Jank (Page 6)

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

0:00

/3737.189938

There is no way this sort of analysis

15 May 2026 By Graham Smith What We're Playing

What you could play this weekend

Tell us what you are playing in the comments

Jank is still a new site and there's no need for us to feel beholden to traditions only months old. That's why it finally happened. This is the week I became uncomfortable enough with the overegging "should" in the title of this series and decided it was time to change it.

Here are three games you could play this weekend. Tell us what you are playing in the comments.

Wall Street Raider

The original version of this game was released in the '80s, and it's been "in active development" ever since according to its Steam page. Now the frighteningly detailed stock market simulation has been remastered and released on Steam. If you think Football Manager is just a spreadsheet, you haven't seen anything yet.

Black Jacket

The latest in the 'every form of gambling is now an indie game' trend, but at least this one is a form of gambling I already understand. Black Jacket is, if the wordplay wasn't already obvious, blackjack, played against... the devil? Cards can have special abilities and you can deckbuild to improve your odds, Balatro-style.

Space Haven

I saw this neat-looking spaceship management game and then was

14 May 2026 By Graham Smith Bits

An incremental game that's also a platformer

I became interested in incremental games last year thanks to work like To The Core and the Gnorp Apologue. These aren't strictly idle games, because they are active and playing with skill makes the big numbers get bigger quicker. I've come to think of them as supplements to my regular entertainment diet; they are the most efficient way of getting my daily recommended dosage of videogames, if not always the most edifying.

An Incremental Game That's Also A Platformer is both the name of the game I played this week and an accurate description, but lets use its preferred acronym: IGTAP. In IGTAP, you complete platforming course to earn resources which can then be spent to buy a clone. The clone repeats your fastest time around the course, earning you resources without you having to complete the circuit yourself. If you have played incremental games and you have played platformers and you are like me, your brain just shuddered like a stretching kitten.

Clones don't earn as much resources as you do, at first, and so you complete the circuit yourself a few more times. You unlock a few more clones, increase the base resource reward,

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

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

11 May 2026 By Graham Smith Reviews

I enjoyed Mixtape and therefore it's good

Finding truth amid nostalgia

The music video for 1998's All I Need by French electronica duo Air features a young couple skateboarding in the suburbs of California, mixed with interview clips of the pair trying, and mostly failing, to explain their feelings for each other. A YouTube upload of the video has become a shrine to the era for a particular type of person. "This song just sums up the vibe of the '90s," says one commenter. "I miss those days so much and feel sorry for this generation that didn't get to experience this type of life, free from all the social media bullshit."

Mixtape, released last week, is clearly inspired by the '80s movies of John Hughes, especially Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but it may as well be an adaptation of that music video and the aching nostalgia of its comment section.

Click through to YouTube to read the comments. They're nice.

It's Stacey Rockford's last day in town, the summer after the end of high school, and she and her friends Van and Cass are determined to make the most of it. That means securing booze to bring to that night's big beach party

10 May 2026 By Graham Smith Feature

The Lie-In

Links to good words about videogames from across the web

Good morning, videogames. We did it. We made it through the first week of Brendy's paternity leave and Jank did not immediately crumble. Sure, you might save some empathy for Brendy and his partner, exhausted as they no doubt are, but Jonty and I are the true casualties here. We are the Timon and Pumbaa of Jank, our trio's down to two, and the blog won't fill itself. Let's lift the log of the internet and see if we can find some slimy yet satisfying writing about videogames underneath.

I remember following the Nakatomi Plaza mod for Half-Life way back when, but had completely forgotten that it got turned into a full retail game, and had never connected that its developers went on to make the modern MechWarriors. Rick Lane tells the story for PC Gamer, which includes plenty of twists and turns.

Holtslander, however, says that he called Fox Interactive, and that the plan was not to persuade them to let the modders make a Die Hard game, but simply to allow them to use the assets they'd created to make something else. "I got connected to somebody there and I started my