Reviews - Jank

20 Jul 2026 By Nic Reuben Reviews

Sol Cesto review

I hope the sun is dead forever

It's the second heatwave of the year in the UK right now. My PC quivers like angry blancmanche at the suggestion it perform even the laziest task, and Snickers ice creams melt down my palm and form crunchy bangles around my wrist before I can ferry them home to my face. Sol Cesto, you say? The sun has ceased? Sign me up!

But seriously, folks: the sun dying will actually wreak a terrible toll on the once-verdant earth and force you to eke out a dangerous living in monster-infested catacombs far beneath the soil. I love the concept of a dungeon that's marginally better lit than the surface, but it sucks down here. I keep being forced to shove gargoyle teeth into my gums, and there are massive magic bees everywhere.

An intricately hand-drawn 4x4 grid showing colourful blob-like characters of red, blue and green. — The red and blue monsters switch affinity each time you move. I call them 'butt imps'.

Each screen of the dungeon consists of four rows of four squares each, and each turn you choose one row to move to, landing on a random square. Some contain traps or monsters, others treasure or healing strawberries. You always kill monsters, eat fruit, or collect treasure you land on, but traps stay. Monsters are aligned to either strength or magic, and your chosen hero has a numeric score in each. Land on a two strength monster with a one strength hero, lose one HP. Land on a three strengther, and lose two HP, and so on.

"That's so much HP!", you wail, cravenly, producing a non-zero amount of spittle. "Why would I ever click on a row with a monster I can't handle on it? Am I stupid?!". It's fine. All adventurers are stupid, it's part of the job description. The reason you'd do that is because it might be the only sensible choice. Click the all-monster top row, and you're guaranteed to take damage. Go for the bottom, and you've got a 75% chance of getting some treasure, but you might land on your third toxic mushroom and die instantly. The very basic idea is to make the least worst choice each turn until you've knocked out enough squares to move on.

Except you might not actually want to play it safe - you might want to snaffle up treasure so you can buy handy, single use items from the merchant to counter the spiraling difficulty: healing potions, monster-killing arrows, a die that rolls a new room. Or, you might want to save your coins to pop in the bucket that takes them to the surface. Surface gold is safe gold, spendable between runs to diversify the dungeon's offerings, and also on a few new characters and upgrades. So: village coffers, or personal glory?

It's a much zestier approach to roguelike upgrades than plain buffs, since you're often just buying the chance to benefit - expanding a pool of possibilities with few guarantees that, say, the merchant will have the toothpaste you just spent a fortune to unlock. And I love how bloody dungeony this all is. Everything is either elusive, expensive, a bit shit in ways you can imagine a fickle god getting a mild chuckle out of, or is some variety of monkey's paw, bottle imp, or that time Beat Saber added 3D stages but only for Imagine Dragons.

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15 Jul 2026 By Alice Bell Reviews

You deserve better literature than Dungeon Crawler Carl

Demand more from books inspired by videogames

With the benefit of hindsight, I should have read the dedication in Dungeon Crawler Carl as 'HERE THERE BE MONSTERS'. What it actually says is the following:

This version of Dungeon Crawler Carl is dedicated to the star of one of the greatest, most inspiring, most amazing survival stories of our time.

Fiona.

Fiona the hippo.

Yes, I am dedicating this book to a goddamned hippopotamus.

Sorry, Mom.

It really has everything. A zaniness hovering between being insecure and smug. Graceless repetition because the prose wasn't structured properly in the first instance. A self-conscious swearword to indicate that what's happening is funny. A gesture toward emotion as an afterthought. My god, if it isn't a perfect distillation of the whole book.

I picked up Dungeon Crawler Carl on a recommendation from multiple people I trust, and now will never trust again. It's the first entry in a LitRPG series that is both self-published online (visionary auteur Matt Dinniman has kept the digital rights, an incredibly baller move) and now trad-published in book stores.

Dungeon Crawler Carl has an air of originality because, while LitRPGs have been popular in countries like Japan, Korea and Russia for a while, this time it's about a cool white American dude. Our titular Carl is 6'3", jacked, and weirdly defensive about having been a member of the Coast Guard. Without warning every building on Earth and anyone inside them is destroyed - "splattered into dust" at "approximately 2.23 am", as we are told on literally page one, and if you think that's another sign of bad things to come, you're correct.

"The times when Dinniman writes something dense with subtext, it's because he's done so accidentally"

Objectively incorrect use of words and their meanings aside, the set up is fine, I guess. The middle of the planet is transformed into a multi-layered videogame-esque dungeon by the genocidal aliens now in charge. Carl, along with a prize showcat called Princess Donut belonging to Carl's ex-girlfriend, and several million other members of humanity, take their chances in the dungeon. Their exploits as Crawlers are televised across the galaxy in a daily reality TV show.

The LitRPG genre leaves in the tedious grinding and stat fiddling that you do in a videogame, but sort of excise from your memories of playing it. In Dungeon Crawler Carl, your brain has to suffer through multiple paragraphs like:

"She also received a dozen Heal scrolls from a Silver Survivor's Box. That one was rewarded to her because she'd ended a boss battle with less than 5% of her health. The scrolls were good to have because there was no countdown between reading each one, and even better yet, we could use the scrolls on each other."

