What We're Playing

After a week of respite, the machinegun of videogame releases has begun firing once more. In fact, it's been joined now by the handgun of demo releases, as June's Steam Next Fest grows nearer. You can expect some writing about our favourites in the days and weeks to come, but for now, here's a handful of full and finished games you could play this weekend.

Tell us what you coulda woulda shoulda been playing in the comments.

33 Immortals

A co-op hack-and-slasher for 33 players - sort of. In reality, you can play solo or party up with four friends, and then you'll be matchmade with other people in their own parties for large-scale, MMO-style raids, in which you need to coordinate to take down God. Hades seems like an obvious point of comparison to the combat and loop here, but it's also from Thunder Lotus, the makers of Spiritfarer and Jotun.

Tales Of Seikyu

Not a part of the Tales Of series of JRPGs, but a

We have once again dragged our nets along the sea floor of videogames to trawl for new releases worth bringing back to port, but for once our catch is bordering on paltry. Perhaps the videogames were simply too small to be caught in our nets, or perhaps the industry's videogame farmers thought it unwise to release alongside the marketing bonanza of Summer Game Fest, which continues over the weekend.

In any case, there are still some interesting new games you could play. Tell us what you are playing in the comments.

Crashout Crew

The latest game from Aggro Crab, fresh from their success as the co-developers of Peak. Crashout Crew has a similar art style and focus on co-op slapstick, but here your and your buddies are fulfilling orders in a warehouse that's really just an escalating series of physics arenas. A little bit Peak, a little bit Overcooked.

The 7th Guest Remake

I never played The 7th Guest, but it was practically a permanent fixture for about a decade of PC gaming magazines. This remake uses volumetric filming techniques to produce

It's one of those weeks where several long-anticipated videogames all release at the same time, and yet still that's just the tip of the iceberg of the interesting games that released this week. Me? I'll probably just be playing that great game that's about to be removed from sale.

You? Tell us what you are playing in the comments.

Map Map: A Game About Maps

I love maps, and videogame maps, and I have a lot of fondness for the stripped-back sexy-as-it-sounds orienteering sim Virtual-O. Map Map is similarly about orienting yourself in a world using landmaps, but here you do so to make the map itself, with a much more playful presentation.

Paralives

I confess, when Paralives was first shown over five years ago, I figured it was a game that would either never come out or would be bad when it did. A wildly ambitious indie Sims? Sure, it already had a cool character creator, but the rest of the game would surely fall down just as every

The great secret of 'what we're playing [in the coming days]' articles is that they're full of lies. No one, certainly no games journalist, knows on a Friday what they're going to feel like playing on a Saturday or Sunday - if they're even going to play anything at all after a long week's graft. That's why Jank delivers you not what we are playing, only what we could or should. These are articles of pure potentiality.

You, though, can be trusted to tell us what you are playing in the comments below.

Phonopolis

Is any independent game developer as quietly and consistently excellent as Amanita Design? I remember first writing about them when Samorost was but a twinkle in your browser window, and since then they've been stylish, inventive and unmistakably themselves across Machinarium, Botanicula, Chuchel, Happy Game, Creaks, Pilgrims and more. Phonopolis is their latest. What more would you need to know?

The Adventures Of Elliot: The Millennium

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

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

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

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.