What We Ve Been Playing

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Saturnalia, PC

Saturnalia, with its ghoulish pursuers, ancient rites and shifting midnight streets, may seem like an odd choice for a game to play over Christmas, but actually it fits perfectly. That’s because there’s always been something spooky about the festive season. You can see it in books like The Box of Delights and The Dark is Rising - and it helps that The Dark is Rising got a lovely audio adaptation at the end of last year, with help from Robert MacFarlane. So actually, Saturnalia’s misty, sketchy environments and air of dread is perfect for the wintry end of a year like 2022. With the presents wrapped and the last work done, a haunted version of Sardinia beckoned - and it was brilliant.

Strange Horticulture, PC

Is this the most intoxicating, transporting game of 2022? It felt like it this Christmas. Strange Horticulture is a puzzle game that is hard to play as a puzzle game. You work in a plant shop and must slowly untangle the true nature of the plants on your shelves, understanding their properties and finding their real names. Meanwhile, you venture out into the world - and people also come to you in your shop - to find new plants and new puzzles. That sounds pretty straightforward, but actually all the roads in Strange Horticulture lead outwards, away from playing the game as a simple Sudoku-ish logic challenge and towards something deeper, more ancient, more wyrd, more literary. To say more would be to spoil one of the most surprise-filled games of the last few years. The cards! The bit with the doodad! The true charms of that wonderful map of the territory beyond your shop! Strange Horticulture is a game, and a series of stories, and also something more. It’s a prompt to speculate, about the natural world and its uses and misuses. Give in. It’s wonderful.

The Traitors

Does this count? It should. The Beeb’s big Christmas winner was a riff on Among Us, amongst other things, but also a surprisingly deep rumination on the nature of games and how they can transform their players. 22 strangers meet in a Scottish castle and must complete a series of tasks to grow the prize pot. But among them are three traitors who whittle down the ranks with a murder every night. Will the faithful find the traitors and remove them? Or will the traitors make off with the money in the final episode? God, this was a good bit of telly. The Traitors benefited from a truly brilliant cast and a pitch-perfect host, but it also surprised in the way it took a simple parlour game and made it as weird as possible, with masked congregations waiting in a local church, hooded villains who met in a turret, and a very weird fish shack in the woods. What elevated it, though, was its deep understanding of the Among Us/Mafia/Werewolf formula and the web of interdependence it creates. Players were transformed by what they were playing even as they struggled to remember that it was actually a game. It was grim viewing at times, but always fascinating. They played a blinder.

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-28” author: “Rose Phillips”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Return to Monkey Island, Switch

If you have read any of my stories over on the news side of Eurogamer recently, you will be aware that I have been incredibly excited about the release of Return to Monkey Island. Well, after what was admittedly not all that long a wait, but one that has felt like an eternity to me, I finally got my hands on it (along with the totally useless horse armour that came with it thanks to my enthusiastic pre-ordering). Why it’s never been done before, I don’t know. It’s a startlingly brilliant idea - one of those ideas that stops you in your tracks. Take one of the most notoriously difficult instruments to play in tune, the trombone - a brass instrument without defined keys but just one long sliding arm you have to learn the position of notes on - and make a Guitar Hero-style game out of it. You control the trombone arm with your mouse, sliding it up and down to move the pitch up and down, and then you press the mouse button, or pretty much any button on the keyboard, to sound the note. You have to keep an eye on your breath - you can’t just hold the ‘play’ button down and honk endlessly because you’ll run out of breath and have to pause to recuperate - but otherwise that’s all there is to controlling it. It’s the nuance of it that makes it fun, though, makes it imprecise - makes landing those notes in the thick of a lively rendition really hard. The mouse-powered arm moves around a bit like it’s sliding on soap, with enough of a delay to build some natural error in, so even though you know instinctively how to move a mouse around, it feels hard to do, particularly when you move at speed. Landing a note spot-on is very hard to do. But it’s all intentional because this is where Trombone Champ has its fun. This is a game built around the mistakes, around laughing at them. That’s why it’s a big fat trombone honk you’re hearing, not some clunky reprimand like in Guitar Hero, which blocks and ruins the music. If anything, the slightly out of tune honk embellishes it, and the closer your attempt is to the actual note, the stronger the comedy - it’s the equivalent of being accidentally funny versus trying to be. Trombone Champ has really perked me up, and that’s a wonderful quality for a game to have. It’s full of energy - I have never heard such a pumped up version of Auld Lang Syne before - and humour (there are some great trombone gags on loading screens). The only drawback being that perhaps it’s too intense to play for long - I suppose it’s a bit like an espresso. It’s a charming package. A game of enthusiasm and, I think, underneath it, real love for the instrument it’s lampooning. It’ll liven up any time you can give it. Honk! Bertie I won’t give any story spoilers away here, but I will say I am delighted that the game has not disappointed. It all evokes such a strong sense of nostalgia, while still offering up something totally new. I really love everything, from the way the game begins with a nod to the finale of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge, to its new characters that fit so seamlessly into the world of Guybrush Threepwood and co. This is not to say it is predictable, however. If I thought I could have guessed where Monkey Island vets Ron Gilbert and Dave Grossman were going with this new beginning, well, I would have been wrong. As with so many of the series’ puzzles along the way, right from the get-go Return totally subverted my expectations. Meanwhile, while there has been some debate over the new art style we see in Return, I personally feel it really suits the overall tone of the game. It is bright and joyous, and has helped make the moments I have spent curled up with my Nintendo Switch a gleeful escape from the bitterly cold and grey weather we are currently having up here in Scotland. Perhaps the biggest cherry on top for me though, is that Return to Monkey Island has also captured the imagination of my nine-year-old son. Without getting too emotional here, I can’t tell you how special it is to be sharing this experience with him. I really hope that when he is in his 30s, he will look back and smile thinking about the time he spent on Monkey Island. Oh, and also, the music is truly brilliant! Victoria Kennedy

Warframe, PC

I am far from being an expert at Warframe, but I do have almost 750 hours of experience, and it will always have space allocated to it on my SSD. Between the times where I play religiously everyday, and sporadically throughout each year since I started, the game for me just keeps getting better. I am heavily invested into the lore of the game, and I advise anyone to try the main story quest line (and even the side quest lines) if you enjoy a single player experience that just keeps giving. That’s not to detract from the multiplayer aspects the game has to offer as well, but I will talk about that in a bit. I do not want to spoil the story for anyone who has not had the chance to experience it yet, but Digital Extremes always seem to one-up themself, every main quest update. The story can be dark, can be lighthearted at times, and can bring an element of sadness, but it does not fail to deliver unique experiences, and twists and turns that you are not expecting at all. Unlike other games Warframe drip-feeds new systems into the game slowly throughout the main story rather than dumping them all on you at once, but once they are unlocked they are relatively evergreen, always as part of your arsenal to use going forward, something other games rarely seem to get right. There are factions of reputation dotted throughout the galaxy that you meet, or do quests/bounties for that unlock further systems, locations, quests or expanded weaponry. That coupled with the diverse selection of warframes and weapons available to the player to suit every play style imaginable, warframe has content for everyone. With hourly/daily/weekly/monthly events and activities, a non premium battle pass, free updates, gifts for players and much more. I sometimes find it hard to believe this game is free (yes you can buy warframes/weapons/cosmetics but I have never found the need to). With the ability to trade and sell parts you get with players for premium currency, you can always grind your way to anything you want. The game can be at times very grindy if you are targeting certain items or warframes, and that’s where the multiplayer aspect for me comes into play. If you have a group of friends to play with on a regular basis, using voice comms and having a generally good time, the grinds do not feel as long as they are, and you are always gaining materials and currencies that you can put towards crafts no matter what activity you are doing. Warframe caters from the hardcore to the casual alike, with so many different things you can do and work towards, it has come so far from its original form to what it is today, with so much customization and new experiences added and refined over the years. Whether you are a new player or someone who has not played for a long time, it is worth downloading and jumping in and seeing what Digital Extremes have created. “See you again, eh, Tenno.” Alix Attenborough

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-04” author: “Kevin Porter”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Arcade Paradise, PS5

Apparently, I’m drawn to doing mundane things. Perhaps I’m inherently boring. I just can’t get enough of tidying up, though, or folding someone’s clothes, or washing them. Or cleaning the toilet, and I never thought I’d write that. And I know that isn’t really the point of Arcade Paradise - the point is growing an arcade out the back - but it’s the mundane half of the game in the laundrette that really balances me, and the game, out. Beautiful monotony - something to gently latch a restless mind onto and occupy my hands with. Plus, the mundane tasks aren’t really mundane, not like they are in real-life. They’re gamified. So when you pick gum, a little power gauge rapidly fills and empties, challenging you to stop it at the optimum moment for the most pulling power. When you take the bins out, something similar happens; when you clean the toilet, something similar. Play permeates everything you do, even washing someone’s underpants. So even though it all looks mundane - and that’s half the charm, I reckon - it’s secretly the same sort of thing as playing the arcade cabinets out the back. Neat! Bertie

Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus, Android

On Wednesday morning this week I booted up Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus as normal and nearly cried. I had been kicked out of my guild. Those aren’t my words, either. The game actually displayed a message that said “you’ve been kicked out of your guild”. I was shocked, at first, then confused. Why had they done this? I hadn’t spoken to anyone in the guild, called Black Legion, since joining a month ago when the game launched (more here, if you’re wondering why I started playing). I had contributed. When other players asked for in-game items, I gifted them. I played every day. I took on each and every boss in the guild raid mode. I even joined the discord server the guild leader had set up. The discord! Surely this was a mistake. Surely someone had accidentally pressed a button somewhere. All I had to do was go on our guild discord and ask what had happened. I had been booted out of the discord, too. My confusion quickly turned to anger. At least tell me I’m getting kicked out before kicking me out. Cowards!
Was it something I said? My only communication in guild chat was to agree that the last PvP event wasn’t great because of a lack of team variety. That doesn’t sound controversial to me. I didn’t speak in the discord - why should I? In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war - not small talk. Were Black Legion carrying me? I suppose. Had they upped the minimum power level? It’s now set at 22 (I had a look at my previous guild in-game to check up on them - maybe they had deleted the guild?). I’m power level 20. Fine. Still, tell me first? I was surprised to find myself feeling sad about all this. At the time I was unceremoniously booted out of Black Legion, we had a guild raid position of 18. There are thousands of guilds on the leaderboard. We were one of the best guilds in the game. It was quite nice being in a top tier video game guild. Members spoke enthusiastically about the Warhammer 40,000 tabletop and shared pictures of their models in our discord. There was the occasional tactics talk - which item is best for this character? How do we defeat this impossibly hard raid boss? That sort of thing. And the rewards were great, because we were powerful enough as a group to defeat high level enemies. Now, it’s all gone. Just like that. Without explanation. As I write this it’s been two days since I was kicked out of Black Legion. I almost quit the game over what happened, but I’ve come to accept it, I think. I’ve joined a new guild called Sons of Sanguinius. Minimum power level one. Perhaps starting afresh as one of the good guys is what I need right now. Hmm. The discord invite link is still on Black Legion’s in-game guild page. Perhaps I’ll pop my head in and see if they’ve said why they kicked me out… Wesley Yin-Poole

Hades, PC

I consider myself a bit like Nintendo. Not because I’m worth billions of dollars (I’m priceless, actually) but because I’m usually slow to hop on whatever’s popular or trending. That’s why I’m playing Hades for the first time, and I’m having a bloody good time. This is an ultimate “just one more run” game for me, and when I check the clock I’ve spent four hours hacking my way through the Underworld and praying I don’t run into Tisiphone. The gameplay loop is addictive and there’s so many different combinations of weapons, trinkets and boons that guarantees experimentation with each run. The art style is wonderful and the music is fantastic too. I’m a sucker for hot Greek gods and I’m not ashamed of that, okay? I’ve still got a long ways to go with Hades - so far I’ve only managed to get out of the Underworld on 3 Heat, but I’m not complaining about having to spend more time with this game. As Zagreus repeats the loop of getting to the surface, I find myself falling more and more in love with Hades. Liv Ngan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-07” author: “Dorothy Bailey”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

The Mortuary Assistant, PC

I had a proper creep-out playing The Mortuary Assistant the other day. All my hair stood on end and I was sweating and my heart was thudding. And it wasn’t the middle of the night or anything - it was late afternoon and RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under was blaring in the background - but it didn’t matter: I shuddered. And OK, I’m an easy target, but there’s something about the way this game handles scares that fascinates me. There’s no combat in the game, you see, so you don’t have to defend yourself when something frightening appears - you’re not under that kind of threat. Really, you’re just there to observe, and it’s a design decision I cling to like a life raft in those moments, believe me. And you might think that really limits what Mortuary Assistant can do, the stress it can put you under, but it doesn’t. This game is a master at making almost imperceptible changes very quickly and then leaving them up to you to discover them. Think of those creepy photographs where you don’t see the face at the window until you look again: it’s like that. And those photos I always find creepier because I don’t see the thing the first time around - it’s something to do with the vulnerability of being in the presence of something but not realising it, I think, and it shakes me up. And I’ve lost count of the times Mortuary Assistant has pulled a similar trick. But it doesn’t feel like a trick. Somehow, it feels classy. There’s rarely any fanfare attached to it for starters - it’s not like you get a whack of orchestral sound just to make sure you jump out of your seat. All of a sudden, something is just there, and just as quickly, it’s gone, scuttling away like a spider back down a hole. Actually, spiders are a really good reference, not because there are spiders in the game but because of how they move, so quickly and silently, so gracefully - there one moment, gone the next. The Mortuary Assistant is so often like that. I realise this has probably put you off completely, but you should play it. Bertie

Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel, PSP

The PSP is perfectly placed to feel like the future and the past. It’s still a lovely machine, with a bright screen and a real sense of luxury to it. But it’s clearly old, too, even if you have a working battery and don’t, like me, need to keep it connected to the mains. I got the old PSP out this week because I was looking in the loft for something else - if anyone knows where the yellow wheely suitcase we bought a few years back is, please tell me - and I came across Metal Gear Acid and Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel. Acid is too good to rush through while loitering near a plug socket, so I’ve got a new battery coming. But the novel? I forgot I had this. It’s wonderful: a digital version of the comic by Ashley Wood, who turns Yoji Shinkawa’s nervy designs into something that sort of reminds me of late period Sienkiewicz. The novel follows the plot of Metal Gear Solid in such evocative style that as I’ve been watching it I’ve been sort of flashbacking to the first time I saw the game running myself, back in my student house over twenty years ago. The digital novel feels like the future and the past too. It’s a lavish bit of fan service that came out, I suspect, to bridge the gap between Acid and Portable Ops. It’s both a cash-in and something that comes from a place of real love, and it has a wonky item-search mini-game thrown in to make it harder to properly describe. Playing this is 2022 on the PSP I feel like one of those soldiers who stayed in the trenches for years, not knowing the war was over. But don’t get me wrong: it’s been brilliant. Chris Donlan

Immortality, PC

If you’re familiar with Sam Barlow’s newest foray into the interactive movie space you’ll know that the first rule of playing Immortality is you do not talk about playing Immortality. To spoil its genuinely surprising twists to any curious new player won’t ruin their experience, but keeping its layered secrets for them to discover all on their lonesome will definitely enhance the creepy, what-the-hell-is-going-on-here atmosphere of that first playthrough. So, without talking about it too much, I can tell you that I half-wish wish I could erase Immortality from my memory and play it for the first time all over again. You never know what you’re going to get each time an image from one scene is clicked and it takes you to another random clip containing that image. This is one of the only mechanics in the game added to help you discover what happened to vanishing actress Marissa Marcel. Click on images, fast-forward, rewind, and favourite key moments from each of her three unreleased movies and you’ll soon be jumping down a twisty rabbit hole containing just as many messed up questions as there are messed up answers. I only half-wish I could experience Immortality for the first time again, because right now - over a week after rolling the credits - I’m still playing it. Still searching for answers, making new discoveries, and reading other players’ wonderful thoughts and theories on the game’s story and its versatile themes. Although I wouldn’t say its plot and themes are unique, the way you discover them are. I’ve never played anything quite like Immortality. Jessica Orr

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-20” author: “Elna Bevins”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Poinpy, smartphones (with a Netflix account)

Poinpy is one of the first Netflix games, a surprisingly great selection of smartphone treats that are worryingly easy to miss or forget about, given the streaming giant’s slightly odd rollout. But Poinpy is also the next game from the creator of Downwell. I’d be tempted to say it’s Downwell in reverse, but that sells both games short. Where Downwell was about going, well, down, Poinpy’s about going up. You jump, double-jump and wall bounce upwards using swipes, and you can hit the ground with precision at any moment by tapping the screen. This is useful because as you hit the ground any fruit you’ve eaten while jumping is instantly converted into juice, to feed the angry monster who is following close behind you. This sounds whimsical, and the simple colours and clean lines and chirpy music certainly aids that reading. But actually Poinpy is wildly stressful. That monster really wants juice! Specific juice made from specific ingredients! And there are timers ticking down as you work! And you have to keep moving! And and and! Poinpy is a blast, then. Just not always a cheerful blast. I love it. Chris Donlan

Tetris, Game Boy

I picked up my Game Boy for a feature we ran a week or so back, but I haven’t really been able to put it down again. I’ve mainly been playing Tetris, and this week I rediscovered a lost - lost to me anyway - classic. Tetris B-Type. Over the years, I’ve mainly played A-Type Tetris, which is the classic marathon game. But B-Type is an absolute stunner in its own right. It’s a 25-line game based around high scores, and it allows you to set not just the speed of the drops but the amount of garbage you have to deal with on-screen. The garbage is where this mode comes alive for me. It’s a puzzle in itself, a siren call to put aside best practice and get yourself in serious trouble. I play it now and I’m always tempted to try and clear up the garbage while I get my 25 lines - so my attention is split and doom comes swiftly. What I really love is the way the garbage looks on the screen, this procedural landscape that brings to mind asteroid fields or the tricky underwater coral ridges a navigator might have to get a boat past. Tetris really is the game that keeps on giving, I think. B-Type has made it feel fresh and new for me. Chris Donlan