I didn't have a specific quote in mind then, I just opened the book at random. There's even a supporting character who's the head of the Tutorial Guild and may as well be called Basil Exposition. Info dumps like this happen once a page or so, sometimes in the middle of the universally boring fights, and are all delivered in this repetitive, basic style with very few sentences of varying length. It's leaden.

More than that, it's dead. Nothing comes alive, adjectives are rare and a vanishing few of them are sensory. The dungeon is "dark" and "big". Goblins turn up a lot in this book, and the first Carl meets look "much like they did in movies and video games." Masterful stuff. I will give Dinniman an amount of credit for coming up with a reason why the dungeon is full of references to Earth pop-culture. And at least he shows more restraint than Ernest Cline.

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14 Jul 2026 By Jay Castello Reviews

The Incident At Galley House review

A rebuilt machine

To investigate the deaths at the Galley house, you'll first have to familiarise yourself with the machine. By inputting a time code, location, and the reference numbers for the people present, you'll be able to view that moment. Or, more accurately, hear it. Although you can occasionally pick out clues from the background art, and assign avatars to the hazy shadows once you've figured out which of the photographs in your inventory they correspond to, it's most important to pay attention to what they're saying.

The whole mystery unspools in these aural moments: people arguing and suddenly discovering dead bodies, the thunderstorm a constant accompaniment. It's a game that is predominantly a listening experience. Which is why it's surprising that The Incident at Galley House began life as Type Help, a text-based browser game.

Although the puzzling itself has been expanded, this transformation is predominantly a case study in the power of UI. I found Galley House's story to be solidly "pretty good," but combined with this upgraded presentation - the clunk of the strange machine, the generator flickering out every so often, the voice acting and audio design - I spent plenty of time genuinely creeped out. This isn't something I've experienced while simply reading, but it's also not something I've experienced in any of the other games that Galley House is inspired by, like Return of the Obra Dinn or The Roottrees are Dead.

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08 Jul 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Wall Week

Wall-e review

There's a reason for this but it's not a good one

The world of Wall-e (2008) is covered in half-pipes and quarter pipes, as if designed by a committee of Thrasher magazine photographers. It is a wasteland of human detritus and dead buildings, many of which have helpfully collapsed into useful ramps and handy pathways lined by traffic cones. The afterearth of Wall-e is functionally indistinguishable from the post-apocalypse of The Last Of Us, insofar as it is a landscape of signposting and affordances. Finding an old children's toy in the dust of a failed civilisation offers a poignant moment. Good thing they sparkle to make sure you spot them.

Why am I reviewing Wall-e, a licensed Disney tie-in from the year of our dirt 2008? Well, I've been informed we're doing Wall-e week at Jank and I thought: "Weird, but okay".

To quickly enlighten you. This is a gentle children's platformer full of set pieces loosely adopted from the film. It has racing levels, gentle box-slinging puzzles, and bright diode collectioneering. There is an insufferable looping calypso track that will make you want to perforate your own eardrums. In one level you may spend a grand total of 120 seconds guiding the floating iPod called Eva away from a sandstorm while blasting incoming obstacles with lasers. In another you will be hoovering up a hundred gizmos to unlock a door. Honey, we're videogamesing. Its best levels showcase the sediment layers of game design practices over the preceding decades that have compacted to produce, finally, a semi-competent movie tie-in for nine year olds. Its worst levels are a kind of shitty Sonic.

You recharge your health in sunbeams and throw cubes a lot.

I did not play Wall-e when it first graced the most bargainous of buckets at your local Gamestop in 2008, which has since transformed into a pawn shop that BUYS YOUR GOLD TODAY. I cannot meaningfully review it in the context of its own time - a year in which I concede Left 4 Dead, BioShock, Portal, Burnout Paradise and Mass Effect may have overshadowed it. All the flesh components of my cerebellum have long since become infected with a kind of psychic mold from the intervening history of pandemics, financial collapses, and news stories about gorillas from Cincinnati being shot in the head.

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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

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,

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

23 Apr 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Reviews

If you want to explore a strange city, go play Moves Of The Diamond Hand

Cosmo D, as I live and breathe

I am $999 in debt and I may be going insane, but at least my pockets are full of sandwiches. You too may attain bread-based nirvana if you play Moves Of The Diamond Hand, a new dice-rolling RPG from Cosmo D, although you don't need to follow me into the deathspiral of bankruptcy. I just enjoy becoming insolvent in any game that gives me the chance. My granny used to say: "They can't put you in jail for debt". She had roughly nine billion children to feed and I do not, but part of me carries her philosophy to the grave. And indeed past the grave! Into videogames.

But before I explain debt to you, I should explain this entire game. This is impossible, because it is a Cosmo D game. I'll settle for the basics.

You arrive first-personally via subway train to Off-Peak City. It is the middle of an intense mayoral race, with everyone in town talking about three candidates. One is a clone who will fall to pieces if he doesn't have his companion fish robot with him at all times. Another is a former boy band member