Brendan Caldwell - Jank (Page 4)

29 Jan 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Peak

Three game devs climb a mountain - part 2

"I would never do climbing for real"

In Peak, you reach out your hands to grab onto surfaces. Holding left click against a wall or a tree sees you climb, but your stamina bar will drain quickly. Thankfully, players can offer an arm to hoist up a fellow climber in a difficult spot. You'll need to boost and help each other out a lot to reach the summit. It's a good thing the three game developers I have roped into this horrendous jaunt seem to be good at working together.

"I think when you talk about climbing, you're talking about a very strenuous sort of activity," says Holly, plucking fruit from a shrub growing on the side of a cliff and pocketing it for a future snack. "You're talking about this very physical thing. And giving your player character a physical body that obeys some rules of reality helps the feeling of climbing become more real in a sense, right?"

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Get started at part one.

Over the course of a climb in Peak, your stamina bar will become afflicted with all sorts of clutter that reduces how much energy you have - injuries, burns, sleepiness - all reducing how much

28 Jan 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Peak

Three game devs climb a mountain

It's your turn to get over it, Foddy

"So, I assume the task is to climb that giant peak up there."

I look at the mountain and tell Bennett Foddy he is correct. The creator of Getting Over It and co-developer of Baby Steps has agreed to my unusual journalistic request. He must conquer a mountain in co-op climbing game Peak and answer my questions while doing it. And he won't be ascending alone. With us on the beach at the foot of this mountain are two other hardened developers of climbing games. Holly Jencka, lead developer of urban clambering sim White Knuckle. And Emeric Thoa, creative director of sci-fi alpine sim Cairn. They are currently rummaging through suitcases and collecting coconuts. I don't say it out loud but I have a strong feeling none of them will survive.

After messing about on the beach for a few minutes, I tell the trio they're "on their own". I'll be following, but mostly hanging back and asking questions. I want to see how three developers of climbing games will manage when faced with a mountain not of their own making. Maybe we'll uncover gems of game design wisdom along the way. Maybe we'll just plummet to our doom.

Three players stroll towards a twisting and rugged looking mountain. — Peak

27 Jan 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Feature

The best games of the decade (so far)

Yes, we know it's not over yet

A list article is not how I imagined setting Jank up as a unique place to read about PC games. Everybody does lists. But the more we thought about it the more it made sense - we wanted a definitive rundown of our favourite games from recent years. We needed to offer you a taster menu.

This is not simply a list of cool games we reckon you ought to play, it's a way of telling you exactly who we are at Jank - what kind of sickos we are, and how to distinguish us from the other sickos. It's also a chance to stare one another down across a spreadsheet, sweating like three spaghetti western outlaws, chewing words in a tense standoff to see whether or not Balatro will make the cut. It does. [spits]

Our process was simple: we made a big raw list of all the games we liked even a little which were released between 2020 and now, and included many games that made an impact, even if we weren't that hot on them. This "shortlist" came to 172 games. From there, we cast votes. Any game with at least one vote from any of us

27 Jan 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Feature

Life at Telltale was “complicated”

"The whole point is to bleed a little bit for this"

When survivors of Telltale Games get together, they tell war stories. I know because two veterans are speaking to me now, and they look into the middle distance as they tiptoe around the complex feelings they have regarding their time at the ill-fated studio.

"The stories would just go on for days," says Michael Choung, who wrote for a handful of Telltale's games between 2014 and 2016. "Whenever Telltale people get together and talk," explains Choung, "it's not like 'what fond memory would you like to share with me, because I will share my fond memories with you!' It's always just like: 'Oh my god, that was happening to you? Oh my gosh.' Yeah, so it's a very complicated feeling."

I'm chatting to Choung in a video call alongside fellow Telltale alumni Nick Herman, director of The Wolf Among Us and choreographer across many Telltale games. He agrees things were sometimes messy, but would later sum up his time at the studio as "worth the squeeze".

"It's got to look like premium animated television," says Herman. "You got to look at it and think it's something that would be on Netflix."

Choung and Herman are now two

27 Jan 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Bits

Why we are making Jank

Because if we didn't we would probably explode

What I want from Jank is simple. I want to find the good PC games, and write about them with an honesty and thoughtfulness that only independent ownership can allow. An oasis where good writing on games can live in peace. I want Jank to be a little tropical island you can visit, where you will always find me in the shallows, trousers rolled up, spearfishing for something interesting. Like Tom Hanks in Castaway.

Except I'm not a shill for FedEx. So I also want to fire autoplaying videos into the sea. I would like churn to take a backseat to quality scribbles. And if the noise of deals posts could please diminish into nothing, that would be nice. Perhaps paragraph-long headlines could also get straight into the bin? No worries if not. At the very least, I would appreciate a place where I can safely shit on Call Of Duty when annually called upon to do so, a high horse upon which to laugh at Leslie Benzies' latest disaster. What? You mean having your own site allows you to just do all that? Cool.

A woman with white hair looks dead-eyed toward the ground, saying "This is good for me". — From egg frying simulator Arctic Eggs, a tale of culinary independence in a hellish