What We're Playing

What you should play this weekend

Tell us what you are playing in the comments
By Graham Smith
A VTOL lands in a small garden next to a street in Xenonauts 2.
I've picked the only two screenshots of Xenonauts 2 with a colour in them.

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.

Some ramen soup is ladeled into a bowl of noodles on a food prep surface next to other food items.
This is basically identical to Jonty's mechanic sims but with soup instead of bolts.

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.

A tower of girders and makeshift platforms collapses into the ocean against blue skies.
This seems like the most fun part.

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 your society to survive post-climate collapse. It's also about constructing that city in such a way that it doesn't fall over in a strong gale, towers colliding in a shower of falling girders. I ask you, though: what if I want to see those towers fall? Society is doomed.

A suburban street with a yellow car and blue bus next to some soldiers. Green grass is visible, some of which is on fire.
That's it, that's all the colour you're getting. Realism is grey.

Xenonauts 2

I have no particular appetite to return to the hard work of UFO: Enemy Unknown, and even XCOM 2 was too overwhelming for me. I'm told several people are not me, however, so here's Xenonauts 2, the sequel to UFO/X-COM spiritual successor that hews much closer to the original in systems and style than the Firaxis revival. It's not slavishly beholden to the original games, in fairness, but if you want a tougher experience, and macro-layer strategy that works better than it ever did in the original games, here you go.

Alright, that's enough videogames now, thank you.

I didn't play anything at all this past week, so I will once again spend this weekend dipping into Abiotic Factor and starting something new, I hope. How about you? Tell us what you're playing in the comments below.

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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.