Spelunky 2, Switch

I watched the wonderful Italian film Il Buco over the weekend. It made a fantastic double-bill with Nope, and it’s also just a fascinating thing in and of itself: slowly, and nearly wordlessly, it tells the story of a 1960s spelunking expedition into one of the deepest cave networks in the world. There’s a glorious moment in it that It can’t get out of my mind. The cave network itself is accessed through a sort of gash in a field where various animals graze. At one point, people are playing football in the field with an old heavy ball, and the ball goes down the hole. For a while we watch as it rattles around the hole entrance, and then it just drops, drops, drops down into darkness. No neighbour is throwing that ball back. Inevitably, it made me want to play Spelunky. But which one? In the end there was no choice in it. Spelunky 1 might be the more coherent game, but Spelunky 2 makes me feel like I’m deeper underground. And the point that feels the most remote is not actually the most remote at all. Tide Pool! There are many levels below it, but this strange, wet landscape filled with the hopping undead and pieces of coral and chunks of gold speaks to me like no other level. I think I was reading Piranesi when I first played it, the Suzanne Clarke novel about a house with a sea trapped inside it. Even if I’ve jumbled up the memories, the two places are inseparable. Underground seas, with little chance of escape. Piranesi is a great novel, oppressive and rather sickly in the best way. Il Buco is a great movie. And Spelunky 2 is the surprising point at which the venn diagram overlaps. Not bad for a lazy bank holiday weekend. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-12” author: “Laurence Tate”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade, PS5

When people talk about Final Fantasy 7, I go a bit quiet because, between you and me, I never actually played it. And I know, I know, but I didn’t have a PlayStation so how could I? All I could do was go to my friend’s house and watch him play, but there’s a limit to how long you can do that before it gets weird and the parents throw you out. But now, 25 years later, I’m given a chance to experience it again, as if it were a new game, courtesy of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake Intergrade on PS5. And the whole thing fascinates me because I’m getting both a history lesson and a modern game all at once. And it’s beautiful and it runs deliciously: I know technical issues aren’t always the sexiest thing to talk about but FF7 runs like silk on PS5. This, as a project, as a remake, is about as lavish as it will ever get (excluding the upcoming instalments) and only a game as historic as Final Fantasy 7 could ever command something like it. So that’s great. But there’s also this jarring dissonance of old and new. On the one hand you have a dazzling new combat system that’s acrobatic and cinematic, and feels more like an action game than anything Final Fantasy (except maybe 15). But at the same time you have old level design and pacing and mission design from the original game, and they clash. Is it old, is it new? I’m not sure it ever really knows - it sort of wavers back and forth. Not that I’m complaining! I love that a project like this exists. I do wonder, though, what younger audiences detached from the context surrounding the original think, but perhaps such a detachment is impossible. Back to my Cloud I go. Bertie

Final Fantasy 12, PS5

Double speed is a game changer. I never really enjoyed Final Fantasy 12 the first time around on PS2, despite loving the series as a whole: the combat is too hands-off, the labyrinthine dungeons are laborious, and the environments are sandy brown, dirt brown, and rocky brown. But the Zodiac Age version brought a number of changes, best of all double speed that allows you to simply race through all the rubbish bits with a hilarious running animation, Benny Hill theme not included. That might sound like damning praise, but it’s allowed me to see the game with fresh eyes. Final Fantasy 12 has always shone for its grounded political drama and likeable cast of characters (except Vaan, sorry). That’s still the case. But at double speed the dungeons are far less of a roadblock and I’ve arrived at the lush, late-game areas much quicker. Battles, meanwhile, are a breeze. Without getting bogged down by the drudging minutiae of each encounter, emphasis is instead placed on the licence board metagame, tinkering away at the available abilities of my party and deciding what weapons and armours to unlock next before one-handedly grinding for points until becoming so OP that bosses are laughable. Suddenly the long game of party management feels far more manageable at higher speeds. I’m also more inclined to tick off the game’s side quests and hunts. These require a considerable amount of backtracking through each maze-like environment, but in double speed I can focus on the destination and not the journey. And that’s led me to some more challenging and interesting boss fights, as well as extra stories to flesh out the plot. I never bothered with this extraneous stuff before, but double speed has had the completionist in me happily spending an evening ticking off menu items, giving me the space to just relax and enjoy the ride. It’s a weird dichotomy of rushing yet taking my time. I always felt I misunderstood Final Fantasy 12 the first time around and wanted to give it a second chance. Now, despite its length, I’ve been able to sprint through it and re-evaluate its merits. Double speed is an option all JRPGs should have, frankly. Ed Nightingale

Lumines, Switch

There’s probably a book to be written in the ways that Lumines and Tetris are not alike. It’s weird to report, though, that I am now bad at both of them in exactly the same way. It’s greed, really - greed and a desire to showboat. In Tetris this means I wait eternally for the long block and I plan around it, taking stupid risks in the hope that it will drop in and score me four lines at once. In Lumines, the long block is called the fuse block - it’s the block that allows you to clear any blocks of the same colour once it’s connected and the timeline sweeps past. This means that I rig landscapes with a back and forth path of one colour, building perilously high and courting disaster, chasing the perfect pay-off. And it has to be said that the pay-off in Lumines is far more exciting than the pay-off in Tetris. Four lines are fine, but there’s nothing like a chain of orange blocks erupting, and leading to a secondary chain of white blocks erupting on the next timeline pass. When it works, anyway. When it doesn’t work - and all afternoon for me it has not worked - both games are entirely alike in the way they conjure sweet frustration. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-14” author: “Edward Donahue”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. The mechanics are so simple that it’s no surprise plenty variations of this game have popped up on the internet. They may be riding on Wordle’s viral success, but plenty of them are just as enjoyable as Josh Wardle’s game (or should I say New York Times’ game now?) So far, my collection of Wordle dailies consist of 5 other versions: Saltong: a Filipino version of Wordle. Korean Wordle: a way to polish my Korean vocabulary. Nerdle: guess the mathematical equation of the day. Hogwartle: Harry Potter Wordle. Worldle: guess the country based on its silhouette map. The most frustrating one I’ve encountered yet is Letterle, where you guess a single letter. It took me 26 guesses. Never again. Felisha Dela Cruz Another found footage live-action detective game from Her Story developer Sam Barlow, Telling Lies again has you piecing together a mystery based on database codewords. You begin with very little - clips of a man talking to a woman online - and from there begin to unwrap the true story, codeword by codeword, character by character, thread by thread. Framing it all is the fact you are actually playing as someone tapping all of these searches into a database. Their image is always vaguely visible on screen - the ghost of an image, heightening the game’s voyeuristic tone. And Telling Lies is voyeuristic, sometimes uncomfortably so, as its one-sided video conversations play out with often frustrating pauses where you are just left staring at its actors faces for minutes at a time, as they react to words on the other side of a computer screen. In the silence, Telling Lies leaves you to wonder about similar technology being used in the real world. In its jumble of characters and narrative threads are believable people simply working through their personal issues - very much unrelated to the main case at hand. It’s a compelling yet unsettling experience. Tom Philips Still not ready to go on an actual cruise ship, though. Instead, I’ve settled for Overboard!, Inkle’s award-winner about a murderous lady crossing the Atlantic and trying to stay one step ahead of the consequences of her deadly actions. Overboard! is great. Not only does it feature the absolute best performance of the word “Bollocks!” when she’s caught, it’s a neat time loop puzzler, which sees you replaying the same cursed day again and again, knocking about the ship and trying to make a perfect case for your innocence. It’s great to be evil, basically, picking your way through the day, working out when is the perfect time to destroy evidence or plant a suspicious item on a potential victim. Learning the workings of the ship and the schedules of its occupants reminds me a little of the early Dead Rising games, but a lot of Stuart Turton’s brilliant novel, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle. Evelyn would give a good performance of a word like “Bollocks!” And she’d probably quite like cruise ships, I reckon. Chris

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-18” author: “Robert Wooten”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. Where they stumble, though, is in gunplay - not just for that infamous dissonance between hero and gameplay, but in the way it often punctuates the action with frustrating difficulty spikes. The recent Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection on PS5 has provided an opportunity for me to catch up on Lost Legacy, which I initially missed. It’s the Miles Morales of the Uncharted canon: shorter, more tightly paced, and with a more interesting protagonist. Watching the friendship between Chloe and Nadine blossom is the game’s truest highlight, even with all the stunning vistas and glittering, golden tombs. And there’s a greater focus here on puzzle solving, from its little open world section to that Tomb Raider-esque delight of stumbling into an undiscovered catacomb. Yet that makes those gunplay spikes all the more frustrating when they inevitably rear their head. Lost Legacy’s final sequence is an impressive callback to Uncharted 2, but rather than a smooth, grand crescendo towards its conclusion the action film stutters and stumbles through unfair deaths. It’s as if the film director is shouting “cut!” every 30 seconds because the stuntwoman got accidentally shot. Or maybe that’s just my own weakness to launching the photo mode at every inopportune moment. Ed Nightingale But of course cinematic action, which is what Not a Hero trades in, has a lot to do with extreme sports. You slide in and out of cover, stunning enemies, dodging bullets, blowing people away and reloading. Get close and you do a crit. Get an enemy down first and you do an execution. It’s horrible, but somehow wonderfully horrible - the pixelart and general cheerful lairiness does a lot for the conscience in this case. What both games have in common is chaining your moves and moving across a landscape in which you can really excel. You can scrape through the levels here, or you can move like a shadow and escape without taking a single hit. It’s OlliOlli to its core. This was obvious when Not a Hero came out, of course. But it’s lovely to return now, fresh from OlliOlli World and see how clear this team’s sense is when it comes to what they want to do and how they want to do it. Chris Donlan I’ve never played it and yet I know it intimately, and I know it intimately because I cannot escape it. It doesn’t matter where I am in my flat, which admittedly isn’t very big, I cannot hide from a daily update from the island. “Look at my pumpkin patch! Do you want to see my new wallpaper? I’ve got another room in my house!” Argh! Somehow, I’ve followed the progress of this island from tented wilderness to an urban-planned settlement with Godzilla topiary. Somehow I know that you can catch those pesky wasps with your net. Somehow I’ve developed a dislike for stern Tom Nook. And I don’t even play the game! So I think it should count. Bertie

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-20” author: “Pat Schnetzer”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. The next thing you know, as your eyes open in the dark, is that you’re crawling on the floor of the aisle, and some half-naked, blood-covered muscle-man is carrying your son away. Then, blackout, and when you come to your senses it’s daytime and you’re up on your wobbly feet, exiting a ripped-apart fuselage and stumbling into a tropical forest beyond. What’s the first thing you would do given what I outlined above - the thing you’d instinctively do? Is it to flick through your handy survival guide, as the help prompt says, and learn how to make basic shelters and fires - to run around collecting sticks and rocks and chopping wood? Or is there something more pressing? No? You silly sausage. It’s a good job you’ve written it in your journal’s to-do list. “Find Timmy.” Honestly, you’d forget your head if it wasn’t screwed on. Tsk! Survival games eh? Too eager to show off their survival systems. Still, when you’ve been out for eight years like The Forest has, you’ve probably got some deep and impressive systems to boast about. Those 300,000 overwhelmingly positive Steam reviews can’t all be wrong. Bertie One month on, you can barely move for freely flapping penises and vaginas; horny Sims will now down pants and screw each other’s brains out as often as they say hello - no table, telephone pole, or tumble dryer has escaped their ceaseless humping unscathed. One of my Sims is a drug dealer; another has a cocaine habit; yet another has dropped out of college to start a lucrative career masturbating on webcam, and I’m pretty sure there’s an actual serial killer on the loose. Sickness, disease, poverty, and alcoholism is rife (as is a fairly nasty case of crabs), and there’s a cabal of nudists on my patio. It is, in short, delightful pandemonium. Yet, in amongst all this madness, the mundane pleasures of existence still shine through: the gentle rewards of a job well done, a good book, a new love, an arresting view on an evening stroll. My Sims 4 is now a maelstrom of chaos: messy, ridiculous, vulgar, sad, tender, infuriating, and a journey of ceaseless surprises - quite a lot like real life then, which I’d call a job well done. Matt Wales Legendary means a lot of things - it’s nowhere near the top of the ladder, despite the impressive name - but more than anything for me it means that I can collect the final card, Mother Witch, who turns attackers into pigs. This is important for me - I am so sorry for how this update is turning out! - because I have been trying to create an all-pig deck of late, to go along with my all-pig emote deck. I don’t think going all-pig is possible with a battle deck, but this will certainly add to the piggy flavour overall. You’re never done, though. That’s the thing about Clash Royale. There’s all those other steps up the ladder, sure, but there’s also the Champion cards that only unlock when you hit level 14 - and I only hit level 13 a few weeks back, so that’s a bit of a grind I have ahead of me. I am still having fun though. My clan still put up with me, I still love a good 60 percent of my matches, and, yes, there’s that all-pig battle deck dream to pursue. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-16” author: “John Pratt”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. I love that brutishness and that feeling of coiled anger in the game. Everything you do reinforces this raw power Kratos possesses: opening doors, pushing and pulling levers, rowing a boat around. All that busiwork that might otherwise sag in a game is here fastidiously animated to reinforce the sense of who you are and what you can do. You, this Hulk, this bubbling volcano. It’s wonderful to behold. Bertie What I love most about Vampire Survivors is how ugly it is. That isn’t a knock on the art team. It feels intentional. There is a grimness to the characters, the landscape looks like a mid-winter Rugby pitch. The game is ugly, but it’s the ugliness of compulsion. This is a place you stay in not because it’s all so pretty, but because you can’t bring yourself to leave.
It’s so simple. You move around the landscape auto-attacking hordes of monsters. They drop gems which you collect to level up, at which point you add more auto-attacks, or faster auto-attacks, or, or… onwards and outwards until it’s three in the morning.
What’s terrifying about this game isn’t the hordes - although they’re bad enough. It’s those two words: “Early Access.” What might this become?
Chris Donlan Key to this is the crash gates, Paradise’s genius spin on another Renderware treat, Crackdown. Crackdown had those Agility Orbs you couldn’t help but lose yourself collecting. Paradise has crash gates, bright yellow, sprinkled across the map. They’re a joy to blast through, but they also open up neat alternate routes. A beautiful videogame idea in every way. As a result, I have always used the crash gates sparingly. I don’t want to run out. And across the various different formats and consoles and years of playing Burnout Paradise, I have never run out. I have never crashed through all the gates. But now, now I’m playing Paradise alongside my daughter, who told me the other day it’s her fourth favourite game, and then struggled to remember what the third spot was. My daughter has been sailing through Crash Gates like we will never run out. But we will run out! And soon! It’s a weird feeling. Will I finally reach the end of a game that has no end? Possibly. But it’s also been a rare joy to share something like Paradise with another person. Burnout may be multiplayer-focused, but it’s the most internal of videogames. It locks me into a private state that is very, very hard to put into words. To have to try to put it into words because you’re playing alongside an eight-year-old has been brilliant. And it’s been brilliant to see how naturally she took to crashing through those gates. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-27” author: “Loretta Thorp”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. I don’t think this is the best level, and it’s certainly not the most complicated, but it’s the level that gets at the heart of the game for me. This is about a group of friends and a world where all of the decisions are being made by other people - generally stupidly. This rootfop feels like home - a place filled with graffiti and tape decks and music and magic markers and cherished clutter. It’s the perfect place to understand how to use the camera and the lenses, and to get to grips with what the objectives are. It’s also the perfect place to understand how the game works in a deeper sense. This is a game about observation and empathy and interpretation. Look at the stuff around you and work out what it means, why it is where it is, and who it might belong to. The game’s youthful anger and energy and perceptive force is all visible in this first level. I log back in sometimes and feel like I never want to leave. Chris Donlan Free Radical Design’s legendary first-person shooter was built by the team behind GoldenEye, freed from the rushed development cycle of the first TimeSplitters (sped out for the PS2’s launch). Its multiplayer modes are legendary, but without other players on hand, I’ve been dipping back into its campaign levels. Its opening Siberia dam area remains peerless - even with that helicopter shootout at the end. A mix of James Bond stealth with zombie B-movie action, it is still a brilliant thing to blast through. And it’s funny! So funny - and not just the cutscenes. There’s the bit with the timed mines on the ceiling to disable the machine gun turrets - where if you miss you blow up the computer room you’re trying to get into, failing the mission. (But there’s a checkpoint.) Then there’s the sudden arrival of flaming zombies, which can then set you on fire. (But you can dash to a shower room and put yourself out.) We’re past the point where shooters have to be serious and brown-coloured and full of men with beards. This is the age of Fortnite and its banana men, or Splitgate and its neon portals. There’s never been a better time for TimeSplitters to return, flaming zombies and monkeys and all. And until then, again, TimeSplitters 2 is currently £2. Tom Phillips You don’t need to understand how to play Exploding Kittens to understand the Nope card, but the game is huge and chances are good you’ve played it a few times by now anyway. The main thing to know is that it’s a card game in which you spend a lot of time screwing over your enemies - nicking their cards, forcing them to draw potentially hazardous cards from the draw pile, that sort of thing. It’s fun. But I think it’s the Nope card that makes it truly stellar. It’s as simple as it sounds: if someone plays a card on you that you don’t like you can play a Nope card - if you have one - and you don’t have to do what your enemy’s card told you to do. But they can Nope your Nope, if they have their own Nope card. Never fear, though, you can Nope that! And onwards. Nope works I think because it reaches through the rules of the game and gets at a very human instinct: Hell No. And gosh, how I wish I could have that Nope card in Clash Royale, in Tetris, in Halo, in basically anything. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-25” author: “Ashleigh Snyder”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. If there’s one word to sum up Observation, it’s disorientating. Set in a space station where things are going very, very wrong (of course), this Devolver Digital game from 2019 has you embody its prime inhabitant: the on-board AI. That means you view everything from cameras placed around the station, switching viewing angles to try and get a hold on the space. Then you’re inside a floating sphere - both inside and outside the station - bobbing around in zero gravity, not knowing which way is up. It certainly feels authentically like you’re in space, but the accompanying motion sickness is maybe a step too far. There’s a voyeuristic thrill to the setup though, especially as the humans on-board look to you as an AI without knowing there’s a human player behind the camera. Observation is essentially a point-and-click adventure where you solve puzzles to indirectly affect the humans on the station. There’s a wonderful tactileness about its retro-futuristic technology, even if the sometimes awkward UI feeds into an obtuseness that’s typical of the genre. Still, Observation really thrives on its horror atmosphere, with a near-constant creepy tension underlying your actions. I’m yet to finish, but “AI gone rogue” seems inevitable and fills me with a perverse glee.
Ed Nightingale So I went backwards. And it turns out the original game on which it was based is partially based on a much older game that I have played. Duck Tales! The brilliant Capcom platformers for the NES and Game Boy. I spent hours as a kid bouncing around and collecting gems. Shovel Knight updates all that - lovely NES-era pixel art, generous levels, bosses and fantastic enemies. Many of which I now recognise from Pocket Dungeon. It makes me realise what a lovely piece of translation Pocket Dungeon is - taking all these concepts and characters from a platformer and making them work as a puzzle game. And in turn, what a lovely piece of translation Shovel Knight is in the first place - a modern twist on an old 8-bit charmer I had almost forgotten. What a treat all round. Chris Donlan Now it’s that much easier to play thanks to this week’s surprise Switch port from the brilliant Code Mystics that captures all of the magic of this deck building masterpiece. Coming back to it all these years later, I love how the card battling captures the essence of the fights from which the characters you play with are better known, with that same to-and-fro mixed with a clash of tech. I love how the pixel art captures 90s icons such as Terry and Ryu in such fine form. I just love Card Fighters Clash, really - give it a shot, because I’m fairly certain you will too. Martin Robinson

