Graham Smith - Jank (Page 4)

03 Jul 2026 By Graham Smith What We're Playing

What you could play this weekend

Play a game, while they last

The Steam summer sale continues, which means there's still a relative paucity of new game releases. There's nothing inherent in this weekly feature that requires the three games I pick to be new, but still I have rummaged around behind the sofa to pick three relatively recent games that seem worth your time.

As always, tell us what you are playing in the comments below.

A 2D platformer pixel art world. It is dark and has strange mushrooms. "Get away!" is written in the middle of the screen.

Casualties: Unknown demo

This is a demo I've had open in a browser tab since its release back in April. Delve into caves on alien planets in search of lost cargo, and deal with the strange, hostile environments you find. I'm most interested in this because it has "simulated limb and cardiovascular systems" that require you to fight infections and apply bandages to body parts in order to survive injury. I love a granular wounding system.

Some sort of plant guy is using abilities in third-person on a sandy planet against distant purple enemies.

Voidling Bound

A "creature collector", but far from a Pokémonlike. This looks like a third-person Risk Of Rain 'em up, in which you find and hatch alien creatures, cross-breed and evolve them with Spore-style body-part combinations, and then directly control one of your choice in wave-based combat. That combat is

30 Jun 2026 By Graham Smith Bits

The World Cup is best in first-person

The BBC are offering interactive 3D replays of every match

I am always watching football. Premier League, Champions League, La Liga, or whatever dusty field is being streamed on FIFA Plus; I do not care, I will watch it if it is football.

Naturally, I'm currently watching the World Cup. The only surprise is how often I'm watching it in first-person.

As part of the tournament, the BBC launched the FIFA World Cup 3D Experience (UK only). "3D experience" is one of those cursed phrases, conjuring expectations of a blurry Ronaldo JPG pasted on a wall in Second Life, but what they actually mean is: you can watch a replay of every single match of the World Cup in motion captured 3D. It's remarkable.

Earlier this evening, Norway beat Ivory Coast in the round of 32, and so you can now watch it in 3D in your browser. It's synced with the BBC's audio commentary, lets you overlay the pitch with shotmaps and formation stats, and best of all lets you move the camera around. That means you can watch Amad Diallo's 74th minute equaliser through Diallo's eyes as he jinks past defenders, or from the goalkeeper's perspective as the ball

28 Jun 2026 By Graham Smith The Lie-In

The Lie-In

Links worth clicking.

Good morning, videogames. I am a little late with The Lie-In today, such that it is no longer morning as this goes live. This is because I met up with Jonty in fleshworld on Friday night and we filled ourselves with the devil's liquid. The regret on Saturday was overpowering. Now it is Sunday and I am reborn via the medium of links to good videogame writing.

Star Fox released this past week. I am currently resisting the urge to buy it, at least until I've completed a couple of other Switch 2 games that sit in front of it in the queue. For now, I enjoyed Chris Schilling's review for Eurogamer.

Conscious as I am that memory is the most unreliable of narrators, I don't recall feeling quite so exhilarated by some of these stages. Katina's mothership is more imposing than ever, spitting out fighters by the dozen. Sector X's derelict base feels enormous as you pick your way through its ruins. Take the warp route on Meteos and your destination is positively kaleidoscopic, a proper feast for the eyes. It's not too much of a stretch to suggest this is

26 Jun 2026 By Graham Smith What We're Playing

What you could play this weekend

Tell us what you are playing in the comments

The Steam Summer sale is underway, which means you may be playing the ancient game of, Do I Really Need To Buy This Now Or Am I Merely Seeking Dopamine. It's a surprisingly popular game considering the answer is always the same. It's dopamine. You already own dozens of games you haven't played, right?

Here are three new games through which you could seek dopamine this weekend.

A bipedal mech in a grey street, viewed in first-person with a gun in the player's hands. — From the developers of Splitgate.

Empulse

You might never get a Titanfall 3, but Empulse looks like a pretty good consolation. It's a 6v6 multiplayer first-person shooter with wall-running, grapple hooks and pilotable mechs. Its unique idea - or at least, the idea it borrowed from a game other than Titanfall - is paint bombs which you can throw down to apply effects to surfaces, creating faster movement, bigger leaps, and stickiness.

