What We're Playing

Pour one out for Brendy who, if you were paying attention, you know has now entered the hinterland of fatherhood. He is already filling Jank's team and subscriber-only Discord servers with tales of projectile pooping and photos of gamer onesies. It will be some weeks before he's able to resume his regularly scheduled videogaming, and so lets do it in his honour.

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

Alabaster Dawn

CrossCode was a masterclass in gamefeel and its developers have just released their new game in Early Access. Alabaster Dawn is another action-RPG with a heavy emphasis on exploration, and an art style that uses 3D to deliver the smoothest SNES graphics you've ever seen.

Huntdown: Overtime

A 2D roguelite blaster in a grim cyberpunk world and a prequel to the original Huntdown, Overtime also launched in Early Access this week. This is the cyberpunk of 2000AD and Verhoeven rather than of Gibson, marked more by back alley brickwork and blood spray than gleaming chrome, so take a look if you want to gib a pixel art man.

Mixtape

I am sick to death of coming-of-age videogames set in

It's another long weekend here in the UK, which means more time than ever for either playing videogames or thinking about how you could have been playing videogames if only you'd made significantly different life choices.

In either case, there remains time for talking about what you're playing this weekend with your fellow commenters, on Jank, the only website that permits such things.

Bus Bound

I have a real soft spot for driving simulators - as distinct from racing sims - that let you pootle around a city while obeying traffic laws and exploring side streets. Bus Bound offers that alongside another weakness of mine: a management layer in which you're setting down the bus routes yourself to efficiently meet the needs of the population. It doesn't look to have the atmosphere of OMSI's 1980s East Berlin (what does), but I'm tempted to board.

Forbidden Solitaire

A "card-slashing horror game about unearthing the contents of a cryptic 1995 CD-ROM that should have never existed." I have no particular nostalgia for '90s CD-based horror games, but I did play a lot of Windows 95 Solitaire, and this is from Grey Alien Games, the makers of Regency Solitaire and Ancient Enemy, so

What a pushy, presumptive title this post has. Who are we to tell you what you should play? We are but mere servants, providing a bucket for you to fill with your own independent selections.

Shovel the chum, friends. Fill our bucket for it is empty without you.

Titanium Court

"A surreal strategy game for clowns and criminals." The IGF Grand Prize winner, 2026. This year's Blue Prince or Animal Well. The game your smartest and smuggest game-playing friend will be raving about all year. A game that's brave enough to make jokes out of its Steam screenshots. Doomed to be critically beloved and commercially underperforming. Art.

Kiln

Double Fine in their silly, frivolous mode, producing a team-based multiplayer brawler in which you sculpt pottery and then, optionally, steer those pots into battle against others. The abilities of your character are determined by how you've crafted your beautiful porcelain bodies - and in the game. I love the art style that fits the pottery with doodled appendages and expressive faces.

I've got family visiting, which means I likely won't spend much or any time gaming this weekend. You might be lonesome, however, and what better salve for familial loneliness than a Dad game, of which we've got three flavours this week: a '90s throwback management sim; a blockbuster about showing a surrogate daughter the wonders of the world; and a game about golf.

Tell us what you are playing in the comments, Dad game or otherwise.

Sintopia

This looks to be inspired by the Bullfrog greats of old, in that it places you in charge of Hell Incorporated. You construct the underworld to turn a profit by punishing souls, while simultaneously using God game-style powers in a pastoral overworld to keep your machinery fed with new sinful denizens. This also means its cheeky sense of humour might cause me to groan myself into the afterlife, but I appreciate that it's not just another 1:1 Dungeon Keeper successor.

Pragmata

Capcom's latest third-person action thingy, and therefore the kind of game I might normally consider

Maybe you shouldn't play anything this weekend. Maybe you should step away from your computer, stretch your body, and grab some vitamin D before the sun disappears. Maybe your aches and pains would diminish and your spirits would rise.

Not me, though. I'll be hunched over my computer like a goblin as always. If you're similarly cursed, read on - and let us know what you're playing in the comments below.

KuloNiku: Bowl Up!

My kid used to play the Toca Boca games on iPad - which means, of course, that I'd play them, too. The best of the bunch was Toca Sushi Kitchen, which had you chopping items in a seaside restaurant to produce California rolls, et al. KuloNiku seems to be in the same vein: soothing, simple, tactile actions to prepare food for cartoon customers, with perhaps a bit more story owing to its presumably older target audience.

All Will Fall

What if Frostpunk but also Jenga? All Will Fall is about constructing a city at sea and making the kinds of political decisions that will lead

This isn't just a weekend, it's a Mega Weekend. That means many of us around the world have both today and Monday off work, and need games worthy of filling such a bountiful gift of free time.

I've got three suggestions for what you could play, but share your own intentions in the comments below.

Fishbowl

"Fishbowl is a narrative game about dreams, grief, and hope," reads its Steam description, but you can probably tell that much from the screenshot above. This sits somewhere on the spectrum between To The Moon, Undertale, Yumi Nikki and Omori, with cheerful pixel art paired with inky dark voids. I feel like real life as enough inky dark voids as it is, but I know many who eat these games up.

Temtem: Swarm

For about three weeks in 2022, creature collecting and battling in Temtem was the hottest game in town, as finally the PC had something to offer those with a Pokémon itch. The excitement didn't last, but its developers continued to update the

The half-term holidays have arrived, which in my neck of the woods means all the kids are off school for the next two weeks. This is going to do wonders for my progress in Pokémon Pokopia, and serious damage to my progress in manshooter Marathon. I'm OK with this.

Here's three games you could be playing this weekend, although tell us what is providing you with sweet relief in the comments below.

Nova Roma

Last week, both Going Medieval and Timberborn left Early Access, but here's another citybuilder entering it - and another which offers new ways to drown your population. Nova Roma is about constructing, well, Rome, and doing so in a manner that please the Gods as well as your citizens. Expect aqueducts and lots of games journalists using "wasn't built in a day" straplines.

Nutmeg!

I collected football stickers in the '90s, spent pocket money on issues of Match and Shoot, read sports scores on Ceefax and played Subutteo in my mate's loft. Nutmeg! might be a game for me, specifically. It's a football management game based around deckbuilding

The sun is shining in Brighton, which means my appetite for going outside has returned and my appetite for playing games has greatly dimmed. Luckily I have no available friends nearby this weekend, and so I shall be inside playing videogames anyway.

What of you, our attractive and popular readers? Tell us if and what you're playing in the comments below.

Timberborn

Initially launched in Early Access in 2021, this colony sim features sandbox building and water physics, allowing you to construct vast, hydroelectrically-powered cities of lumber with your populace of beavers. This week brought a 1.0 update, which changes the art and tutorial, adds tools to automate the operation of your city, and smooths the creation of mods. Top stuff.

Going Medieval

Initially launched in Early Access in 2021, this colony sim features sandbox building and deep citizenry management, allowing you to construct vast cities of stone with your populace of needy settlers. This week brought a 1.0 update, which changes the tutorial, adds new endgame objectives among other content, and smooths the management of your many workers. Top stuff.

Out