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-07” author: “Dustin Miles”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. So glad it did. This is a top-down shooter with a distinctly PomPom aesthetic - chunky characters and lurid laser beams. The twist is that rather than shooting swarming enemies yourself, you use the light you carry and nearby objects to whack baddies with a massive lump of roving shadow. You cast the shadow by moving the light past pillars and what have you. I love this kind of thing. A few years back twin-sticks were everywhere. And people were still thinking away, working on making them odder, more challenging, more memorable. Ombra, I am so happy to have found you! Chris Donlan Back on iOS I downloaded Helsing’s Fire again, for what must be the first time in a few years. This is an ingenious puzzle game in which you place potions to destroy any baddies within sight. But what complicates it is the level architecture and the shadows it casts. Pretty soon you have colour-coded baddies who need to have colour-coded armour burned off before you can do them in. So you place potions in order, aware that if you accidentally hit a blue rat, say, with a red potion, rather than killing them you will grant them red armour. It’s an absolute treat, and weirdly reminiscent of the mark-and-execute system from the later Splinter Cell games. It still works beautifully on current phones - go and check it out! Chris Donlan It’s a top-down pixely roguelike, with all the armour, loot and enemies you might expect. The controls are very simple and the colour-scheme is purples and sepias. There is a hint of old mimeo ink to it, but I think that’s me showing my age. What I love about it is the way it moves. As you progress, the screen scrolls, as if it’s a single huge sheet of paper that you’re advancing across, like a piano roll - what is it with the ancient references today? I love that sense of moving forward and only forward. It gives a genre game like this a real sense of identity. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-03” author: “Gregory Pearce”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. As such, my spare time has been somewhat limited. I am so desperate to join in with the many already experiencing the wilds of the Forbidden West with Aloy or become an Elden Lord in the Lands Between, but I equally want to wait until I have the time to fully immerse myself in these worlds which, for now, I simply do not have. So, instead of biting off more than I can chew, I have opted to play some smaller, more digestible games. And one of these games has captured my attention in the best way. That game is Overboard. I first heard of Overboard when it was mentioned off-handedly on a podcast many moons ago. As someone who has a soft spot for Agatha Christie’s Poirot it sounded right up my street. Set in the 1930s, Overboard players take on the mantle of Veronica Villensey, a former starlet and unhappy newlywed. Veronica must use her charisma and cunning to get away with the murder of their husband Malcom while on board the SS Hook, a luxury cruise liner traveling from England to America. Players have eight in=game hours to cover their tracks, form alliances and possibly even frame someone for their crimes. Overboard has been an easy game for me to pick up and put down whenever I have a spare moment. So much so that I have started treating it a little bit like Wordle. I give myself one run through each day when I take my morning break. So far, I have managed to get away with murder, and pin the blame on another unsuspecting passenger. However, I am yet to succeed in tying up all my loose ends. Perhaps I will manage that tomorrow… Victoria Kennedy It’s beautiful, and it chimes perfectly with a book I’ve just finished reading, Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape, by Cal Flyn. Islands looks at a range of environments around the planet where humans have done something wretched and then left. The book examines the way that nature reappears, on World War One battlefields, Scottish artificial mountains of chipped rock, and even the woods around Chernobyl. Perfect stuff for games, and I can’t wait to spend the next ten hours or so moving through Far’s artfully rendered shipyards and old refineries. After a while paddling around I started moving in earnest - up over rooftops in submerged tenements, down in the pools created between factory buildings. I’ve just found my craft, which in this game is a vast red boat. Pushing through the doors of its hangar and out into the damaged world is already one of my cherished memories of games in 2022. Who knows what I’ll find next. Chris Donlan But it’s more than that, too. It’s a chance to also tell the story from a different perspective, to show how this being became an agent of the enemy in the first place. And Ghostrunner does this so well. I really enjoyed how it told a story the first time around, piping it into your ears intermittently as it built the idea of a world and ‘bigger things’ around you, but never slowing you down to acknowledge it. And here again, there’s a voice in your ear, only this time it’s conditioning you to become the ruthless tool you evidently do become. Plus, it’s just really nice to be back in Ghostrunner, in that blend of acrobatics and speed and puzzling, jumping around, slicing enemies up - it just works so well together. And it oozes style. It’s an impressive spectacle to be a part of. And this appears to be a proper, expansion-weight reason to do it all again. So far, I’m impressed. Bertie

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-21” author: “Frank Alexander”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. Inevitably, it’s brilliant: lovely gunplay and hideous monsters enlivened by a dash move that encourages you to gib with a bit of extra speed. You know, like Doom! Best thing about this, though? There is a button just for wiping the gore off your face. That’s cool. That’s Doom - and then some. You patrol the bottom of the screen while enemies come from the top. Skeletons. Armoured skeletons. Wolves. You manage a stamina meter while you move about and chuck spears at them. But as things evolve you can also spend mana on buying troop units to block some of the lanes for a limited time. And then there are special moves. And pretty soon you’re managing mana and stamina while hell rains down from above. What it wants to be like, I think, is a sort of classical Plants vs Zombies, with a bit of Diablo thrown in as you do a glissando of troops and skills when things get tough. I do think it’s going to work. I also think the current demo is just a little slow in proving that. It’s a card battler at heart, but it’s a card battler in which your cards come from nature. As you walk about the world, you conjure new cards from the things around you - trees, rocks, walls - and you then play these cards as you battle enemies, dealing from ordered and unordered decks, maintaining enough heat to play cards, and slowly whittling down your rival’s health. It’s a ponderous sort of game, but it has a truly lovely atmosphere - a melancholy song for the earth and the things that come together to make the environment.

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-05” author: “Jeffrey Roberts”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. So when I saw Sonic Origins was on the way, I knew I had to play it - least of all because, despite owning these Sonic games as a child, I never actually finished them. I was consumed by those chequerboard fantasy lands and azure skies, but not once did I see the end credits - even when I left my console on overnight in the absence of a save file. Well, I’m proud to say I’ve now finally completed Sonic the Hedgehog (1) some 25-odd years after first playing it. But nostalgia is a powerful thing and it can go both ways. As the iconic Green Hill Zone music stirred up, I was immediately transported back and muscle memory led me through those loops and dips. But the first game in the series really lacks refinement. It’s a game that ironically seems to punish you for going fast: Sonic moves slowly, too many levels rely on precise platforming, and the placement of spikes and enemies is just punishing. I love the new animations in this compilation. I love seeing all the artwork in the museum. And I can’t wait to play the rest of the games in the collection. But I can’t help but play these games now with a critical eye. It’s a stark reminder that I’m not that kid anymore. Ed Nightingale I have to say, when you are feeling cold and uncomfortable, it is nice to immerse yourself in a world that is filled with palms swaying in the warm breeze and attractive people being ridiculously athletic (yes, I scaled a pyramid as soon as I was able to leave the game’s tutorial section). Admittedly, the onslaught of crocs and hippos I could have done without, especially as I was not aware of them the first time I ventured into the game’s watery depths. But never mind… after all, it turns out Bayek is still a nifty fighter even when the laws of physics would traditionally work against us average human beings. However, superhuman strength and off-the-charts parkour skills can only do so much for Origins’ leading man (at least when I am in control), as he does still take fall damage. This is something that, ever since the release of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, I have struggled with. I now have it hard-wired into me that if I can climb the climb, I should also be able to glide the glide in the style of Link. This is not the case in Assassin’s Creed Origins, and Bayek, I am sorry for repeatedly having you fight off hordes of angry soldiers (and wildlife) to then just hurl you off the side of a cliff or building and to your death! I will try to do better for us both as we continue on with this journey through Egypt together. Also, yes, the first time I met Cleopatra, I did start singing “coming at ya!” over and over again in my head. I surely can’t be alone in this… right? Victoria Kennedy It’s funny how some games are like those smells that transport you to a different time and place. Clash of Heroes does that to me, and it did it to me this week when I downloaded it on my Xbox Series S after browsing Game Pass in a bid to find something new to play. Capybara’s strategy puzzle masterpiece transports me back to the maternity ward at the Royal Sussex in Brighton. I see the sight of the shoreline from level 13, I hear the reassuring beep of the baby’s heart monitor, and I remember that you really do need to activate your Knight on turn one if you want to get ahead in the game. To pass the time, my wife and I played Clash of Heroes on an iPad. It was pretty competitive: my wife would always choose Anwen and her ridiculously powerful deers, who would leap over my defensive walls to ruin my best laid plans. Her quick-to-fire archers would seemingly always kill my elites before they had a chance to get going. All the while her Emerald dragon, who she somehow managed to activate on turn two at the latest, would loom large over the battlefield, like some smirking, impending doom. My wife wasn’t one for chains, but she was one for fusions, and it was her fusions that would wear me down. I’d pick Godric, most of the time, and try to frustrate my wife with lines of defensive walls. Cowardly play, really, but I didn’t care. Winning was all that mattered, even in the labour ward. Oh, and the birth. We were in the middle of a game of Clash of Heroes, in fact, when things started properly happening. We put down the iPad to focus on what really mattered. It was over so quickly, I remember. I cried. I held my son for the first time. He wrapped his tiny hand around my little finger. I held my superstar wife. “Well done, darling,” I said. “Now, whose turn is it?” Wesley Yin-Poole

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-08” author: “Mary Guthrie”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. Actually, that comparison holds for the over-the-top nature of the game too. There’s a story here but it’s kind of wild - something about being in Heaven and having to get rid of demons, but really quickly - and everyone you meet in the game seems to follow the same principles. They’re all ridiculous in their own ways, but they’re bursting with such energy and charisma it’s hard not to be won over by them. It’s unapologetic and unafraid - that’s what Neon White is. It knows what it is and it’s having a good time doing it. And so am I. Bertie I feel like this game was made specifically for me, what with all the Street Fighter references in the move sets that the Turtles, April and Splinter have. You can really feel the love and passion that went into making this game. On top of that, the soundtrack is just pure joy, most especially the Boss theme for Shredder called “We Ain’t Came to Lose” and sung by hip-hop legends and Wu-Tang Clan members, Ghost Face Killah and Raekwon The Chef. To Recap: Turtles, Street Fighter and Wu-Tang Clan. You can’t go wrong with this game. Paolo Balmes Now it does, though, and I think that’s less to do with the move to free-to-play, and more to do with the fact that, personally, I now have someone to play Fall Guys with. In the time since Fall Guys came out my daughter has properly discovered video games, moving from A Short Hike - the first game she ever finished - to games like Minecraft, which she is now so dizzyingly proficient at, I can watch what she’s doing and only marvel at how she knows how to do it. Fall Guys, though, is something we can play together. It’s the perfect single-player two-player game, in that we each take a round and then pass the pad. These funny soft-play challenges are perfect for us, because if you win it’s great, and if you lose it’s generally hilarious. How long will this all last? My daughter tends to move on from games pretty quickly - with the exception of Minecraft. I hope Fall Guys sticks for a bit, though. Just a few more weeks of passing the pad and collapsing into laughter together. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-10” author: “Jane Tulloch”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. Shredder’s Revenge offers blistering, button-mashing brawling on a single-screen, and fun couch co-op for all in a family made up of people with various ages and skill levels. The developers at Tribute Games have done a fantastic job tapping into this dad’s nostalgia for the original Turtles arcade game, while appealing to the next generation. But I must also give a special shoutout to the engineers at Microsoft who made it so easy to set up a four-player co-op session on the Xbox Series S. As a parent, I find excuses such as “I don’t have the right cable”, and “this controller doesn’t work with this console” often fall on deaf little ears. As my kids bounced up and down excitedly waiting to get Turtles going on the telly, I braced myself for some tech snafu that would prevent me from getting my dusty Xbox controllers to play ball with the Series S. I was delighted - and relieved! - to find the controllers I’d dug out of storage, that I’d last used on previous generations of Xbox, all just worked with Microsoft’s latest console after the insertion of a single cable and the press of one button on each device. And then we were straight into turtle land, smashing Foot Clan robots to bits. Phew! It’s nice when things just work, isn’t it? Wesley Yin-Poole And this is the magic of them, I think. I have A Short Hike on several platforms now and at several levels of progress. But in truth, the game’s magic is that it resists any form of completism. Because I dive back in often with months off, I have no memory of what I’ve done and what I haven’t, and also of what I’ve seen and what I’ve never seen before. Was the stickball game added in a patch? Or was it there at the start? I play it for a few seconds and realise that I’ve played it before - but when? This is richness indeed. This morning I went for a dive around the the island and swore that a bunch of trees, backs bent like old men, were entirely new to me. Then, on a nearby ledge I found an open treasure chest, so all of this was, in some way, land that I had already travelled. I play A Short Hike now, and memory and the absence of memory constantly jostles up alongside itself. It makes the game familiar, but forever fresh. You know, like Crackdown. Chris Donlan The Quarry isn’t in the Dark Pictures series that Supermassive usually groups these games in, but it’s exactly the same thing. In fact, the formula is so obvious now it’s like an established sub-genre all of its own. But I don’t really mind? I quite like all the elements of the template and how you do things like get clues about future moments, which are important if you want to keep all the characters alive. There’s even this lady who reads the tarot cards you collect in between chapters now. There’s a cool-sounding new Movie mode too, which I haven’t noticed in Supermassive’s other games before. It allows you to auto-play the game as if watching a film but set different variables for character’s behaviour and watch the outcome, which is neat. My gripe with The Quarry so far, and I’m not very far in - an hour or so - is that it’s a bit slow, a bit boring. I actually fell asleep at one point, though I was tired and that wasn’t The Quarry’s fault. And yes, I know it’s setting a scene and building the tension, and there have been some scary moments - the prologue is good - but it isn’t as tense as I remember Until Dawn being, for example. Also the mouths are weird. Bertie

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-24” author: “Marc Kattner”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. It just gets better from there. Loot Rascals is a sort of card-collecting roguelite battler thing, but in truth it’s just an explosion of humour and tactical precision. You wander around beating up enemies to get cards from them which in turn makes you better at beating them up. There’s a timing element, because different enemies attack first depending on whether it’s day or night. But the cards are where it gets special. You have attack and defence cards, which is simple enough, and you arrange them in rows and columns in your inventory, swapping out old cards when you get better ones and decompiling useless cards for credits to buy stuff. Fine. But you can boost your cards significantly depending on how you arrange them. One card might be boosted if it’s in an even column, for example. Another might confer a boost on the card to the left or right. Another might lower your points if it’s in the wrong row. I love games that encourage this kind of endless tinkering - games where the flow of cards means that an arrangement can never be perfect - just perfect for the next few minutes. This is why getting new cards in Loot Rascals always feels like Christmas - whether you’re on your first hour of the game or your 100th. Just lovely. (And best of all, I’ve only described the absolute basics today: there is so much more to learn.) Chris Donlan Well, kind of an RPG anyway. Inventory Hero is a sort of endless runner, I guess, that has your hero jogging along and biffing baddies. All you have to do is give them new armour and weapons - they all run down quite quickly - and then keep the potions flowing. It’s more complicated than that. Armour and weapons have different stats, so sometimes it’s about knowing when not to equip something new. Then there are bosses which have their own quirks, and garbage items that you need to get rid of to keep space in your inventory free. It can be surprisingly tricky to work out whether to equip something or drop it when you’re moving at speed. So far, perhaps the deadliest enemy in Inventory Hero is rabbits. Get a few of them in your inventory and they breed like, well, rabbits, quickly filling up all slots and making it impossible for you to pick up anything else. Getting rid of them is like playing whack-a-mole. Whack-a-mole in an RPG? Sort of. Inventory Hero is a treat. Chris Donlan All of this is so much more fun, for some reason, when played out on a globe. When your satellites really do orbit, and when you can follow the trails of rockets as they arc overhead. It helps that the low-poly art-style is so elegant, and that the game’s sense of aggression ramps just so. Last time I played I realised that the UI is playfully based on the periodic table. Neat stuff. And just what I would expect from a game as poised and clever as Element. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-19” author: “Thomas Bergstresser”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. It’s a narrative puzzler - the closest thing I can think of is Obra Dinn. You have a book with details about a bunch of demons. To summon them you need to work out what music they like, what offering from your fridge might tempt them, and which three classmates to bring along. This is the puzzle bit. So one demon might like the sound of trumpets - do you have a jazz record to play? Another likes to settle arguments - do you have friends who are at war about something? When you have the right blend of ingredients, as it were - Demon Quest 85 is essentially a cooking game, I’ve just realised - the demon appears. You chat. Maybe you solve a few problems. Crucially you might find out details that allow you to fill in the gaps of what other demons might need in order to be summoned. This is all lovely, but what’s really special is the story that slowly emerges. Or rather it’s two stories: the squabbling high schoolers with their teenage preoccupations, and the squabbling demons, with their own teenage preoccupations. I’m about halfway through Demon Quest 85 and I don’t want it to end. Really, though, I wish everybody could play it. What kind of demon would I need to summon in order to grant that wish? Chris Donlan The first two games in the Monkey Island series were such a key part of my childhood, offering a sense of adventure without ever really posing any real threat (something small me appreciated after being launched into Ocarina of Time’s Shadow Temple rather unceremoniously by my older brothers). As such, I decided that now is the time to introduce my own children to the world of Guybrush Threepwood and co. and I downloaded the game from Steam. Admittedly, my small humans are not as enamoured with it as I was (and still am). They find the effort of pointing and clicking on every small thing more of a chore than anything (“I even have to click to walk over there, Mummy?!”), but they do appreciate the colour and the humour of it all. The first time my daughter met the pirate leaders and chose to call them a “bunch of foul-smelling, grog-swilling pigs” caused much hilarity in our house, and I still hear my children bandying the phrase around when they run round the garden. Just imagine what they are going to be like when we finally get to the insult sword fighting bit… (Also, as a side note, I have added Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis onto my “To Play” pile. If I am embracing my childhood once more, I really should go all in.) Victoria Kennedy I was obsessed with Flight Control in the late naughties mobile gaming boom - hours spent drawing paths for bi-planes, jets and helicopters to safely land, carefully lining them up so they don’t collide mid-flight - and though I’ve yet to get a score into the hundreds yet, old tactics are slowly returning to me. My current focus is to be a little less heavy on the fast forward at the start while planes are still trickling in - the screen always becomes busy faster than you expect! It’s strange it has taken a system designed to take PC games on the go for me to rediscover a mobile classic. Is it the handheld form factor? The touch screen? Yes to both of these, of course - but most importantly, the Steam Deck has given me the desire to reach deep into the recesses of my Steam library to actually rediscover it. After Flight Control, I have sorted through my entire Steam library and have uncovered all kinds of other long-forgotten classics I didn’t know I had - purchased either over a decade ago or collected from bundles - and I can’t wait to spend my summer slowly going through them all. Newer games really will have to wait. Matthew Reynolds

