What We're Playing

What you could play this weekend

Three games, including one demo, for this long British weekend
By Graham Smith
A busy city street, viewed from above, as a character tightropes across some wires holding up a sign. The world is drawn but looks as if it's constructed out of boxy cardboard.
I don't know what you do in this game but it sure looks stylish.

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.

A tinkertoy-style four-storey building, in primary colours, some rooms visible inside.
Every Amanita Design game is different in genre but not in values.

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?

Some sort of spiked, flame-turtle is struck by Elliot in a lava arena.
I don't care if he's made out of lava, I don't want to kill something that looks this happy.

The Adventures Of Elliot: The Millennium Tales demo

You might think Elliot is a weak name for a fantasy protagonist, but don't worry, he's also wearing a wide-brimmed red fedora with a feather in it. This is the next game in Square Enix's HD-2D style, but it's an action-RPG with real-time combat rather than turn-based. It's very easy to make fun of - achingly earnest anime voices and fairy sidekick included - but I remain desperate for some wholesome RPG vibes, and this might deliver. The full game launches next month, but the prologue demo released this week and your progress will carry over.

A mask, held in the player's hand, saps purple energy from a guard with his back turned.
No one else is making Thief in 2026, so more power to them.

Thick As Thieves

Warren Spector's latest attempt to spiritually succeed his older work, this is a Thief-like stealth 'em up with the twist that you can play it either in singleplayer or in co-op. (Earlier plans for PvPvE were scrapped.) It's also releasing as a thin package, with two ("replayable") maps, a four-hour campaign, and an appropriate price of £5. People seem to like it so far, with some caveats, which hopefully bodes well for further expansion in the future.

Will I play any of these games, or will I spend the weekend experimentally swallowing different kinds of plant just to witness their effects? I'm talking, of course, about Yoshi And The Mysterious Book on Switch 2, which released yesterday.

Tell us what plants you're eating, and what you're playing, in the internet's best and only comments section.

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What We're Playing
Graham Smith

Graham Smith

Graham is a former editorial director of Rock Paper Shotgun and editor-in-chief of PC Gamer. He has now been a games journalist for over twenty years, and retains a bottomless appetite for playing new games and tinkering with old ones.