Reviews - Jank

18 Apr 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Reviews

Review: Anthology of the Killer

I don't need an excuse to do this but I've got one anyway

How late can one review a game? Pointless question, I don't care to hear your answer. Anthology Of The Killer has been out on PC for a while, but it was released on the Nintendthing and Player's Station V this week, bringing the comedy crime caper to the respective audiences of baffled children and tired parents who've forgotten they even have a subscription to PS Plus. This act launches the game back into what we may generously call the Public Eye. Ow! Poor eye.

This gives me the perfect opportunity to finally do what I neglected to do when the game came out two entire years ago (oh no time's inexorable stomp etc etc). That is to say: here follows a non-thorough yet official evaluation of thecatamites' comedy slasher. The video game review continues to be a relevant form.

BB converses with a voice from the audience as she moves through corridors made of curtain.

If you are new to this developer's homebrew bafflements, fear not. Anthology is as good a jumping in point as any. This is a mechanistically simple game of walking about and looking at things until you feel one emotion or another, I won't dictate to you which. BB is a zine maker in a city of terrible murders. Every episode sees

30 Mar 2026 By Graham Smith Reviews

Screamer review: we don't give scores but this is one of those sevens

The original Screamer was the first racing game I ever played on PC. It was heavily inspired by Ridge Racer, but I didn't know that at the time. I just knew that me and my two older brothers were all competing in the same game, a rare occurrence given the age gap between us. Even in permanent third place on the time trial leaderboards, I was thrilled.

It didn't last. By the time Screamer 2 and Screamer Rally released in '96 and '97, my brothers had mostly moved on, and I played them alone. I remember being disappointed, unable to recapture the spark of excitement that I'd felt competing in the original. It would be foolish to blame the games for this, although maybe it did make a difference that I'd played actual Ridge Racer by that point. I think I'd instead be wiser to accept that the original Screamer wasn't a great game either, but that sometimes, games don't need to be great; they just need to arrive at the right time, for the right person. Enter Screamer (2026).

A raised highway racetrack through a city of tall buildings under blue skies. Three cars are visible on the track. — It's really difficult to operate four triggers and two analogue sticks and press the 'take screenshot' button at the same

18 Mar 2026 By Graham Smith Reviews

Lost And Found Co. review (of the YouTube videos I watched alongside it)

It could have lost the plot, and maybe I have

Lost And Found Co. is Where's Wally with a mouse pointer. You peer into orthographic worlds and you long to live within them: bustling city streets filled with colourful stores, buskers, and cute cats; a cluttered house that looks like it's fallen out of the pages of Kyoichi Tsuzuki's Tokyo Style; a park, a jungle, a swamp, a convenience store, an island bar, a cat cafe.

The game's objective is that you find a given list of items in each location to bring notoriety back to a shrine goddess and win a popularity contest against an evil corporate president. My objective, however, is to dissociate of an evening while watching YouTube videos on a second screen. So let's appraise Lost And Found Co. in how it enables my goals.

Video 1: Episode 43 by Quest For The Best

I haven't watched this anime and never will.

Second screens have been a commonplace part of PC gaming for decades, and today people refer to certain releases as "podcast games". It's certainly always been a regular part of how I play games. I used to watch Buffy The Vampire Slayer on an adjacent television while playing Counter-Strike betas; now I watch video

16 Mar 2026 By Alice Bell Reviews

Esoteric Ebb review

A smart, funny puzzle game in RPG clothing

I have heard Esoteric Ebb described as Discworld Elysium, which is useful to give you an initial sketch. It's a tale of political intrigue amongst rival factions in a city about to boil over, as you, a hapless detective, find yourself in the middle of an investigation that could change everything. But, crucially, it's all fantasy themed and it's really funny. It's not as funny as Pratchett, mind you. But I'm monstrously protective of the man and his work, and am tempted to dock points from anything where people draw a comparison, out of spite. So maybe it is as funny as him; it's certainly much funnier than most games that try to be funny at all.