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “David Ramirez”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. It’s a downward-scrolling arcade game in which you control a futuristic speedboat and try to steal valuable shipments from a megacorporation enemy, while trying not to get blown up in the process. I checked the Swordship website after the show and discovered there’s a global warming backstory, which explains the flooded world. The eye-catching bit, besides the bright, stylised look, is that you have no weapons yourself. In other words, it’s a dodge-’em-up. You have to get out of the way of charged beam weapons, or area of attack bomb blasts, or multiple mortar attacks, while also zipping over to long, thin yellow platforms where the shipments will be - and then when you have them, drop them off at small platforms that appear. I tell you, doing all of this while the screen is filled with red flashing danger zones is hard. You’ll be blown up a few times, but Swordship is a game about trying again so you restart almost instantly. Soon, you’ll begin to understand how the game is played. You’ll understand that although you don’t have weapons, you can use your enemies as if you do, turning them against each other. It’s just a question of timing and waiting until the exact moment to veer off and leave your pursuers in the bomb blast. And when you do, you’re rewarded by a cinematic slow-motion sequence as they blow up behind you, and it will give you the ‘James Bond in a boat chase’ feels. It’s awesome. It’s coming to PC, Xbox S/X, PS4/5 and Switch this year. Bertie This is why I haven’t replayed this game, which I love, as much as I should have. But this week, on Fez’s 10th birthday, I woke up feeling differently about things. What the hell. I loaded up an old Switch save and got Fezzing. I loaded in somewhere around the 8 percent mark. No idea what I was doing or where I had been heading. Instead I just picked a door on the vaguely industrial island I was on, and hoped for the best. For the next five minutes, I enjoyed a brilliant bit of puzzling as I moved between rising and falling platforms, shifting the perspective to create longer continuous tracks. It was effortless: so clever and so engaging, so much of a delight just to muddle through. WHen it was done, I still didn’t know where I was or what I had been doing, but I felt like I knew Fez again. Happy birthday, Gomez. Chris Donlan Going back to 2017’s Sonic Mania - can it really be nearly five years old? - I’m now convinced there’s a pretty good case for it being not only a series highlight but one of the better 2D platformers yet. Sega’s trademark 90s style is met with a deft execution and fan’s enthusiasm that somehow manages to elevate it above the originals. In truth, Sonic the Hedgehog was never really quite this good. Martin Robinson

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-28” author: “Derek Olivares”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus, Android

Yes, it’s on brand for me. Yes, it’s a free-to-download mobile game with microtransactions. And yes, it’s unnecessarily bloated, with more resources to collect and progression gates to grind through that even the Emperor himself might have lost patience. But I have found some fun in Warhammer 40,000 Tacticus, a fast-paced turn-based strategy game in the mobile phone mould that is scratching an itch I am somewhat depressed but unsurprised to find myself afflicted with. Perhaps it’s the promise of unlocking some of my favourite characters from the Warhammer 40,000 universe. Legendary Ultramarines Chapter Master Marneus Calgar is sitting there, on my phone screen, locked away. I need 500 character shards to unlock him - I have none. It’s the same eye-watering grind to unlock the Warmaster of Chaos himself, Abaddon the Despoiler, and Helbrecht, High Marshal of the Black Templars. There are even Death Guard characters here! Like Nurgle’s boon whispered in my ear by some pox-riddled daemon, it feels like this Warhammer 40,000 game was made to tempt me alone. Gameplay is basic, but fast-paced enough to have that ‘one more round’ feel to it. I’m currently soldiering through the Indomitus campaign, a squad of Ultramarines at my command as I face down hundreds of Necrons. There is a story of sorts, although so far all it’s offered is a bunch of Space Marines declaring they’re gonna kill loads of Necrons, which, well, they would do that I suppose. There’s nothing too taxing here - think about your team composition and your environment, as some tiles offer bonuses. Positioning my characters smartly and using their special abilities at the right time usually does the trick. The Fall of Cadia campaign is available to buy for the ridiculous sum of £25.99. PvP is available, but of course it’s pay-to-win. I’ve joined a guild and we’re currently working towards taking down a Hive Tyrant from Tyranid Hive Fleet Gorgon. You get the idea what type of game this is. And yet, I’m playing a lot. I spent two quid to unlock Imperial Hero Commissar Yarrick straight off the bat - or should that be a stolen Ork Power Klaw? He’s really useful in battle, and can summon up to four Cadian Guardsmen who are surprisingly durable. The Emperor protects! I’m not sure I will spend any more money, and I’m having a decent enough time with the campaign. But I can also see a progression block looming over the horizon like a rumbling WAAAGH! inching ever closer to the frontline. I think (and I’m not sure, because Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus has so many progression tracks and things to unlock and items to collect that I have yet to figure out how it all works), that improving the stats of my characters is the true endgame, and doing so at high levels requires items that are hard to get. Perhaps I’ll be able to buy them… for the Emperor! Wesley Yin-Poole

Cult of the Lamb, PS5

Cult of the Lamb is already off to a great start across Steam and Twitch. That’s because it’s the perfect game to stream. The top categories on Twitch are usually high action esports titles - Fortnite, League of Legends, Valorant, and the like - but just as important are the relaxing, wholesome games that bring people together as a community. Cult of the Lamb works on stream because it has both of these aspects. It’s got the laidback busywork of base building and management that allows streamers to chat and interact with viewers at their own pace. That’s then punctuated by short bursts of roguelike action against fluffy little critters and demonic bosses to keep viewers hooked. It’s testament to the game’s interlocking systems that this all works so seamlessly. There’s Twitch integration too, which also keeps viewers involved: contributing to a cult’s totem and entering raffles to have cultists named after them. The game has a wonderful sense of dark, macabre humour that’s entertaining alone. But when a cultist from your Twitch chat suggests another viewer is a picky eater and therefore must literally eat shit, forcing you to literally cook up a bowl of steaming turds (something that happened to me), it’s infinitely more amusing. Your cult isn’t just a collection of cute virtual animals, it’s online and very much alive. Ed Nightingale

Rod Land, Evercade

Nature must finally be healing because in the last couple of weeks I’ve attended more in-person press events than I have done in the last two years. During the Covid years, physical press events were a no-go, so enterprising PRs instead hosted virtual hands-ons using streaming and chat software. To be fair, this was a really good way to put demos in the hands of games journalists during those tough times, but blimey did I miss leaving my house ever. Aside from the simple act of seeing the outside world, one of the main reasons why I missed travelling to press events was because they gave me a good excuse to get up to some good old handheld gaming. It’s something I neglected whilst locked down so I’m loving the fact that I can finally insert a cart or two into a games system. Which (finally) brings me to what I’ve been playing this week; the arcade classic Rod Land on the Evercade. Rod Land was a game I’ve played many times in the past on both the ZX Spectrum and the Amiga and so it quite rightly holds a big place in my nostalgic gaming memories. The version of Rod Land on the Evercade’s Jaleco Arcade 1 cart is one I’d never played before - the original 1990 arcade release. It seems pretty much identical in visuals to what I remember the Amiga port looking like and that means it’s cute, bright and just an absolutely pleasant platformer to spend some time with. And talking about nostalgia, I had serious flashbacks while playing it too. This was especially true when facing some of the bosses, like the Hungry Hungry Hippos-esque crocodiles or the cute as a button button baby elephant boss that bounces around and fires mini elephants out of its trunk. Rod Land is probably the most cheerful game about smashing adorable creatures to death with a wand and even nowadays it’s still a pretty decent game. Oh and most importantly, on the Evercade version you can add extra credits at the touch of a button so if your ageing reflexes aren’t what they used to be, you can still get Tam and Rit to the top of Maboots Tower without too much hassle! Ian Higton

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-25” author: “Darrell Shaw”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. This is deeply pleasing. Donut County obeys the Katamari rules of escalation - incrementally you get to work on a bigger scale, so while you start with rocks and grass and tins, by the end you’re swallowing the Griffith Park Observatory. My favourite part of the game is probably the material change that comes over things once you’re big enough to damage them. Things are heavy and fixed at first, but once you’re a hole to be reckoned with they become bouncy and knockabout, like plastic tubs. Donut County’s a wonderful puzzler with some intricate late-game stuff. And I’ve discovered this week that it’s impossible to see it on a telly without being drawn in. Chris Donlan This is one of those massive games that had completely passed me by. My daughter watched videos about it and chatted to friends in the playground - I think they even played a bit of live action Among Us. But now we have it on Xbox, we’re all transfixed. You know the deal by now, I’m sure: if you’re innocent you knock about the map doing your jobs and trying to stay alive. If you’re the imposter, you try to look innocent while isolating people and then murdering them when nobody’s looking. Regular meetings - sometimes triggered by the discovery of bodies - encourage you to vote on who might be the impostor. We are very bad at getting this right in our house. But the best bit of the game - the part with the most mystery and pathos - is when whoever got the most votes disappears out the airlock and into space. Chris Donlan Unfortunately, this year’s event was a bit of a misstep. There were some significant changes to how things worked, and most not for the better, turning what was a lengthy but pleasant checklist of pottering around the solar system into something far more repetitive and cumbersome. At least the EAZ, a fun, gravity-defying map which sees you ping around rooftops and floating rocks, remains largely intact. All the same, as an excuse to check back into Destiny 2, I embraced Solstice with open arms. I’m now caught up with the Season of the Haunted storyline - it’s been a pleasure to return to a (literal) old haunt with the Leviathan - and on the meta side of things, I’ve discovered Resilience is a stat I should really be paying attention to. In this regard, this was something the event was useful for, allowing you to re-roll rewards with this in mind, allowing you to rely less on luck to get the perfect armour set. There’s something about Destiny 2’s layers of busywork during these events - writing a checklist of event requirements, lining them up against any outstanding season challenges and daily bounties, then ticking them off as efficiently as possible - that I can’t help but find very satisfying. Even if things don’t improve much next year, I’ll always carve out some time in my summer for Solstice. More glowing armour alone will be worth it. Matthew Reynolds

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-26” author: “Sara Rowold”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. So, to rectify my increasingly stagnant stature, I have signed up for a half marathon, which takes place this October. There is nothing quite like some good old-fashioned extrinsic motivation mixed with a heavy dose of accountability to actually get me up and moving after the work day is done. To prepare for this undertaking, which is actually not all that far away now I come to think about it (cue gulping in the style of Scooby Doo), I have dug out our copy of Ring Fit Adventure for the Nintendo Switch. If I am going to play games, I may as well get my heartrate up at the same time. Well, at least until October, that is. My latest foray into fitness, admittedly, could have gone more smoothly than it has done so far, as it turns out that while we kept the actual ring for the game, the leg strap to house the second joy-con was clearly cast aside when we moved at the end of last year. As such, I have had to fashion a makeshift leg strap out of one of my daughter’s elasticated headbands to make the game playable.This is something that will have to be a short term fix, however, as it is both tight and loose at the same time. With every squat, the circulation down my left leg is somewhat hampered as my thigh pushes the headband to its tightest extreme. Meanwhile, at the other end of the scale, with every jogging motion that goes above a gentle trot, the joy-con can be found sliding its way down my leg at a rather jaunty angle. But leg strap debacles aside, I am enjoying bopping and stretching my way through this virtual world in a bid to defeat the hench, bodybuilding, Dragaux. Who knows, I may yet even make a habit out of this exercise malarkey… once my new leg strap arrives, that is. Victoria Kennedy The first area works as a sort of tutorial before you get to the full game itself, and it’s set in a wonderfully shabby escape room - peeling wallpaper, junk scattered about, and the staff seem bored, at best. After a few minutes messing around I knew how to interact with things and go through my inventory. The first room itself is very easy to solve, and the second isn’t much harder. But after that it all gets a bit special. I’m lead underground into a more expansive, and mysterious location. The first areas felt like they took place in an industrial estate - suddenly I’m in what could be a castle. There’s an underground train, and it promises to whisk me off to the real game - and the setting will be much grander and more exciting. If they’d started there, I would have just accepted it. But by starting off in such lowly environments, I now can’t wait to see what’s next. Chris Donlan Sang-Froid must have been the second or third game I bought on Steam, after a lifetime of consoles and handhelds, and it’s remained a sort of weathervane for me, speaking of everything PC games can be. It’s the work of a distinctive imagination, and it’s filled with fascinating and complex ideas that you can see being worked out as the game comes together. I swear it’s one of the most inventive tactics games I’ve ever played, and one that exudes the kind of specific, hand-crafted atmosphere I wasn’t getting on the machines under the telly. I go back in now and then just to see if it’s as good as I remember it being. Of course, it’s always better. What I want to do now is convince other people to play - a game this good should not be a secret, even when it’s such a lovely memory-rich secret. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-13” author: “Steven Walters”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. There’s a certain trigger that activates this cheap (but effective) scare in the remake, meaning you can avoid these annoying enemies for as long as possible if you steer clear of traversing the eastern corridor after your first visit. In the original, however, the dogs seem to smash through the windows on your first journey. This change in the remake, along with many others, helped build tension for players who had experienced the original and knew its set-piece triggers like the back of their itchy-tasty hand (weren’t the dogs supposed to be here? Why haven’t they smashed the windows yet? Oh God, where are they!?). Yeah it’s got dated tank controls, ridiculous voice acting, and polygonal character designs I probably only like due to nostalgia - but playing Resident Evil: Director’s Cut is now the tenser experience for me. It’s so familiar, and yet I’m now wary of what else I’ve grown used to due to the remake’s set piece and puzzle subversions. The exact reason the remake added tension is why the original now has me terrified to enter each of the Spencer Mansion’s once-familiar rooms. Jessica Orr In part, that’s also because of all the modern features the game introduced. No random battles! Multiple endings! New game plus! Chrono Trigger was an advanced and experimental release at the time, bridging the gap between the mature storytelling of Final Fantasy 6 and the operatic vision of Final Fantasy 7. What really stood out to me, though, were its layers. It begins as a simple enough, linear, time-travelling adventure, with likeable characters and a heavy dose of anime exuberance. But gradually the game itself turns into a giant puzzle. The freedom to travel through time brings smart overarching puzzles on a gameplay level, but also a way to explore its themes of generational conflict. The way this interlocks with various game endings means this (relatively) brief JRPG becomes a giant puzzle box to slowly and satisfyingly twist and turn and pry open. I originally started the game on mobile years back but found the touch screen menus a pain. I’m so glad I eventually came back to it on Steam. With the recent remastered releases of Chrono Cross and Live A Live, Chrono Trigger seemed like essential background JRPG research; now, it’s shot up my favourite games list. Ed Nightingale Wes: Honestly, I’m not sure. I must be enjoying myself, because I am playing it. A lot. But why? PowerWash Simulator gives me the gift of time, time to listen to things, like my beloved Warhammer 40,000 audio books (don’t say anything, Tom), podcasts such as the wonderful Eurogamer Newscast, the radio, and music. Of course there’s a sense of satisfaction that comes from cleaning dirt off a virtual playground stegosaurus, but it’s more about the zen of it all. For you, PowerWash Simulator keeps you up at night. For me, it helps send me to sleep. What I’m curious to find out about, Tom, is how you play PowerWash Simulator? Tom: I am methodical. Very methodical, as you noticed when we tried to get a multiplayer session going last weekend (hopefully the new patch has fixed those crashes)! When starting off I pick something to focus on and try not to get too distracted, though inevitably I do. On the playgrounds and skateparks that might mean finishing the floor first, or just picking a corner and working out from there. On the later levels it has become harder - the helicopter last night was a proper pain - but it helps when backtracking at the end to finish off anything not quite 100% clean. I think it’s faster this way… though if you’re playing to nod off then maybe that isn’t so much of an issue! Wes: The other night, while absent-mindedly and without method cleaning dirt from a playground floor, I noticed a recognisable shape. Like spotting gods clash in the clouds, I spotted what looked like the stereotypical noir detective looking down at their phone, surely trying to decode some all-encompassying murder mystery. This detective popped up amid the powerwash chaos - that’s emergent gameplay! You don’t get that powerwashing at right angles, Tom. Tom Phillips and Wesley Yin-Poole