The inside of a fridge, where a little sushi guy is washing mold. Some rotten eggs are nearby. — Imagine how much more time I'd have for writing on Jank if this guy lived in my house.

Moldwasher

There are so, so many games about tidying up in the wake of PowerWash Simulator, but Moldwasher is at least visually distinct by being in isometric 2D. Better yet, you take control of a tiny nigiri sushi,

25 Jun 2026 By Graham Smith Podcast

Total Playtime is now part of Jank

One subscription, two great sources of PC gaming nonsense

When we launched Jank (nearly six months ago!), we sweetened the deal by offering our paying subscribers access to premium episodes of the Total Playtime podcast. Likewise, those wise and handsome folk who already backed Total Playtime's Patreon were granted entry into the grand (and empty) halls that lie beyond Jank's paywall.

This ouroboros of mutual support cannot continue. The snakes have finished digesting each other. Total Playtime is a permanent part of Jank now and included in your subscription.

If you're a paying Jank supporter, we love you, and we now have a better mechanism for giving you access to Total Playtime episodes. Premium episodes get their own paywalled article, such as last week's episode, within which you'll find an embedded player and a widget offering you the new ability to subscribe to the podcast, with premium episodes included, in your podcast player of choice. If you're currently signed in to Jank, that same widget may appear below, tailored to your present level of access.

If you're a Jank reader but not yet a paying supporter, we love you in a slightly more aloof way, and you'll continue to get fortnightly

25 Jun 2026 By Graham Smith Feature

Don't pre-order games

They never run out of megabytes at the megabyte store

The videogame industry wants you to buy games before they're released because it makes it easier for them to project their future earnings, and because they want your money before you find out whether a game is good or not.

Don't do it. They won't run out of copies, I promise.

Pre-orders for Grand Theft Auto 6 go live today. It's one of the most anticipated entertainment properties ever, in any medium, and I can understand wanting to give in to that excitement, and to participate in some way with what feels like a cultural moment of real significance.

You don't have to do that by giving them $80 today for a videogame you can't play until November 19th.

Book some days off work. Replay the previous games in the series. Watch some video essays about them. Create a zine about Franklin's dog. All of these are methods of participating in the moment that don't cost you $80 for a videogame you can't play yet.

To be clear, my anti-pre-order stance is not related to Grand Theft Auto 6 specifically.

I've seen the pattern play out

24 Jun 2026 By Graham Smith Feature

The device I want Valve to make

What if the Steam Deck was smaller and less powerful?

If you want a more powerful Steam Deck designed solely for playing games on your television, good news. On Monday, Valve revealed prices for the Steam Machine, a companion cube designed to bring PC gaming into your living room. All of the reviews pretty much agree: they're cool, small, quiet machines that offer a gateway to the platform, but feel too expensive because everything is too expensive now.

That's great and I've added my name to the waiting list. Now Valve should make what I really want: a less powerful Steam Deck that's still handheld but half the size.

I've owned a Steam Deck since launch and I like it a lot. I don't take for granted how wonderful it is to be able to play PC games on the go - or in my case, while lying in bed or on the couch - and it's great that it's powerful enough to play a surprising number of the games on Steam. I could run Elden Ring on that thing, or Resident Evil Requiem, or with the right settings even multiplayer shooters like Arc Raiders.

I could watch No Country For Old Men on

21 Jun 2026 By Graham Smith Feature

The Lie-In

Links worth clicking

Good morning, videogames. My kid has wanted to get into chess for a little while and I finally got round to setting him up on Chess.com. He played some challenges and some matches and, in the afternoon, came to me triumphant. "I am getting good at chess," he said, clearly proud. "That's great," I said, "I hope you are having fun." Later that evening, right before bed, he urged me to get my own Chess.com account so we could play together. I beat him three times in a row and he went to bed sad and quiet. Will he ever play chess again? Will I ever stop feeling guilty? It's clear to me that games were a mistake, but here are some links to words, videos and podcasts about them.

A picture went around the internet last week of the actor Jack Quaid wearing a mocap suit and wrapped in PVC piping, seemingly for his role as the gelatinous cube in the upcoming God Of War: Laufey. For Kotaku, Rebekah Valentine spoke to animators, actors, and a mocap technician to puzzle out the benefits of recording motion capture for a cube.

“There’s definitely a case