You're gallivanting around Norvik, a place with a map larger than you'd think, art more beautiful than you asked for, and a soundtrack better than you, you lowly sinner, deserve. Norvik is a human city days away from its first ever election. An already fraught situation was enfraughtened further when a local tea shop exploded. It was a) the meeting point for local radicals and b) on land that belongs to the city's goblins. Because, oh yes, Norvik was founded on goblin land,

12 Mar 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Reviews

Resident Evil Requiem review

Meets the minimum requiements

Requiem wants to be all things to all Resident Evildoers. It is one half Victorian freak show and one half shotgun-toting facekicker. It wants to scare you and to psych you up, empower and disempower you with alternating waves of scares and action. It is both third-person Leon sim and first-person Grace 'em up. Yes, you can change the view of either character in the settings but I kept things default, if only to test the game's thesis - that being stuck in a girl's head is scary whereas watching a big man's muscles move is powerful.

Like many a rotting zombie, it starts to fall apart in the bottom half. I had a good time, even if it sometimes felt like playing a videogame through glasses rose-tinted with indecision. This is a Resident Evil that seeks to please everybody, and you could argue it has done so. But there is a feeling like it has achieved this by hiding in the safe room of nostalgia and bursting out every few minutes with the biggest gun in its inventory - a dude who everyone already loves.

A zombie policeman smiles as he is pierced through the eye socket with a poker. — Eye don't want to use the obvious pun but eye can't help it

18 Feb 2026 By Graham Smith Reviews

Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Stole Time review

Oh no! My time!

Early in Fantasy Life i, a character tells me that I stink. It's the stench of idleness, he says, and the only solution is to get a job. This happens after I've washed ashore on a beautiful tropical island where my first instinct is to enjoy the sunshine or, more prudently, find the means to urgently save the friends I last saw stranded at sea upon a sinking ship. Rescue can wait, apparently, because first I need to prove my worth by seeking out a career. "How are you going to help people without a job?" I am asked.

I started playing Fantasy Life i last year almost immediately after giving notice at my job of twelve years. "Friend," I wanted to say, "simply having a job doesn't keep the stink off."

Fantasy Life calls its 14 different careers "Lives" - no I will not write an entire essay about this - and the unifying fantasy offered by each one is that your work is a mutually beneficial transaction that helps everybody, makes the world a better place, and rewards you with both personal satisfaction and upward mobility. You perform this work for always-grateful townspeople around a colourful and familiar

03 Feb 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Reviews

TR-49 review: sorry, I'm not up to code

An enigma wrapped in a riddle wrapped in a primary school maths question

I feel like my brain is broken. Sci-fi mystery puzzler TR-49 is the exact sort of clue-hunting solve 'em up I normally love. But somewhere in its thorny forest of fictional author names and twentieth century dates I got lost, hacking my way through more with frustration than curiosity.

It's packaged as a codebreaking game, but really it's a "database game". Imagine Her Story in an alternate history. You type codes into an odd machine to reveal snippets from books or journals. You're here to find a particular book. But the texts you discover are mostly the jumbled notes from previous users of the machine. Sounds intriguing, and many scribbles display a great range of writing styles. But I found slowly constructing my understanding of the plot and its many characters more cumbersome than rewarding. Putting its cryptic story together felt like building a cathedral out of SQL.

Some basics. You're Abbi, and you're stuck in a dank cellar with the strange machine. A voice comes over the radio, a bloke called Liam, who asks you to start toying with the levers and dials on this weird old codebreaker.

A machine with a large circular screen sits in a cellar, as a voice over the radio says "Tell me what you can see." — I don't know why I'm here either, don't

31 Jan 2026 By Brendan Caldwell Reviews

Sword Of The Sea's watery allegory is no great Journey

You can't rewild the desert when you're busy wiping out

A popular stereotype of surfers is that they're attractive airheads. A fit waverider doesn't have time for big thoughts, beyond explaining that the moon is, like, totally in league with the whales, man. This is a lame stereotype, and yet a helpful image when it comes to explaining how I feel about dashing surf 'em up Sword Of The Sea. (We don't mind reviewing 5-month old games here at Jank). This game is beautiful, toned, ripped, fashionable, athletic, and it has a great ear for music. It also has the conversational skills of a post-huff stoner, and its visual similarity to Journey only invites an unflattering comparison.

The game itself is an approachable ride. You swoop along in smooth arcs and can leap into the air, double-jumping for extra trick time, cruising through ultimately linear sandy levels that coax you toward lanterns and bells that turn sand into seawater and unlock the way to the next area. It only lasts about 3 hours too, meaning it can glide in and out of your life with unobnoxious merit. If you've got a subscription service that includes the game, there are worse ways to spend an evening.