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-18” author: “Dana Swindell”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, Switch

My first memories of playing Klonoa: Door to Phantomile take place in the early 2000s, when I had a pirated version of the game in Japanese with no manual, and no knowledge of the Japanese language. Despite this, I often booted it up to see if I could figure out how to play through trial and error because I loved the charming music. Spoiler alert – I did not figure it out. I never even made it past the first level, never to discover the rest of that beautiful soundtrack… I’ve been working my way through Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series on Switch (in English this time!) and it’s been joyful discovering what I missed out on previously. Platformers were the staple of my childhood and playing Door to Phantomile brings that feeling of nostalgic glee back to me. The game is simple if you just want to make it to the end of each level, but the true challenge lies in collecting all the Dream Stones. Exploration is delicately hand-crafted to test your skills, leaving no room for error. It can be frustrating at times, but it more than makes up for that with how satisfying it feels when you manage to nail that triple jump and soar through the trail of gems. I’ve seen the end of Door to Phantomile and beaten the final boss, but the completionist in me demands that I collect all 1950 Dream Jewels in the game before starting Lunatea’s Veil. Klonoa had better get ready to flap those ears of his, because I’ll need all the hops I can get to complete that Extra Vision. Liv Ngan

Raging Blasters, Switch

Is the Switch the best console for the humble shmup since Sega’s legendary Saturn? Five year into its life, with an incredible back catalogue featuring the great and good of the genre and an influx of new and exciting takes on the classics and the answer is pretty clear to me. Raging Blasters, which finally arrived on the European eShop, strengthens the case further; riffing off the Star Soldier series, it’s a vertical shooter that jumps around in the hands like a magic bean, retaining the twitchiness that made Compile’s PC Engine originals such a joy. It’s a shmup told with simplicity and speed - and outrageous speed, at that - complete with a scoring system that’s suitably straightforward. A simple pleasure of the highest order, this. Martin Robinson

Bowser’s Fury, Switch

Bowser’s Fury is my favourite Mario game in an age. There’s something truly special about it, and I think that’s probably because it’s so weird. It’s an experiment, a sort of taster of what an open-world Mario would look like, but with levels and surprises gently fighting against the bigger picture. I have been playing it in chunks for a couple of years now, diving in, gorging, forgetting all about it and then picking it up again, only to lose a few more hours to it. Today’s session was the perfect summary of everything I love about it. I fired it up, wandered around a nearby island and picked up a few Cat Shines, or whatever they’re called, and then got distracted by a treasure hunt, and then distracted within the treasure hunt by a hard-to-reach ledge, and then distracted while aiming for that by the desire to track down a cat power-up. Then night fell and Bowser turned up and I remembered that, really, I have properly lost any real sense of what’s going on here. But it doesn’t matter. Because next time I pick the game up the distractions will be waiting for me afresh. Truly, a Mario game to lose yourself within. Do check it out. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-30” author: “Matthew Whitfield”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. And I hear what people are saying about a grind and for sure, it slows down after level 30, but that’s allowed me to discover more of the game and understand the different components of it - to try groups, to try bounties, to mess around with skill set-ups. All of that rather than just dumbly following quest markers without ever really stopping to read what’s going on (and I can still go back to that, it hasn’t changed that much). Maybe I’m easily pleased, but then I think about Diablo 3 and what the experience was like there and I remember a grind. I remember grinding through a boring story on an unfulfilling difficulty before I could get to the good stuff. And the experience of doing it was no better than here. I’ve looted just as many legendaries, if that’s how you measure things. The only difference is here I’ve got much more to do and play with. This experience is better. Look, I don’t think Diablo Immortal is the second coming and I have reservations I won’t go into here, because I haven’t got enough space, but it plays a game of Diablo as good as Diablo 3 - if not better. Bertie Getting to pick from a variety of space-faring races is just the tip of the iceberg in Endless Space 2, as right now I find myself either conquering the galaxy through debt via the capitalistic frenzy of the Lumeris or straight up nuking the sun of a solar system for laughs. Note: Donlan asked for space pictures for his James Webb piece, and I then proceeded to play this game for six hours after work. Paolo Balmes Somewhere between all that and the recent Turtles video game, I decided to have another run at the Scott Pilgrim beat-’em-up. I have played this many times, but I’d never really ventured into the menus. And what’s this? Extra modes? So I spent a worrying amount of time this week smashing up zombies in Survival Horror. Just Scott - or whoever - and a single screen and an endless throng of milling undead. It works beautifully, not least because the undead take a surprising amount of time to defeat, so I’ve really been able to get back on top of the move list. It’s also a chance to see the little details in the animation that suggest the deep love that went into this video game. I don’t play Scott Pilgrim often, but I’ve never deleted it from the Switch, while feels telling. I’m done with the zombies for now, but I’ve just noticed a Dodge Ball mode waiting below it, so I’ll probably be back soon. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-05” author: “Catherine Messier”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. You’re playing as emojis within an anthropomorphised version of the internet, taking down enemies in four-player co-op action. Which is all well and good, but what makes Glitch Busters stand out is the sense of momentum and elasticity as you tether to your partners and dance around them. A brief 15-minute demo showed a surfeit of ideas, and a slickness to the action that belies the scrappiness of the visuals. This one could be pretty special. Martin Robinson And it’s very minimalist. Working on a small grid you place trees and buildings and lamposts and whatever until you’re done. No goal other than coming up with something you like. Instead, it’s all choices - use the next block you’re given or swap it for something else? A spire or a forest? And where to put it all? I quickly decided I wanted to stick with trees, and made a lovely muddle of trees and lamposts with no buildings in sight. Infuriatingly - it’s brilliant really - the demo is limited to five minutes of playing. My clock has counted down now. I can’t wait for the finished game. Chris Donlan I thought this game was about leading armies in some grand, turn-based-tactics medieval opera, which I’ve been craving a bit, but apparently I am also a substitute teacher with exam season coming up and an indoor garden that I need to go fishing in. I keep reading the tutorials, but they keep spawning more. I do not know what I am doing. I’m haunted by some kind of 500-year-old child. I keep acquiring items during battles but having to send them to my convoy because I don’t have enough space. I do not know what a convoy is. At least two of my students are dead. I shall press on! Chris Tapsell

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-15” author: “Phillip Simmer”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. Over the years though, I’ve managed to figure out that the best way to ’lose time’, other than sleeping (which for me is impossible on a plane) is to play a puzzle game rather than a standard action/adventure game. Baba Is You, for instance, made a six hour flight to New York a few years back practically zip by. Similarly there was Pullblox, which got me through the four hour flight to a holiday in Greece in what felt like a couple of hours. Some people can do this with films but, as I already know the approximate length of the movie I’m watching, these actually make the journey drag for me as I’m conscious of the passage of time in a way that I’m not with puzzle games. I guess it’s something to do with the extra focussing I need to do on the puzzles; as soon as I get stuck on a real head-scratcher, the real world and the rules of time go out of the window. By the time I’ve worked out the solution to a particularly taxing problem, 30 minutes or so could have gone by without me even realising. Then add multiple puzzles and the next thing I know, we’re starting our descent. For last week’s trip the puzzle game was actually The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons and, while it isn’t really a traditional, straight up puzzle game, it did offer me quite a few moments in which I was blissfully unaware of time, mainly thanks to some hard-to-find dungeons and a couple of accidentally-missed items. I’d actually never played Seasons or its partner game Ages before, which is weird considering the original Link’s Awakening is one of my favourites in the series, so I decided to grab the pair from the 3DS store as soon as I heard that it was shutting down. Graphically, aside from the extra colours, they’re very similar in style to Link’s Awakening and, aside from the seasonal twist in Seasons, the gameplay felt very familiar as well. This has meant that playing these lost chapters of Link’s adventures has been a rather nostalgic experience for me, as well as a journey of discovery. Both games run nicely on the 3DS’ emulated Virtual Console too, although they’re definitely showing their age now. For example, the need to regularly swap items is a real pain in the Darknuts thanks to the lack of face buttons on the old console. As these games are emulated they don’t utilise the extra buttons available on the 3DS so at points you can spend more time in your menus selecting the items that you need to use than you do actually using them. Thankfully, the fact that you can utilise save states balances out the creakiness of Seasons’ gameplay as it can cut down on all the backtracking you need to do when you die. Which, if you play it like me and constantly forget that there’s no dedicated sword button, is a lot… Ian Higton But it’s a game about communication, isn’t it? If you can’t communicate, and try to do it all in your head without talking and figuring it out together, it’s not going to work, which is quite a deep message about relationships really. And if you argue, you’re never going to get those cakes baked or that pasta plated, and then Gordon Ramsey is going to get really upset and probably slap the back of his hand a few times and swear. But get it right and talk to each other nicely, and the magic of Overcooked will emerge. For me, this is the magic of finding order in chaos. It swirls all around you as you try to make sense of it on the fly. And when you do, when it clicks and you collectively lose yourself in a moment of intense, productive concentration, you’ve hit the jackpot. Bertie I wish I could, though. Seeing those cute little pixelated bunnies bouncing around on a trampoline made me want to reach into the screen and squeeze them; less so when they started mating so much their pen was quickly overrun. What Let’s Build A Zoo does so well is explore the ethics of zookeeping. Animals can be bred, but most new species are saved from an animal shelter. When those bunnies kept breeding, I had the option to either euthanise or donate elsewhere. And while this is a sim game about making as much money as possible, you’re encouraged to entertain the animals, provide a healthy diet, and definitely not buy anything on the black market. You must balance the happiness of visitors and your shady investors, the environmental impact of business and consumerism. Your morality score also leads to bonuses: sure, there’s an evil route, but more satisfying is recycling materials, providing clean energy, and growing sustainable crops on your own farm. This did fail somewhat once I unlocked the splicing centre that allows you to create your own species. So hideous was the snake-rabbit I accidentally created, I immediately killed and cremated it, never to be seen again. That’s where the Dinosaur Island DLC comes into play though, which I’m yet to explore. Jurassic Park but with cute spliced dinos? Count me in. Ed Nightingale

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-23” author: “Stewart Hunter”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. In Other Waters is one of those games that doesn’t really feel like anything else, but at times I glimpse the Ordovician in it, very fleetingly. We’re on an alien world - an the Ordovician was an alien world really - afloat in the oceans. Life bubbles and swarms around us, and as we learn to manipulate the game’s wonderful interface - a busy quick-change machine that gets so much out of the Switch’s buttons and triggers - we learn to explore, and maybe come to understand a little of what’s happening here. I’m still early on in things - I have only just reached a prompt to go deeper underwater - but I’m transported. This is not an original thought, but In Other Waters uses an abstract interface and a handful of carefully chosen colour harmonies to deliver one of the most involving, panoramic, densely writable sci-fi settings I have ever encountered. And now? Deeper I go. What a game. Chris Donlan Devastator is a classic Radiangames work - fast, dazzling, precise and wonderfully crafted. It’s a twin-stick shooter that uses the sharp-edged light of Geometry Wars, but actually plays nothing like it.. Quadrants is the mode I love the best - by which I mean it’s the first mode I tried and I cannot pull myself away from it. You zip smoothly around the digital arena as orange death blooms in from every corner. The screen is divided into quadrants, and every so often the furniture in the quadrants evolves. It’s a bit like Pac-Man: Championship Edition with its rewriting mazes, but in truth it’s mainly like Devastator. Quadrants is a three-minute mode I only rarely get to the end of, and yet every time I play it I find something new. A chicane where my rebounding bullets make the screen almost unreadable. A teleport. Here’s the thing, though: Quadrants is only part of what Devastator has to offer. Hopefully I’ll get to see the rest soon. After a few more games of Quadrants, I think… Chris Donlan Climbing Flail is a riot. It uses the pull-back-and-release controls of the Twitter app to channel a kind of devilish elasticity into proceedings as you fling your ragdoll mountaineer up from one colourful handhold to the next. Navigate buzzsaws and weird red monsters, reach safe spots and dive into the abyss: everything that you probably shouldn’t have to deal with when climbing a real mountain is present here. My favorite part is that, when you reach the top, you go right back to the bottom and start again. Why? Because it’s there. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-22” author: “Cynthia Vandiver”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. It’s clear these formed the basis for the horror game’s setting, in which the inhabitants of modern day Tokyo have disappeared due to a mysterious fog. Piles of clothing, once owned, litter the streets. It’s eerily quiet, save for the sounds of shop stereos that play relentlessly. It’s a world of Yokai and ghostly spirits from Japanese folklore who stalk the neon metropolis as rain almost perpetually soaks the ground. And you’re alone, besides a surviving spirit in your head. It’s almost reminiscent of those early lockdown days, too, when everyone left inner-city areas to stay indoors and work from home. That is, until you venture inside the game’s buildings and protagonist Akito experiences visions as the walls morph and stutter around him. More mesmerising than terrifying, the game’s grim setting feels hauntingly unique but never truly scares. Yet how to smartly fill an empty world with stuff to do? Tango Gameworks hasn’t quite figured that out. Instead, Tokyo is yet another open world disappointingly over-stuffed with fetch quests, meaningless collectibles, and repetitive design - both in exploration and the flashy combat. This is a game where padding distracts from the narrative, and where you’re rewarded with new costumes you’ll ironically rarely see as it all takes place in first person. A wasted opportunity. Ed Nightingale And Deathrun TV, well, I think it might be one of the best Robotron or Smash TV-alikes I’ve ever played. It is wild! You spawn in procedurally generated chambers filled with deadly enemies and spinning blades and you whittle down the baddies twin-stick style, running and gunning. Like Robotron, there are people to save, who now follow you in a little crocodile, and you can have a weapon on each trigger. Shotgun and SMG? Why not? It has all the polish and joy I expect from Laser Dog Games, and it’s one of those demos you can play for hours and hours, unlocking stuff and beating your previous score. I am hooked. And I can’t wait for the final thing. Chris Donlan But one name came up as having the spirit of Gravity Rush, and I’m so glad I ended up checking it out. It’s Haven. I think I’ve seen it around - possibly a brief stint on Game Pass? - but I never properly investigated it. Now I have. There is a splinter of Gravity Rush in there. Haven’s a sci-fi game in which a couple of lovers race over the lazy hills of distant planets collecting stuff, clearing stuff up, and generally having adventures. Movement is absolutely gorgeous - you collect energy by following specific trails, and there’s a wonderful combination of animation and sound effects, of the world rushing past you, as you nail a run. But in between exploring you get this domestic tale unfolding, and like many reviewers, I’ve never seen anything like it. The two characters you control are properly in love - how rare to see an action game that also includes moments of sweetness and moments of negotiation as you try to navigate a partner’s mood or find out what they’re worried about. Haven is a bit like Gravity Rush, but it’s mainly like nothing else out there. And in a weird way, that was the quality that I loved so much about Gravity Rush. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-26” author: “Jayson Carrol”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. It brings back memories of heading to Electronics Boutique (remember that?) with my parents, choosing a game, and then poring over the manual on the way home, soaking up every detail of its story and artwork. Tunic turns that into a gameplay mechanic. Manual pages are hidden around the world, not only as a prize for diligent exploration but as a puzzle in themselves. English is used sparingly, tasking you with analysing the pictures and handwritten notes to make sense of the game world. It’s a game where the solution is always (hilariously) right under your nose, be that an obscured pathway you never noticed before or an object in the palm of your hands. And that’s most apparent with the manual that’s far more than a set of instructions. Tunic’s final hours present a game-within-a-game, the adventure itself becoming a giant puzzle. Is it frustratingly abstruse? Yes. Some of the game’s puzzle solutions are a little too obscure, and I’m not ashamed to admit I turned on ’no fail’ by the end so the combat wouldn’t interrupt all the puzzling. Tunic is so smart it’s like a layered trifle of lightbulb moments, each one I accompanied with a Zelda-esque “da na na naaah”. Ed Nightingale I think I can see why: how do you turn everything that’s interesting about running into a game? Memories of wrecked joysticks and Daley Thompson aside - and a marathon game I think I remember reading about in Edge way back - I have come up a bit blank. But then I picked up Lumines: Electronic Symphony, as I often do, and realised that so much about running was present here. The shifting paces from one segment to another, the different places your mind and imagination takes you. The sense - this is a compliment - of endurance that Lumines creates, since this is a puzzle game that doesn’t want to finish you off quickly by simply getting faster, a puzzle game you can easily play for the entire charge of a Vita. Lumines, it turns out, is a running game. And when I run now, I will think of this beautiful game, of its shifting colours, and of that timeline rushing across the screen, urging me onwards. Chris Donlan You get to see things afresh. Last night I reached my first Ghost House and was struck afresh by how brilliant they are. They’re a means of saving the game, but they’re also these weird multi-exit puzzle mazes where you learn to follow the rules of Mario to very strange places. What I realise now is that they’re a tutorial of sorts: they’re encouraging you to look beyond the obvious stuff and uncover a game of trick staircases and false mirrors. And they’re wonderfully spooky. Love ’em. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-30” author: “Charles Merrill”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. So, yes, I have been playing Tunic, and it is wonderful. As it has just come out, I am still not particularly far through. But that is OK. Tunic doesn’t pressurise you to keep on going if you need to pause, and I have taken great joy at the end of the day by curling up on the sofa in my pyjamas and enjoying a hot chocolate while I explore the colourful and isometric world. It is harder than I was expecting it to be, but I do not mean that as a negative. In fact, if anything it is a positive. Finding a different way round an enemy to then come back with a new weapon or understanding of said enemy is incredibly satisfying. But gameplay aside, I also love how Tunic looks and sounds. It is comforting, even in battle, and a lovely way to spend an hour or so when the work day is done. Victoria Kennedy The idea’s very simple. You move around a dark screen, feet clipping and clacking against the ground as you go. Each footstep sends out beams of light that bounce off the walls and give you a kind of bat’s-mind view of the surroundings. Early on that’s enough: navigate this dark world and find each level’s exit. Soon, though, red lines appear in the dark, which are enemies. The first level in which an enemy heard me and started to chase was something I will never forget. I’m still playing, and it’s still throwing in new ideas. Dark Echo is a treat - but quite a nasty treat. It’s proper horror. Be warned! Chris Donlan One of the things that really grabbed me, though, wasn’t the colours or the sense of simple fun, or even the inventive twists that are thrown in every few minutes. Kirby has incredible sound effects. I don’t know quite how to describe it. There’s the orchestral soundtrack, which is lovely, but then there’s your movements as Kirby - every jump, every grab of a coin. At first I was like, Oh, they’ve layered in 8-bit sound effects! But I listened again, and that isn’t quite it. It’s sort of an idealised version of what an 8-bit sound effect might be. Ping! Dink! I think it makes for a wonderful juxtaposition, anyway: you have this rusting, fully textured world, and this dramatic score, and then over the top, something harking back to the early days of games, something almost entirely abstract. Anyway! I’ll keep playing - and I’ll keep listening. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-30” author: “Monique Stricklin”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. Every few weeks I reach for the Switch and fire it up. I’m not playing on a console anymore, I’m an art student attending a weird and beautiful campus in the clouds, taking on difficult assignments. Today’s is to paint something knowing that one day it will go in a big gold frame. I wander around the campus looking for inspiration. A maze. Through a sort of mountain made of little mountains. Past a flight of steps that has a single candle at the top of it. This is why Art Sqool is great, I think. The point it makes: you move between the world and your work, and they both impact one another. I walk and think of ideas for that assignment: this candle and staircase? The purple shipping crate I found up by the huge cinema screen? No: the pink spiral tube. I stand inside, so it’s just my head and huge shiny eyes visible through the gap in the pink material. I fire up the art pad and start to sketch. This - this belongs in a golden frame. Chris Donlan They are stunningly over-powered, but it doesn’t really matter, I guess. In Fortnite you can drop something in for a few weeks and then just take it out again. The balance of the game is ever shifting. And the thing about lightsabers is that they should be overpowered. They allow you to defend against incoming fire as well as finish other players off in a few swipes - to have it any other way and they’d be props rather than the real thing - and for all the game’s goofiness, Fortnite’s lightsabers are definitely the real thing. The best part of them isn’t what they do in the moment, anyway. It’s the peculiar jolt of fear I feel when I hear another player fire one up. This is the kind of reaction you can only get if you’ve really nailed the implementation, I reckon. Lightsabers in Fortnite are brilliant, then. Bring back the balloons next pls. Chris Donlan So when Gearbox announced Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, I was intrigued. I spoke to Gearbox about the project back in November, when I concluded the team were genuinely passionate to be dipping their toes outside of Borderlands with this spin-off. New elements like the Overworld and using magic were intended to dramatically change the Borderlands formula. But stepping into Tiny Tina’s fictional world, I couldn’t help but realise how familiar it felt. Sure the environmental artists were now free to use whatever colour palette they could imagine, but the fundamentals were exactly the same: shoot, kill and loot. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Perhaps it’s because of my short exposure to the Borderlands universe, but I still have an appetite for the loot grind, and Gearbox has perfected the formula in Tiny Tina. Casting spells has so much more depth than throwing a grenade and has the added bonus if creating ever more wild enemy encounter and quests. Melee has also become a viable combat option, with new weapons dropped as frequently as firearms. I can’t say I cared much for the story (though when was the last time anyone cared about a Borderlands story), but Ashly Burch continues to be fantastic as Tina and there are great new additions like Will Arnett as the Dragon Lord and Wanda Sykes as Frette. Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands doesn’t revolutionise the looter shooter formula Gearbox popularised back in 2009, but it’s perfected it into a solid spin-off that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed. Ishraq Subhan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-18” author: “Evelyn Mckellar”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. And this lead me, inevitably, back to another of my favourite Tomb Raiders - a bit of a wilful curio. I’m talking about Lara Croft GO, which I think has landed on PCs, but which was originally designed for smartphones. GO was a promising mini-series Square-Enix had cooking for a while - there are brilliant iterations for Hitman and Deus Ex as well as Tomb Raider. It takes action games and turns them into turn-based puzzles, basically. In Lara Croft, this means you move along set routes and have to defeat enemies and collect treasure and avoid being killed by traps. It all depends on timing - knowing in what conditions a snake will bite and in which conditions you can shoot it first, for example. At the time I thought GO was a perfect distillation of a lot of things that make Tomb Raider special: the loneliness, the sense of being somewhere very hard to get to with nothing but deadly wildlife to talk to. Now, though, I see there’s something more. Lara Croft in the Core games - and in the first Crystal Dynamics trilogy - had a very specific, dependable moveset. It was a bit weird at times, but you could get used to it and internalise it. You came to learn how she would react in certain situations - the example I always use is what she would do when she reached the end of a slope. And then the best levels tasked you to really master these strange movement rules to reach improbable parts of the level. GO has all of this. Not the same moves, but the idea that Lara Croft’s movement is a thing of rules - of actions and reactions. To play the game well is to understand the rules that govern how everything in the game operates. Maybe that’s why it feels so much like Tomb Raider. Chris Donlan There’s a simplicity to the lobbies, and the pre-match line-ups punctuated by cute little emojis that look like they’ve come from the hazard warnings that used to be on the back pages of 90s games manuals - or, even better, the moment when you’re waiting for a game of football to kick off when everyone decides to perform diving headers in unison. It’s simple and stripped back, but the sparse elements that are there push you towards playfulness, and a certain politeness that makes an evening in Switch Sports’ company an absolute delight. Nintendo’s take on online is certainly unique, but when it clicks into place it can be utterly enthralling. Martin Robinson But PowerWash Simulator makes a game of the mundane. It turns a tiresome chore into a digital playground of cleanliness. I can’t stop playing. Like a first-person shooter, you simply point and click to spray - water, not bullets. Over the course of the game’s campaign (and yes, there is a kind of story) you’ll encounter vehicles and environments covered in an impossible amount of dirt. Everything is such a consistent shade you’d think it was meant to be that way. Until you start squirting. Suddenly, pristine objects emerge from the mud in sharp lines as you slowly move your jet up and down…up and down…up and down. There’s no music, just the soft splashing of water. It’s like ASMR. Different nozzles are available, from a wide spray to an intense, focused point. It’s akin to a stationary set, except you’re erasing not colouring in. And there’s a meticulousness to it all as you have to crawl and leap around every detailed surface to wash off every speck of dirt; you can press a button to reveal what’s unwashed but that almost feels like cheating. It’s meditative and immensely satisfying. And if cleaning each environment seems like too much work, there’s always co-op. I’ve been playing with my partner and we’ve had plenty of fun spraying together. Just like with real cleaning, many hands make light work. Ed Nightingale

