Bits - Jank

02 Jun 2026 By Graham Smith Bits

The adventures of hat guy and tutorial gal

The Adventures Of Elliot: The Millennium Tales seems initially bland, but its demo won me over

Some people's names can hold up to being put in the title of a videogame or movie, but I'm not sure "Elliot" is one of them. The protagonist of Square Enix's next HD-2D game is introduced by one NPC as a man of good character, although they "will admit he has his quirks." I assume that's a reference to Elliot's red hat, which seems to be the the only notable part of his personality.

The Adventures Of Elliot: The Millennium Tales might be as bland as its main character, but I think I'm fully onboard anyway after playing its demo.

Elliot is an adventurer in a fantasy world overrun by beastmen. The remaining human population are safe inside a medieval city's walls thanks to a magical shield maintained by the princess. Adventurers are those few who travel beyond the walls to explore and find supplies, and in Elliot's case to earn money he can use to care for the children in the orphanage in which he was raised. His name could have been called Hero McDogooder and the game name would have been better.

This has the same art style as Octopath Traveller, Bravely Default and some of the

01 Jun 2026 By Jon Hicks Bits

Gabe Newell’s new yacht enables him to host LAN parties on the set of an immersive sim

A troubling look into a different world

In my life I have attended perhaps five LAN parties in total, and one of those doesn’t really count because it was just lugging my 486 over to a friend’s house so we could play Quake deathmatch. Two people is not enough for a LAN party, in the same way that it’s not enough for an orgy: you need enough people for it to feel like a crowd, and coincidentally they also have to be OK with being sweaty and very close to people in a domestic setting that wasn’t really designed for it. (Also, everybody brought something alarmingly large and brightly coloured from home.)

Nowadays LAN parties feel somewhat anachronistic, replaced by the internet: there are still larger-scale events like Epic.Lan or bring-your-own corners of PAX, but bringing PCs together in one place feels like a dated relic of a former age. I was delighted, therefore, to belatedly discover that Gabe Newell has included LAN parties in the spec for his latest $500m megayacht, built by the firm he recently purchased and kitted out to serve his marine research enterprise.

People playing Counter-Strike in a large conference room in a luxury yacht with full-length windows on either side. — A LAN party, at sea. (Image credit: Oceanco/Guillaume Plisson)

The facilities of

26 May 2026 By Jon Hicks Bits

Mon Bazou is sort of about cars but mostly about being Canadian

Poutine in the hours in the garage

Car fandom has existed for as long as cars have, but mine is a specific affliction that I feel has only recently collectively transitioned from “secret shame” to “fandom” thanks to, of course, the internet. Not for me the impossible expense of classic Ferraris or modern F1 cars; my people flock to OG Ford Capris and idiosyncratic Citroens that were either never sold in the UK or rusted away to nothing within ten years of purchase. There are, I must regretfully tell you, more than dozens of us.

A key symptom of this disease is the ambition, rarely paired with the requisite skill, to fish some dust-covered ruin out of a shed and restore it to running order, something I’ve seen games nod to yet never successfully capture. I was thus instantly compelled by the Mon Bazou key art, which shows a 1990s BMW (E36 316 coupe, my car brain says) with a mismatched door and a wheel missing; getting it running and ready for low-stakes street-racing is the headline objective in what turns out to be a crude but easygoing simulation of smalltown Canadian life in 2005.

Screenshot showing the player looking at a Windows XP desktop PC, with on-screen text saying "Come on, ya need to sit down to play video games" and the option to Save. — We did not have standing desks back in the dark

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 small cluster

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, and increase the multiplier

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

05 May 2026 By Jeremy Peel Bits

Marathon’s med drone is for emotional support and, to a lesser extent, healing

A perma-smiling comfort on the cold surface of Tau Ceti IV

Marathon is frightening. Especially in solo mode, where the silence of rival players is so acute you can hear the blood pumping in your ears, Bungie’s extraction shooter slips into a form of unscripted survival horror. One that makes you entirely responsible for your own safety, on a world that would be awful enough without all the murderers. Have you seen the wildlife? The bugs splatter you with ichor and the birds tell on you, giving up your position to any rivals who might listen. "Caw! He’s here, lads! Grease your elbows for a knifing!"

It’s a terror that turns even the sensible visitor superstitious. Leaves you hankering, on some level beneath active thought, for a good-luck charm or totem. That’s what I realised the first time a teammate hurled a med drone in my direction. The little blocky bot made a gleeful parabola across the crags of Perimeter and settled comfortingly over my left shoulder. Some enterprising robotics engineer had tuned its digital display to show a reassuring smile - much like the face of Minecraft’s iconic creeper, but with the frown turned upside down.

The magic of the med drone is that it

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