Jank (Page 15)

22 May 2026 By Graham Smith What We're Playing

What you could play this weekend

Three games, including one demo, for this long British weekend

The great secret of 'what we're playing [in the coming days]' articles is that they're full of lies. No one, certainly no games journalist, knows on a Friday what they're going to feel like playing on a Saturday or Sunday - if they're even going to play anything at all after a long week's graft. That's why Jank delivers you not what we are playing, only what we could or should. These are articles of pure potentiality.

You, though, can be trusted to tell us what you are playing in the comments below.

A tinkertoy-style four-storey building, in primary colours, some rooms visible inside. — Every Amanita Design game is different in genre but not in values.

Phonopolis

Is any independent game developer as quietly and consistently excellent as Amanita Design? I remember first writing about them when Samorost was but a twinkle in your browser window, and since then they've been stylish, inventive and unmistakably themselves across Machinarium, Botanicula, Chuchel, Happy Game, Creaks, Pilgrims and more. Phonopolis is their latest. What more would you need to know?

Some sort of spiked, flame-turtle is struck by Elliot in a lava arena. — I don't care if he's made out of lava, I don't want to kill something that looks this happy.

The Adventures Of Elliot: The Millennium

21 May 2026 By Alice Bell Reviews

Titanium Court review

Methought I was enamoured of an ass

You've probably already heard of Titanium Court, this season's indie game for people who very loudly say they love indie games. But hey: I love indie games! And Titanium Court is the most IGF Award-winningest game, too. This despite - or perhaps because - it defies easy explanation. Here goes.

Titanium Court is a metafictional roguelite match-3 strategy RPG. It uses 2D pixel art and has a minimalist colour palette that would be at home on the same sweet shelf as Wham bars and Refreshers. It is most obviously inspired by the Shakespeare play A Midsummer Night's Dream, but there are a lot of other influences (there's a small, very specific thing that reminds me of something from Clive Barker's short stories).

Because of all that it is very good, but also a tiny bit obnoxious at times. If Titanium Court were a person I would go to its Edinburgh Fringe show, but not invite it to my wedding.

In fairness, if you're going to be meta, Shakespeare isn't a bad shout at all. His plays are often bookended by a guy coming out and saying "Here's what you're going to

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

19 May 2026 By Jeremy Peel Bits

Grenades never got better than in Halo: Combat Evolved

Hot potato? Don’t mind if I do

When I heard that grenade-spamming was becoming a dominant strategy in Marathon, I was shocked. Mainly because, for the first 50 hours or so in Bungie’s extraction shooter, I’d forgotten to use grenades at all. In a desperate situation, I’m much more likely to reach for the stick that shoots death - the one that’s onscreen at all times. Grenades are relegated to bumper buttons and distinguished by icons I haven’t bothered to learn. Let them sit in their inventory and listen to muffled gunfire.

But it wasn’t always thus. Halo: Combat Evolved was born in a time before aim-down-sights. Which means, when I play it on the Steam Deck, the whole length of the left trigger is given over to grenades. Even when I plonk the machine down on the couch to go grab a drink, there’s a reasonable chance I’ll accidentally throw a hot potato. That’s just how easily accessible grenades are on the ringworld.

They’re also a highly visible part of Halo’s combat sandbox. When I get the jump on an Elite, and the lanky alien goes down with a growl of anguish, a

18 May 2026 By Nic Reuben Reviews

Zero Parades: For Dead Spies review

Fatigue, anxiety and delirium in ZA/UM's sophomore game

At the bazaar, the citizens of Portofiro rummage through bootleg tapes from La Luz, a techno-fascist empire under a cultural blockade that prohibits the genuine article. Everywhere, conspiratorial lips whisper that La Luz's leader is the latest in a long line of copies. With each duplicate, his essence gradually thins.

I take notes and try not to get snagged on easy metaphors for a game that has far too much of its own vitality to ever feel ersatz, but never quite shakes the sense of being an imprint. I'm halfway through a second run now, and I still couldn't tell you whether the metaphor is deliberate or not. Much of Zero Parades is good enough that it deserves to be written about on its own terms, free of the ugliness and controversy that have hung over studio ZA/UM's leadership since shortly after the release of Disco Elysium.

In other words, Zero Parades deserves to be written about by someone who has never heard of studio ZA/UM, and has never played Disco Elysium. What I'm basically saying here is that they should have made a kart racer instead. Incredibly selfish not to,

17 May 2026 By Graham Smith Feature

The Lie-In

Our weekly roundup of links worth reading

Good morning, videogames. It has been a week of everyone, everywhere writing about Mixtape (including me), which means our links mostly have a theme this time. The theme is: articles I disagree with. Is Mixtape worth a perfect score? Is it cheap pablum? Is it too nostalgic? Is its depiction of the '90s too fast and loose and therefore not nostalgic enough? Is it an Australian psy-op? Are teens unlikeable? Are games journalists unlikeable? We will not answer any of these questions (except maybe the last one, every day forever), but here are just a handful of the articles I disagreed with this week.

Cameron Kunzelman wrote about how and why Mixtape deploys its music, and whether it can be effective in a world of nostalgic Spotify playlists.

What is maybe more notable about Mixtape, and what might bring people to clear defensiveness or derision when they encounter it, is that the kind of sampling it does with the database of culture is about your emotions. Bugs Bunny shows up in Space Jam because he is intellectual property that will draw Looney Tunes fans closer to the product, and he exists in contextless space and time to be summoned

16 May 2026 By Jon Hicks

Jank Mail: Mixed Takes

This week in PC gaming

It’s been a slow week on Jank because Brendy still away raising a newborn, although he still somehow found time to write about the book-tidying game that is all he can handle playing right now. He also pitched invertebrate against excessively-vertebrate in this week’s Character Select, Xenomorph vs. Octodad. Total Playtime recording was thwarted by illness and travel and also Brendy’s offspring, so please enjoy a back-catalogue banger on innovation in product placement. Graham played an incremental game that’s also a platformer and that’s it, that’s the name and the post. He also played Mixtape and said it was good.

Out there on the internet, lots of other people had opinions about Mixtape and there was Discourse. Nathan summarised it over on Aftermath but the even shorter version is that some people liked it, some people hated it, and people who dedicate their lives to shrieking on the internet took the existence of either viewpoint as emphatic proof of whatever they believed beforehand.

The next big release was Subnautica 2 which came out in Early Access and is a huge hit, which means that the Krafton CEO almost certainly has

15 May 2026 By Jon Hicks Podcast

Total Playtime: Let's Fix This With Product Placement

I'm with the brand

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.

I regret to say that we were unable to record a regular news episode this week. Everybody was away or ill or both, with the exception of Brendy who is a new parent and thus is going to be preoccupied, exhausted and/or covered in body excretions for the forseeable future.

To tide our regular listeners (and Jank readers) over, we are resurrecting a former Patreon-exclusive episode: Episode Q, which previously aired in October 2025. In it, Alice and I are once again bedeviled by Games Satan, and compelled to save a series of well-known videogame franchises from oblivion thanks to financial support driven by product placement. The twist is that ~~Nate~~ Games Satan chose the products, which lead to some previously unforseen partnerships between triple-A videogame brands and small-to-mid-size service companies in the West Midlands.

Total Playtime EpQ - Let's Fix This With Product Placement

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There is no way this sort of analysis