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-21” author: “Clarence Weaver”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. Actually, it’s a brilliant puzzle game. I treated myself to a little Simogo retrospective over the weekend, and SPL-T was something I was eager to get back to. I played it for a bit when it released, many years ago, but it’s only now that it’s clicked. It’s maddeningly simple at first. Tap the screen to split the playing area. First you’ll split vertically, then horizontally, then vertically… While ultimately you’re trying to maximise points, which involves controlling certain cells of the grid you’re making as a counter ticks down, the thing that’s best to focus on at first is just staying alive, which means making sure you have areas on the grid that can still be split to make smaller areas. I am making it sound complex and headachey, and it seemed like that when I first played so many years ago. Now though I have reached a point where the rules make sense to me and I don’t have to think about them. Split split split. My advice, if you’ve bounced off this already, is to just play and play and tap away and die and get low scores and get grumpy and then play again. Eventually you start to isolate the areas that you want to understand better, and from there the whole thing unfolds. It’s weird to discover a bit late that one of your favourite studios made one of the truly great puzzle games. But that’s Simogo I guess. What a talented duo. Chris Donlan I did this trip a few years ago. Oh man, I thought: this is just like Wind-Waker. And then, when I’d had a chance to reappraise, no! It’s just like The Sailor’s Dream. Simogo again, with a game that feels like a close cousin of its papercraft mystery, Year Walk. Swipe back and forth across the ocean to discover landmarks: a lighthouse, a clifftop house. Then swipe up to land, and explore. No game since Tomb Raider has captured this sort of light: the cool shadows indoors while a warm sun blazes outside. The buildings you swipe through reveal themselves in little architectural clauses emerging from the darkness - a staircase here, a path overgrown there. Occasionally you get little pieces of text, or an item to puzzle with. Then back to the sea where you look for somewhere new and ponder how this elliptical story you’re uncovering might come together. The best way to play this game, I think, is over the course of a week - one landing per day. Treat it like a holiday, and cherish each moment you step from the boat onto new land. I am still paging back and forth across this sea of words and the places where words are clearly not enough. I am still discovering stuff. And I am rapt. I am rapt. Chris Donlan Arkham Knight, despite being the one people probably liked the least of that trilogy, is a stunner I think. It’s comedy genius as much as action and stealth and the rest. Flying about and just pummelling bad guys who look like Joe Rogan and yell “IT’S DA BAT”. The batmobile, when summoned, triggers a kind of slow-mo cutscene oner where the camera follows it twirling around, zooming in on the bat symbols in the middle of the 4-foot tires, before you stuff four people in the boot, or fold out a cannon turret, or shoot an electrified tow cable from your bonnet. Inspired. Everyone wishes they were Batman, especially video games. Chris Tapsell

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-28” author: “Robert Rebuck”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. The combat is visceral, the sound design is immaculate. It’s everything you’d expect from Creative Assembly. It terms of new stuff, diplomacy is also now a key mechanic in the game - that’s not to say that you can’t just fight and take what you want, of course. That’s still more than possible. I haven’t played other factions like Kislev, Grand Cathay and Ogre Kingdoms, but I’m already raring to go back - and either rescue or kill Ursun. Paolo Balmes It’s a skater’s dream of a world, as though one bleary eyed skater fell asleep after a day in the sun and came up with it. A world without conformity, washed with neon-bright colour. A world of no rules but camaraderie through skating, a love of skating. And I love that. It feels ebulliently free. It’s also, of course, great fun to play. Flicking my thumbs around in OlliOlli World actually reminds me a lot of those little trick-deck finger toys people used to mess around with in school - remember those? Something to occupy fidgety fingers with until the bell rang. Ah, happy days. Bertie Now I know what it feels like to conquer an enemy that fills my screen and rushes at me without invitation, and relentlessly tries to cut me down. Now I know what it feels like on the other side of fear - that feeling you get when a boss’ health bar appears on your screen you wade into the unknown (or roll away, as the case may be). More importantly: now I know something like progress in a Soulslike game, and it’s intoxicating. I owe it to the open and more accessible approach of Elden Ring. And who knows? Perhaps, down the line, it will unlock much more than one game for me. Bertie

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-04” author: “Donnie Bungard”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Horizon Forbidden West, PS5

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a game as pretty as Horizon Forbidden West. The environments feel unreal in their beauty, while the details and textures on character models and clothing are incredible. All this stunning work does mean any imperfections are very distracting though - can someone please explain why Aloy’s hair is seemingly made of wool? Despite this wonder, the Forbidden West feels like a world that doesn’t want to be explored. There’s just something off about Aloy’s movement: the way she gets stuck on scenery, the way she jumps either too high or not far enough to grab on to ladders and ledges, the way the environment hinders the fluidity of combat. Or the way mounts refuse to run through bushes and just screech to a halt. The world is so full of details and vegetation and stuff that might look nice in photo mode, but makes interaction with Aloy feel awkward and her Focus a constant necessity to find the right path. And that’s before you take a look at the overwhelming map screen. So while this latest Horizon game is a showcase for the artistic talent at Guerilla, its gameplay is an overstuffed culmination of open-world game design that was already perfected by the previous game. The combat still mostly soars and the cutscene direction is wonderful, but there’s little beyond that feels fresh. Worse still is Aloy herself. Originally a naive and likeable character who brought us along on her journey of discovery, she’s now narcissistic and entitled and obsessive about her position as saviour of the world on a very very important mission that couldn’t possibly be sidetracked by distracting errands. The first game was criticised for its white saviour complex, but Forbidden West seemingly leans into this further. I’m a fair chunk into the game so far, desperately hoping for some form of redemption. Ed Nightingale

Kingdom Hearts: Memory of Melody, Switch

As I mentioned a while back, I’ve been playing lots of Hades and its soundtrack is banging. Being the nerd I am, I wondered if there’s an official piano book released by Supergiant, because In The Blood is a fantastic song. There isn’t one sadly, but it got me thinking about games which do have official piano scores. There are two series I know they exist for - Kingdom Hearts and Final Fantasy. When I was in secondary school, I would painstakingly find scans of them on Scribd and screenshot them, arranging the blurry, zoomed-in shots together and printing them off at school to learn at home. This train of thought was happening at the same time as the recent Nintendo Direct. And during that Direct, Theatrhythm Final Bar Line was announced. I’m interested in it for tracks from 13, 13-2, and The World Ends With You, and so I ended up with a rhythm game itch and nothing to scratch it with. Then I remembered thanks to the piano books - a Kingdom Hearts rhythm game exists! I bought it with the expectation of getting a few hours’ worth of enjoyment from it and then setting it aside to play something else. It’s got me a lot more hooked than that. It’s joyful to go back to these songs I have such fond memories of and experience Kingdom Hearts in a different way. I’m still whacking Heartless, but there’s a different skill involved compared to the original games. There’s a bunch of levels and worlds I even forgot were a part of the series (Tron! The entirety of Re:coded!) and it brings back great memories when I’m reminded of them. I haven’t played Kingdom Hearts for years, so I’m not caught up with all the games that have been released since, say 2012? But I’m still going to play the tracks I don’t know, because I’ve always loved the series’ soundtracks (and to see more of Donald Duck using his staff to one-shot enemies with a bonk). This is by no means the best rhythm game I’ve ever played, and it’s certainly no Trombone Champ, but for a charmingly nostalgic trip down memory lane? My answer is simple (and clean) - absolutely worth it. And if anyone does know of more games with official piano scores, please let me know! I may have a new niche interest… Liv Ngan

Disney Dreamlight Valley, Xbox

Disney Dreamlight Valley is like Animal Crossing in a magic carnival mirror, where its look has lost some of its definition, but where the warps and curves of its reflexion have found fun new forms. Gone is Nintendo’s obsession to detail and restrictive design. In its place, a messier but no less physical thing - holding all of the same great ingredients inside. So yes, Scrooge McDuck is your Tom Nook, and Goofy your go-to for selling apples and cabbages. But this is also a version of Animal Crossing freed from Nintendo’s narrower progression path and customisation limits. Want to uproot McDuck’s business and plonk it anywhere on the map without waiting overnight? Want to freely edit your town’s furniture at any time on the fly? Want to customise your clothing without asking a hedgehog for a pattern? There’s a looseness to Dreamlight Valley which feels wonderfully open. Finally, and most disappointingly in Animal Crossing, it feels like Dreamlight Valley could go on forever. After such an incredible launch, Nintendo seemed to scale back New Horizons’ live support and ditch it completely after a year. Disney clearly has a content schedule - and a monetisation plan to go alongside it - to last for years, with a never-ending roll-call of Disney and Pixar people whose worlds you must save before welcoming them to your town. It’s very Animal Crossing but also not - and that’s no bad thing. Tom Phillips

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-17” author: “Kathy Reynolds”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. You play as Meredith Weiss, a big city professional working during the computing boom of the late 1980s. You have a tiring desk job, a boss who bothers you on holidays, and a sense that despite holding the fort for everyone around you, your work remains unappreciated. But then your father calls, and asks if you can cover his mail shift for two weeks in his sleepy lake town in rural Oregon. It’s time for a working holiday! I first discovered Lake last summer, when its demo popped up on Xbox. Now released and recently added to Xbox Game Pass, I persevered with the full thing over the holidays. It felt a bit like I’d taken a working holiday myself, to the game’s relaxing country roads, gentle storytelling, and deliberately repetitious gameplay. I liked how Lake did not outstay its welcome - your fortnight in Providence Oaks is laid out in diary form from the beginning, and totals around five real-world hours. I also felt it provided a pretty accurate depiction of small-town life - with friendly faces to get to know, oddballs and the occasional arsehole.
When all’s said and done, I felt like I did at the end of a lot of my holidays - in some ways refreshed, in others missing some of my usual routines (and yes, even work). There’s a long-telegraphed choice to make at the end of it all. I’d be interested to hear what everyone else picked!
Tom Phillips So when Super Mario Odyssey released in 2017 to critical acclaim, I was sceptical. I threw it on my list of games I’ll eventually get round to, which I have four years later. What I experienced was an absolute delight. Super Mario Odyssey shakes up the platforming formula just as Super Mario 64 did in 1996. Nintendo had the courage to push the boundaries while retaining just enough elements from the series so it still feels familiar. There’s so much to explore and collect, none of which feels forced or meaningless as one has come to expect with a modern open-world title. Movement and combat feels crisp and smooth, while throwing Cappy with a gesture using my Joy-Cons feels effortless. Most of all, Nintendo proves that having cutting-edge graphics is not the be-all and end-all to the success of a game. Ishraq Subhan But Little Misfortune is a game all about accidents. This delightful, darkly comic game from Swedish developer Killmonday Games was released back in 2019 and has largely flown under the radar. It’s a point-and-click adventure that follows the titular Misfortune on a quest to gain eternal happiness for her alcoholic mother who suffers at the hand of an abusive father. With tough subjects seen through the eyes of a child, Little Misfortune touches on incredibly serious topics but often with a comic edge. Suicide, substance abuse and more rub shoulders with slapstick humour in a macabre concoction that swings wildly between extremes. Hilarious and horrifying in equal measure, it doesn’t always land but still has plenty of heart. Along the way, there are tonnes of accidents. Choice and consequence are at the core of gameplay and it’s never quite clear what the effects will be. That makes it wonderfully random and often shocking. Which brings us back to that pup. I threw a ball, desperate to play. But after cackling as the ball bounced back and smacked Misfortune in the face, that schadenfreude soon turned to horror as a tree branch swiftly fell on the poor doggo. I’m sorry puppy, I’ll never forget you. Ed Nightingale Last year, for instance, it was Ubisoft’s decent but terribly titled Breath of the Wild clone, Immortals Fenyx Rising. This year however, I decided to play through some Zelda games from the past that had previously escaped my attention. This quest was sparked off by my brother who gave me a Zelda Game & Watch for Christmas. It’s a brilliant little machine that looks like the Game & Watches of old, but instead of one jittery LCD game, it contains Zelda’s 1 and 2 for the NES and the GameBoy version of Link’s Awakening. By following a guide, I was able to finally complete Zelda 1 for the very first time (it’s super hard and I’ve tried many times in the past to do it without one so don’t judge me) after a solid day’s worth of playing. That left me with a taste for retro Zelda action so, after having a little look at which ones I’d missed, I climbed up into my loft to rescue my Wii U. It turns out the Wii U is the perfect Zelda machine because its online store holds a host of hard-to-find Zelda titles. First I played Wind Waker HD which I loved, despite an unfortunate power cut that caused me to lose hours of progress. To buy that game physically for the GameCube will cost you an arm and a leg, but digitally on the Wii U? Twenty notes - bargain! Then, thanks to the Wii U’s dual screen, I was able to download and play Wind Waker’s DS based sequel, Phantom Hourglass, which cost less than a tenner. Initially it felt strange controlling Link with a stylus but I soon got the hang of it and ended up really enjoying the way the stylus and built-in Wii U microphone played into the puzzles. There are still plenty of past Zelda games that I need to play through - I’m very much looking forward to Spirit Tracks and the Oracle games - but to be honest with you, after all of that, I think I need a bit of a break from Zelda for a while… Still at least I’ve got something to look forward to playing next Christmas! Ian Higton

