What We're Playing

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.

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

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