also tell you what arena they'll face one another in. It is up to you, the filthy commenters, hollering from the stands of this trashy coliseum of popular culture, to decide the winner of each conflict.

I have a small stack of these face-offs prepared and ready to publish every week. I'll be honest, I invented this brawling column as a quick and dirty means of covering my article quota while I am away changing nappies on paternity leave. But don't think about that. The point is: many characters you know and love will die. It's now, or it is

30 Apr 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Bits

A love letter to videogame pubs

Pint?

The pub is a haven and a hopeless place. Fantasy RPGs uphold the tavern as the hubworld of society. More than piazzas or busy markets or sturdy fortresses, the pub is where real things happen and where real people spit. It feels natural that it becomes a favourite of game designers. In our boring fleshy world they are both the alcoholic's watering hole and a place of legitimate relaxation and escape. They are a third space where office-cursed ghouls can unwind and complain about corporate, and a buzzing recruitment bazaar where jobs are slyly offered to those who dare to schmooze after a conference. Some of the best ideas happen in the pub, why shouldn't some of the best quests begin there too?

When I think of the game pub, I think first of Skyrim's roadside inns. It is impossible to estimate how much of Skyrim's sense of place is owed to its many thatched rest stops, offering you fireside and food in deep warm contrast to the blizzards outside. There's history in these pubs, even if it is the fictional history of a fantastical realm.

They remind me of Ye Olde Trip

23 Apr 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Reviews

If you want to explore a strange city, go play Moves Of The Diamond Hand

Cosmo D, as I live and breathe

I am $999 in debt and I may be going insane, but at least my pockets are full of sandwiches. You too may attain bread-based nirvana if you play Moves Of The Diamond Hand, a new dice-rolling RPG from Cosmo D, although you don't need to follow me into the deathspiral of bankruptcy. I just enjoy becoming insolvent in any game that gives me the chance. My granny used to say: "They can't put you in jail for debt". She had roughly nine billion children to feed and I do not, but part of me carries her philosophy to the grave. And indeed past the grave! Into videogames.

But before I explain debt to you, I should explain this entire game. This is impossible, because it is a Cosmo D game. I'll settle for the basics.

You arrive first-personally via subway train to Off-Peak City. It is the middle of an intense mayoral race, with everyone in town talking about three candidates. One is a clone who will fall to pieces if he doesn't have his companion fish robot with him at all times. Another is a former boy band member with a dodgy energy drink sponsorship. The third