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-19” author: “Rosario Kirkland”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Crux: The Great Outdoors, iOS

One of the things I am always up for in a video game is mountain climbing. Mountain climbing, rock climbing, bouldering. These are the things I wish I did in real life. It’s the video game as wish fulfilment. My mother was a huge fan of mountaineering, and out house was filled with books by mountaineers and climbers. What’s fascinating is that everyone seemed to approach the task differently. They’re all one-offs, if that’s possible. No Venn diagrams overlap. So it is with climbing games. My daughter loves Climbing Flail, in which you sort of rubber-band your way up a mountain moving from one hold to the next and losing limbs as you go. This week I discovered Crux: The Great Outdoors, which could not be more different. Crux sees the wall you’re climbing as a series of nodes, and you use one side of the screen to move your hands and the other to move your feet. It takes a lot of getting used to, but when it clicks I feel like I’ve learned something deeper about the challenges of real-life climbing. As abstracted as this game is, it delivers a sense of climbing as being a sort of orchestration of all the different parts of you. It’s wild. Chris Donlan

The Good Life, Xbox

So, this is an odd one for me. I have been dipping into The Good Life on and off for a while now, and I can’t tell you what it is about the game that keeps luring me back in because, in truth, I can’t say I particularly like it. I initially started playing it while I waited for something else to happen - perhaps I was waiting for the oven timer to ’bing’ for my supper? I honestly don’t know. But anyway, I digress. In short, I saw it on Game Pass and thought I would give it a whirl simply because I liked the name and it reminded me of the show called The Good Life that I watched with my mother when I was younger. Admittedly, not the best reason to choose a game, but that is what it was. So, as I have already said, I am not a huge fan of the game itself. And yet, despite this, there is something endearing about it. Perhaps it is the cosy village setting. I have always been quite partial to the rural-living seen in shows such as The Vicar of Dibley and The Darling Buds of May. Perhaps it is the animals in there, of which there are many (I won’t spoil anything). Perhaps I am just enjoying the easy-going mindlessness it allows me to savour between the chaos of work, family, pets, and just life in general. Who can say, certainly not me. However, later on this evening I will probably dip my toe back into this unusual and yet familiar setting while waiting for my pie to finish cooking in the oven, even if I don’t really know why I am there. Victoria Kennedy

Gunbrella demo, PC

Gunbrella is fabulous. It’s my favourite demo from the current Steam Next Fest; I am just so glad I found it. Welcome to a pixelly action-platformer painted in sepia tones and with a hint of Steampunk to it. You move from town to town taking on quests and pushing back the forces of villainy. Mainly you ponder how lucky you are to have a gunbrella in your life. The gunbrella is primarily a weapon. But it’s also an umbrella. You can open it out and you suddenly have a whole new world of options. Deflection? Sure. Perfect for timing just right to take down turrets. But also traversal. Jump up and open the gunbrella and enjoy a sudden updraught. I already love spotting an enemy on a platform above me, and then gunbrella-ing into range, dropping out of the sky just behind them. What else? Rail-riding! This is always money in the bank. Use the gunbrella to zip along clothes lines and race through the skies. Move about the enemies beneath you before they’ve even spotted where you were. The Gunbrella demo is surprisingly generous. You get a decent chunk of adventure with a few quests, a bit of the dialogue system, and a lovely puzzle about moving bookcases. All of that is fabulous. But the reason you turned up is for Gunbrella’s gunbrella. I am counting the days until this game is properly out. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-25” author: “Joy Skipper”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Prodeus, Xbox

Ripping and tearing my way through the original DOOM games was easily some of the best gaming experiences of my youth. That series has some of the most memorable weapons to have featured in a video game and they’re a joy to use, but DOOM 2’s Super Shotgun felt especially amazing. I can still hear the incredible ‘BOOM’ it made as it fired, and that super satisfying trio of clicks that it made as new shells were loaded into it. The best bit though was the way that any hellspawn unlucky enough to be stood right in front of the barrel would just burst into gibs as soon as you pulled the trigger. It delivered such stupidly incredible carnage, it was overexaggerated, amped-up annihilation and up until recently, it felt like one of the most powerful video game guns I’d ever fired. But that was before I played Prodeus. Prodeus wears its DOOM inspirations on its sleeve, it’s not ashamed to be mimicking one of the greats and indeed, its developers seem to be totally attuned as to what exactly it was that made the old-school DOOM games so special. The POWER! You’re not trapped in there with demons, they’re trapped in there with you, etc, etc! And don’t get me wrong, there are countless moments in Prodeus that make you feel powerful, but there’s one moment in Prodeus that sticks in my mind over all others and that’s the first time you get to lay your hands on the Minigun. It happens early on in the game, during the ‘Research’ level, after you’ve liberated the weapon from the cold dead hands of the first Heavy Minigun Zombie you meet. As this huge gun appears in your hands a small platform begins rising up at one end of the room, unleashing a horde of zombies that march towards you in a tight bunch. With a squeeze the trigger the barrel of the gun starts spinning, leaving you with a couple of seconds of panic as nothing at all happens except for a whirr that rises in pitch. Then suddenly, once the barrel reaches full speed, hot lead begins to spew forth as the weapon emits a booming roar that sounds kind of like the noise I’d imagine a dragon to make if it got kicked square in the nuts. And then those zombies? Well, they just kind of vanish. Erupting into bright red blooms of blood as huge, chunky splatters of gore arc up and out and over the room, like fleshy fireworks that cover the walls and floors with a glossy red sheen. It’s a wonderfully gory sight, like something out of an early Peter Jackson movie, but it doesn’t end there. The very next section puts you inside the tight confines of a train carriage, it loads you up to the eyeballs with minigun food and then, as the doors slide open to the next carriage, you’re offered up a straight line of fish-in-a-barrel targets to evaporate. It’s so over the top, and almost needlessly extreme but it just looks and feels so amazing to do. It’s the perfect introduction to this incredible gun too, and I dare you to try that section out and not end up with a huge smile on your face. And then, as you stride down that once full, now empty train with chunks of pixelated viscera dripping from the ceiling to the floor, I can pretty much guarantee that all you’ll want to do next is hear that minigun roar once more. Ian Higton

Destiny 2 King’s Fall, Xbox

It’s good to be back on the Dreadnaught. Expansion The Taken King - like many others - was when I was most into the original Destiny, and so to revisit the reprised King’s Fall raid in Destiny 2 has been a weird homecoming for a series that still feels rather new. (Fun fact - King’s Fall is now seven years old. Where does the time go?) From memory, it was a raid I was rather lukewarm towards, but whether due to smart tweaks by Bungie or a friendly raid group, it holds up far better than I expected. Destiny raids are some of the game’s most demanding activities - often too demanding in some cases - but King’s Fall strikes the right balance between giving everyone a role without putting too much pressure on one or two people to deliver, or to remember dozens of symbols or callouts. It’s a welcome return, in other words. It’s also great to rediscover the Dreadnaught itself - a Giger-esque structure that few other Destiny destinations have matched for atmosphere before or since - and the view of Oryx spiralling towards Saturn after being blasted to pieces has yet to be topped as far as finales go. Let’s not forget it’s home to the most iconic jumping puzzles in series history either - where players navigate a confusing armada of ships and a ‘dick wall’ in the first and second half of the raid respectively. What I’ve discovered is that, even if you’ve been away from Destiny for a while, it’s amazing how running a raid rejuvenates your interest in everything else. I’m now eyeing up other end game content with renewed vigour - do I start farming Lost Sectors, and dare attempt a Grandmaster at some point? - all in the knowledge it could make the next King’s Fall run a little smoother. As I say - it’s good to be back. Matthew Reynolds

Kevin Costner’s Waterworld, PC

Earlier this week, I wrote a news story about Kevin Costner’s Waterworld, an indie game based on a joke made in The Simpsons from all the way back in the 90s. For a quick bit of context on this, in the episode ‘The Springfield Files’, Bart’s friend Milhouse is seen inserting 40 quarters into an arcade machine of Waterworld, a game based on the panned and famously expensive film from 1995. He then takes on the role of Kevin Costner’s character, The Mariner. However, Milhouse only gets to take one step in the game before the machine proclaims he must deposit 40 more quarters to keep playing - something he swiftly does. Now, with my job being what it is, I did not feel that I could report on this news without playing the game for myself. So, I downloaded the free PC game from Itch and set out to discover just what lies beyond that single step we saw Milhouse take in season eight. Well, I am pleased to say I made it further than Milhouse. However, while this game is certainly amusing, my word it is infuriating. Every time I got a Game Over (something that happened quite a lot, I won’t lie) I was required in-game to reinsert 40 quarters, while the game kept a running tally of how much I had spent in the top right corner. Thankfully, after the initial deposit which I painstakingly issued quarter by quarter with my mouse, all subsequent payments were made with big chunky fistfulls of coins, making the process a bit slicker. I do, of course, appreciate this is all part of the gag. So, to conclude, Kevin Costner’s Waterworld, I both love you and loathe you. You have made me smile, that is most definitely the case. But even with a smile on my face, I am starting to get repetitive strain injury with all this coin work, and, to be honest, I am not sure how much longer I can ultimately keep this going for… Victoria Kennedy

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-08” author: “Catherine Browne”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Reefland, PC

Reefland was one of the many games that had a demo available during the most recent Steam Next Fest, and I’ve had my eye on it since. At the beginning of the week, it released into Early Access and I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my time with it. The game is a city-builder puzzler. Greyscale maps of hexagonal tiles are procedurally generated, with some of the tiles containing resources. Water tiles could have fish or boats on them, and land tiles might have trees or minerals. You’re given a few random buildings and improvements to place on tiles. As you place your buildings, colour will spread across the island. Reefland takes what I like about the Civilisation series and Dorfromantik and blends them into an amazing strategic challenge. You have to be very aware of where your resources are and what to place near them, as this affects your score. For example, if you have some sheep, you could place a house next to it. But if there’s ore next to the house and you choose to put a mine on that ore, you’ll incur a penalty. You end up having to weigh up the scores of each of your placements - if I put down a lighthouse before I put fishermen down on any fish within its range, I won’t get any bonus points, but how do I know if the game will give me some fishermen? It can be a bit frustrating with the improvements you’re given. They’re random as far as I’m aware, and there’s been a number of times when I’ve been given a load of paddocks but there’s no more sheep left to use them on. The game just came out in Early Access though, so I’m not too bothered about balance issues. The music and art style is very relaxing, and your aim is to colour a certain percentage of the island to unlock the next level. There’s currently 15 levels, each with their own colour scheme and biome, and I’ve almost unlocked them all. Currently, the creative mode is still in development, but until then, I love trying to rack up as many points as possible. My high score at time of writing is 3260, though I’m sure it won’t stand for very long! Liv Ngan

Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator, Xbox

Lately, my time has been occupied by Space Warlord Organ Trading Simulator. It’s like the stock market but in space. The frantic and constant need to check organ prices drives me forward and the dopamine rush of profitable innards is always a plus, although sometimes it’s more about the euphoria of an absolute capitalistic frenzy and nursing organs back to health only to immediately sell them for profit. The concept seems novel but I’ve experienced starting in on it at 9am only to turn around and discover that I have been playing for 6 hours straight. Warping through time is always a blast. Paolo Balmes

Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Switch

“Who’s gonna run in fear, while screaming ‘Mamma miaaaaa’?” sings Phantom. Not, not the guy with the white mask ‘of the opera’ fame. This is Phantom, the rabbid, boo, gramophone hybrid singing opera in the midst of Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle. And it’s pure art. Not since the operatic Great Mighty Poo in Conker’s Bad Fur Day has a singing video game boss had me cackling. Nothing quite beats the absurdity of a gigantic turd passionately emoting about sweetcorn before being flushed away, but Phantom comes close. His little aria has everything. Like every operatic diva, his entrance comes at a dramatic point in the narrative (here, the climax of the game’s spooky third world) and he - quite literally - will not leave the spotlight. There’s romance (“My art will touch your princess’s heart and you will be pulled apart”). There’s tragedy (“Who leaves me grey and grim? Oh, what does Peach see in him?”). There are scathing put downs (“Slithering down every pipe, despite his plumb-shaped body type”) and funny rhymes (““It’s-a-me, let’s-a-go!” The only words you know!”). And, really, a fair summation of the Mario games as a whole: “You’re so not worth the hassle. Your princess is in another castle!” I jest, I love a good Mario platformer. But Mario + Rabbids offers a fresh take on the series I didn’t expect. It’s more puzzle than strategy game, combining Nintendo’s exquisite gameplay with Ubisoft’s flair for comedy. I’ve been playing the game in preparation for the sequel out this week, but I’m enjoying it so much more than I thought I would I’m worried that Sparks of Hope can’t compete. Unless, of course, there’s another musical number… Ed Nightingale

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-23” author: “Cheryl Pichardo”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Lego Bricktales, PC

I’ve been itching to play Lego Bricktales ever since I read Tom’s review: a Lego game in which you actually use Lego bricks to make things! Solve problems, build bridges and vehicles and all sorts. And then your jumbled solutions appear in the world. Nice. I’ve put a few hours in so far, and I’ve mainly been in awe of how good everything feels. Building Lego inside a computer has sounded like a bit of a fudge ever since that Douglas Coupland book JPod. Or was it Microserfs? Anyway it’s nothing like a fudge here: one brick at a time, simple controls to rotate and raise and lower the piece in space, and a lovely sense of connection. In terms of real Lego bricks, this is called Clutch Power, incidentally: the matter of how nicely one brick sticks to another. Lego has it, and the competitors often don’t. Bricktales has it too. Now I’m off to build a bridge. Chris Donlan

Phantom Abyss, Xbox

I played Phantom Abyss when it was first out as an early access game on PC. Now it’s an early access game on Game Pass. It feels good to play it on the sofa, but there’s an added bonus: so many new players to adventure alongside! Phantom Abyss is clever stuff. You explore a procedurally generated dungeon in first person, avoiding traps and collecting loot, all while being chased by a terrifying dungeon guardian. The twist is that people all over the world are served the same dungeon until someone survives all the way to the end. You play alongside the ghosts of people who have tried and failed before you. That’s unnerving. But the glory of it! If you reach the end you will be the only person who ever completed this dungeon. That premise works if the dungeons feel distinct, and while they don’t fully hit that mark at the moment, they’re well built with nice set-piece rooms that give a touch of authorship to proceedings. To distract you elsewhere is lovely movement: I dig the slide move, but I adore the way I can leap across huge gaps with the whip. I loaded up earlier this week and it suddenly felt like there were a lot more ghosts alongside me in the dungeon. That’s Game Pass I guess: a boost in player numbers. Then I died, quite quickly, and I became a ghost just like all the others. Chris Donlan

Marvel Snap, iOS

Apologies - I know we’ve already had one Marvel Snap piece this week, but it’s the main thing I’ve been playing outside of stuff for review, and it’s also reminded me what a magical time for card games the first few weeks can be. Yes, for one thing it’s because not everybody you play is an absolute master just yet - the meta isn’t punishing you and you aren’t up against people who have already spent thousands of pounds on cards and learned hundreds of hours of lessons. It’s a pleasure for sure to play a new game when everyone’s learning. More than that, though, I’m just really enjoying the cards - and enjoying not knowing all the cards and what they can do. This means that every other game someone plays a card I’ve never seen before, or a card that works in a way I couldn’t imagine. Hulk Buster! Just saw that card for the first time and it properly dazzled me. I lost, obv, but it was worth it just to see some Hulk Busting on display. Honestly, every other game is like this at the moment - something I’ve never seen, something I have seen used in a way I could not have predicted. Marvel Snap is a bit of a melancholy experience I suspect: I play it knowing that soon there will come a day when the game has just evolved away from me. But until then, what a thing this is. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-30” author: “Walter Stonebraker”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. It was like the game heard me. Suddenly, a kind of enemy I couldn’t defeat quickly enough flooded my screen, and I couldn’t get out from the pack surrounding and suffocating me. So I dove through a part of them to escape, still confident enough to think I could do that, and half my health disappeared. Then, I panicked. I was scrabbling, on the run, desperately looking for breakable objects I could get a roast chicken health-drop from. But all the time, my health was being nibbled away at and the inevitability of death was rapidly catching up with me. Then another large wave boxed me in a corner and, overcome, I died. This all happened in the space of about 30 seconds. I was humbled in the blink of an eye, and left staring blanky at the screen. Sometimes I really hate you Vampire Survivors. Challenge accepted. Bertie So I did, even though Silent Hill 2 is surprisingly difficult to get hold of these days. I found a very pricey special edition PS2 version in a nearby game store, but instead opted to play the HD remaster released on Xbox 360 (and PS3) that’s available via Xbox back compatibility. It’s a bit of a frustrating play these days. The design is archaic with its lack of direction, the puzzles are abstruse, and the interiors are so dark it’s almost impossible to see anything. I’m sure purists will love this and I can appreciate it’s a game of its time. But a few modern tweaks wouldn’t go amiss, so I’m definitely looking forward to Bloober’s remake to see how far it goes in switching things up. Even in this old form, though, I love Silent Hill 2 for being a horror game that doesn’t rely on jumps and cheap scares. It thrives on its eerie, oppressive atmosphere: the washed out visuals devoid of life, the creepy sound design, the iconic enemy designs of Pyramid Head and those nurses. It’s no wonder it remains such a cult classic all these years later. And one more thing: I love that you can separately set the difficulty of combat and puzzles, so I can test my brain more than my reactions. More games should do this! Ed Nightingale I’m not going to suggest that Live by the Sword: Tactics, which just recently came to consoles, is better than Tactics Ogre, but it’s certainly more in tune with some of my tastes. A stripped-back take on the genre built predominantly around 5v5 battles rather than the vast armies at your disposal in Tactics Ogre, it’s an enjoyably direct take on the kind of tactical RPG action Matsuno was once known for (and that he’d perfect, I’d suggest, in the incredible Final Fantasy Tactics). After a couple of hours, though, I’m starting to find this particular spin on the genre perhaps a little too shallow - but it’s been a fun couple of hours nevertheless, and if you’ve any love for a genre that’s sadly often overlooked there’s plenty worthwhile to be found here. Martin Robinson

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-17” author: “Joseph Cobb”

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Vermintide 2, PC

Vermintide 2 was free last week and my friends decided to give it a go. It’s safe to say they enjoyed it! From the different classes to the wildness of co-op, it was a blast to mow down rats and Chaos Troops - especially the giant angry refridgerator bosses. There is a certain charm to games such as these. My friends are even considering getting the 40K equivalent, Darktide. If you’ve been having doubts about picking this game up, or its 40K counterpart, this is the sign that you have been waiting for. Paolo Balmes

God of War: Ragnarök, PS5

It’s refreshing to be playing a linear game again. When so many games go open world and smother their maps with icons to hoover up, God of War: Ragnarök instead offers a tightly choreographed thrill ride. There are flashy setpieces, there are quiet moments of character, and it’s all seamlessly held together with a family soap opera drama wrapped up in Norse mythology. The breadth of the game and its sense of gargantuan scale is impressive, but so too are the smaller mythological details stuffed away in the codex. Every brutish smash of Kratos’ axe has heft, but even he is rendered tiny compared to the grandest mythical beasts in the nine realms. The art direction is truly exceptional, offering a fresh take on Norse mythology when so many games mine it for inspiration. Each new beat offers a feast for the eyes. The biggest criticism of the game has been its pacing, and I have to agree there are issues there. I think there are two reasons. In part it’s because so much is crammed into the game - plenty to immerse yourself in, but some slower moments that drag on. But it’s also due to that continuous single shot. Unless the level design is circular, you know each dead end means turning back and retracing steps. That choice might be cinematic, but a cut wouldn’t go amiss. Ragnarök is a typical Sony first-party game. It’s a powerhouse release that runs beautifully on the new console, and a feelgood blockbuster for everyone - especially with its accessibility options. But it’s also conservative, offering no revolutionary gameplay. Still, this is a thrill ride I don’t want to get off. Ed Nightingale

Marvel Snap, iOS

Argh, so sorry - still playing Marvel Snap. I know the point is coming where I’ll be completely overwhelmed by players who understand the meta and have built better decks, but so far I’m still having fun. I like the surprisingly wildness of this game, I think. You can do stuff with combos of card and location that lead to weird outcomes. Last night, I put Odin in Bar Sinister and created an accidental Odin loop. Bar Sinister fills the location with copies of the card you put into it. I chose Odin because he has 8 power, but I forgot that he also activates the On Reveal abilities of all other cards at that location. As the copies of Odin started to appear, each one triggered and retriggered the On Reveal abilities of the other Odins, who then triggered the abilities in turn. It went on for about a minute and a half, which is quite a long time in a game as quick as this. It was beautiful and slightly unnerving to watch. I still lost, though. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-29” author: “Brandon Peres”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Return to Monkey Island, Xbox Series X

Is it possible to feel nostalgic for a game you’re still playing? Return to Monkey Island is such a brilliantly faithful return for LucasArts’ long-lost adventure franchise that it also feels like an entry I half-remember playing over a decade ago, sprinkled with fresh surprises. I mean this in the best possible way, of course. There’s all the elements you’d hope for - Dominic Armato’s ever-cheerful Guybrush Threepwood, Elaine, LeChuck, Stan and Murray. I’m sure Herman Toothrot is lurking around somewhere too. There’s the signature anachronistic humour, the warmly-tweaked take on Saturday matinee pirates, and the twisted logic required to solve puzzles. I’m not hugely far through, just mopping up Melee Island, and I’m currently stuck. That feels familiar too. Of course there’s all the new bits and pieces to help - the in-game hint book, for example - but I’m skipping that for now. I need the full nostalgia hit of trying everything, wandering Return to Monkey Island’s many locations, and letting this gift of a game sink in. After all, who knows how long it will be until the next? Tom Phillips

King of Fighters 98: Ultimate Match Final Edition

Having grown up in the 90s and early 00s, I’ve always been what you would call an arcade rat, and while browsing through my Steam Library I came across this gem - bought in a random sale - that I thought was lost to time. Upon dusting it off, I unlocked a lot of core memories - having to re-learn pretzel motions and the like - while also remembering that a lot of SNK Bosses stole my lunch money in my futile attempt to try and beat them. If any of you have the time, play it. Paolo Balmes

Resident Evil Village, PC

It’s been a hot while since I last played this, and I mean something like a year. When DLC for it was announced way, way back in June 2021, I decided I wanted to wait until it was released before jumping back into the game again. It was a silly decision in retrospect, because of how large the gap was between Village’s original release and when the Winters’ Expansion finally came out, but I had my own reasons for it. I’ve been playing the main campaign in third-person mode and it’s a bit jarring when the camera has to shift back into first-person for cutscenes, but apart from that I much prefer playing it. I forgot how funny some of Ethan’s dialogue is, even if he is a bit bland as a character himself. I’m not that far into the story at the moment; I’m very much enjoying being chased around Castle Dimitrescu by the lady herself and smashing all of her pots and windows! I also tried out Mercenaries for the first time. I was never a huge fan of Mercenaries in the previous Resident Evil games (getting a solid combo with those tank controls in RE5? No way) but Village nails it for me. It’s fluid and fast-paced, and a completely different experience to the main game. So far I’ve been maining Ethan and maxing out the M1911 pistol. It’s great fun unloading a ton of bullets into enemies, something which I wouldn’t dream of doing in the campaign (when I’m not using a weapon with unlimited ammo, that is). I haven’t unlocked Lady Dimitrescu or Heisenberg as playable characters yet, which is next up on my to-do list. I have played through Shadows of Rose. I have Thoughts about it, but there were a couple of really cool points that stuck with me. That bit when the lift doors open and the camera tilts down so the perspective changes? I really loved that shot. And that ending fight? Give me a whole game of that! Liv Ngan

Sonic Frontiers, PS5

It’s well known how much time Miyamoto spent perfecting Mario’s movement in Super Mario 64, but Sonic Team never seem to have spent the same amount of time and care on its blue hedgehog. As a result, the 3D outings have always struggled with controls. The blue blur just cannot be contained. Sonic Frontiers does come close, though - at least, in the open zone. Finally Sonic has been given the space to speed around freely. No time limits. No restrictions. Each zone is a sandbox to bounce and boost and charge and race through, collecting rings and tokens, grinding and flipping more than Tony Hawk could ever manage. Never before has being Sonic felt this good. That is, until you hit the cyberspace levels. Once more Sonic is restricted, forced along a narrow path, momentum stalled at the slightest touch of a barrier. Getting the perfect run through repetition and learning is eventually satisfying, but it feels like a fight against the controls more than the environment. Sonic Frontiers is a mixed bag, then. Its freedom is wonderful, but it comes at the expense of pop-in, an under-developed plot, and a confusing structure. And I still long for an open Sonic game with the aesthetic of Sonic CD’s animated intro, instead of the dismal realism on display here. Yet Sonic Team should be applauded for continuing to experiment with its mascot - this latest is more right than wrong. Oh, and do yourself a favour: switch to 60fps mode and turn off the blur effect. It all looks far clearer that way. Ed Nightingale

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-05” author: “Kathrine Edgerton”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Pokémon Violet, Switch

I’m having a lot of fun with Pokémon Violet. A fully open world Pokémon game is a step towards the perfect vision I and many players have had since my tween days playing Blue. Both major and minor changes have been made in this latest instalment; it’s just frustrating they come with some caveats. The open world design allows a sense of freedom Pokémon fans have longed for. Finally you can choose the order of gyms and strategise based on your party, or you can spend time simply roaming the land adding Pokémon to your collection. The flipside is an empty world with little to discover but locked doors and bland environments. And I miss the dungeon-like themed gyms of the past. The Let’s Go feature is a welcome change that allows you to quickly level up your party and streamline battles, which no longer occur in a separate screen making it all feel more alive. Yet this also makes Pokémon feel more disposable, with less time to develop a connection. And you’ll want a connection with the new designs, among the most adorable yet conceived. Then there’s the glorious bookshelf Pokédex; the use of Spanish words to add character to dialogue; the brilliant music (the slap bass in the battle theme!); and small tweaks like auto heal and switching lead Pokémon. There’s a joyful adventurous spirit that, despite the game’s flaws, is inescapable. Yes, the performance is appalling, but the core gameplay is solid. Pokémon Violet offers comfort food as I journey through Paldea with my sassy dancing duck and perfectly baked, sugary sweet, glossy coated cinnamon bun dog. I must stop salivating over him, though. Ed Nightingale

Bugsnax, PS5

Bugsnax was a launch title for the PlayStation 5 that I immediately ignored for the much more grown-up Spider-Man: Miles Morales. But with Sony’s foray into games as a subscription model, I decided to download the game on a whim. I wish I did it earlier. The game is both delightful and terrifying at the same time. On the one hand the game is remarkably simple and light-hearted: go and collect these half-insect/half snack creatures to feed the newly immigrated populace of human-like Grumpuses. There is an immediate sense of uneasiness about collecting these talking and moving burgers/French fries/strawberries with the intention of dropping them into the mouths of a Grumpuse. But what happened next was not something I expected at all. Feeding a Strabby to Filbo Fiddlepie, the self-appointed Mayor of Snaxburg, changed his hand into a strawberry! “Oh this? Pretty neat, huh? It’s a side-effect of eating Bugsnax!” Filbo says nonchalantly, as if it wasn’t absolutely terrifying to witness. But it’s that commitment to a rosy and deceptively family friendly vibe that makes Bugsnax so great. I’ve yet to finish the game but I can sense a deeply sinister ending awaits. As for the gameplay, none of the puzzles were terribly difficult but were challenging enough to still feel like an accomplishment when you have the “aha!” moment. And that’s what makes this game a perfect addition for my rotation of games. When I feel too tired to sweat it out in Call of Duty or invest myself in a narrative heavy Yakuza game, I can always turn to Bugsnax at the end of the day. Ishraq Subhan

Burnout Paradise, Xbox

I came downstairs at some point last weekend and my daughter was playing Burnout Paradise. This was one of the first games she ever played - I can still remember her wild giggling as she rammed her car against railings and sent up endless showers of those beautiful Burnout sparks. As such it’s been an excellent means to study her development with games. She’s nine now, and an absolute Burnout demon. She used to weave back and forth on the road and now she has beautiful focus, and has uncovered a load of short cuts that would never have occurred to me. What I love most though is that I watch her play and I understand what’s important to her. She doesn’t like doing the races or any of the events. The city is just a big playground and she explores it, thinking about the buildings, choosing a spot where she might live, and sort of doodling around the map with her car. What a game. And what a perfect introduction to games in general. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-25” author: “Alva Hamm”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Paradise Marsh, Switch

I would love to live near a good marsh - just a place for me to knock around, squelching about, checking out the bugs and whatnot and feeling moody. Alas, not a marsh to be seen - which makes Paradise Marsh all the more welcome. There is a game here, about collecting stuff and returning the stars to the sky, but now that’s out of the way I feel more free to explore what’s really great about this endlessly beautiful thing. I wander around the marsh, watching the day turn to night, the colours move through the spectrum, one area giving way to another. I love games that are transporting - that take you somewhere else. And I think what I really love about them is that moment where you return. Paradise Marsh is great at this. I’m out there in the wilds, and then I shut the thing off and I’m startled to find myself back at my desk, my cat asleep next to me. Do give this game a go. Chris Donlan

Pilotwings, Switch

Pilotwings 64 landed on the Switch a few weeks back, and I’ve discovered I’m a bit too nervous to go back to it. It was a favourite game back in the day - I don’t know if I want to see if it holds up. Instead, I’ve gone back to the SNES version of Pilotwings, also on the Switch. And it’s been a proper journey. Suddenly I am back in the early 1990s, looking at screens of this game in Mean Machines and wondering how it’s possible. Not wondering how the graphics are possible, although there’s still a thrill to everything the SNES does with Mode 7 in Pilotwings - the ground coming towards you, but also the title spinning out at you on the start screen. Wow. More I remember wondering how it was possible that someone would think to make a game about that - a dreamy game about skymindedness in all its forms, in an era where genres were already starting to ossify. Pilotwings still has that sense of freedom. The freedom of the air, sure, but also the freedom to pick a new direction for games, to think afresh about what games could be. You know, maybe I will check in on Pilotwings 64 after all… Chris Donlan

Skate City, iOS

How lovely to come back to Skate City, which has added Venice in my absence. Venice Beach, that is, the Venice I know best. Here it is, with its uneven sidewalks, its encroaching sand, its basketball courts and low sun-faded buildings. I play it and can almost smell the pot smoke tumbling on the summer breeze. Free Skate is where this game lives, I think. It’s a great skating game with an excellent, flexible, empowering trick system, but in Free Skate it becomes a series of places. Skate City’s cities are long strips of paper unspooling, but magical paper, with a bit of depth, a bit of movement, and a wonderful boiling down of the things that make real places special and individual. On holiday recently I read Geoff Dyer’s book on Roger Federer, which is, of course, not really about Roger Federer. Part of it is about Venice, where Dyer now lives. I like to think as I skate past that he might be lurking out there on the sands, waiting for the tennis court to become free, plotting his next wayward piece of non-fiction. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-12” author: “Cathy Nowacki”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Signalis, Xbox One

All I knew going into Signalis was that it was a survival horror game. As a lifelong fan of the genre, that was enough for me to dive in without so much as a cursory Google search. This has previously led me to many a janky Resident Evil clone in the past, so even with the positive buzz around Signalis, I really wasn’t expecting one of the best survival horror experiences…ever? Rarely does a game borrow so heavily from another and actually produce something equal, or better than, its inspiration. Signalis is undeniably a love letter to Resident Evil, with little kisses blown to the Silent Hill, Alien, and Bladerunner universes in its design. You only have six item slots, there’s a box to store your other pickups in dedicated save rooms, you combine and inspect items, health is displayed like a heart monitor, and you solve weird puzzles with weirder items to get weird keys and continue the story. You can even use tank controls if you really hate yourself. What makes Signalis better than all the other Resident Evil clones out there is the way it streamlines these familiar survival horror systems, making them a part of its David Lynchian story, then turning some of them on their head almost completely. One example is that the entire map of a new area is filled in from the get go, and key items are marked when you find one - great! Exploring was a treat, and rarely did I ever wonder what I had to do next. Then at some point my map was taken from me. That was scarier than any enemy I eventually stumbled upon. I also love how the traditional Resident Evil grading system affects what ending you get. In Capcom’s games, getting a good grade usually unlocks a new, overpowered weapon of some sort so you can have a cathartic blast in a new save. In Signalis, depending on how often you save, and how aggressive you are, you’ll get one of three main endings, revealing more of what the hell is actually happening in this Germanic-tinted spacefaring future. Survival horror is definitely having something of a resurgence of late, with Dead Space, Alan Wake, Alone in the Dark, Resident Evil 4 and more Silent Hill yet to come. I don’t know how they’ll shape up, but I sort of don’t care now that we have Signalis. Jessica Orr

Fuser, PS4

This week brought the sad news that Fuser, from Guitar Hero studio Harmonix, is going offline. The game only released back in 2020, but it’s been some time since it was supported. Following the news, I decided to jump back in and remind myself how underrated this game is. Harmonix truly pioneered the plastic controller craze of the 00s, but Fuser is a music game that’s all done without peripherals. It’s essentially a DJing game that makes anyone with a vague sense of a beat appear to be a master. Each song is divided into four lines - vocals, synths, bass, beats - and you’re given four decks on which to mix in whichever lines you like, as long as it’s in time with the pulse. The game takes control of tempo and keys for you so mixes are smooth and seamless - it’s less about musical skill and more about understanding your crate of vinyl and what songs work well together. It also includes a pretty awesome character creator for your personalised DJ, with plenty of skin colours, hair styles, and clothing options to represent yourself or your dream persona. Or, if you’re like me, you can headline a prestigious dance festival in nothing but your pants and a giant bear mask. Deadmau5 who? While there’s a campaign mode that teaches you the basics - as well as some slightly awkward advanced techniques - the game is at its best in freestyle mode. No time limits, no requests. I could spend hours just mixing unlikely songs together: Lady Gaga over Rüfüs Du Sol; Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff weaving into Lady Marmalade over Rage Against The Machine; Childish Gambino with Rick Astley. This comes into its own on the Diamond Stage, an online-only mode where you can watch others DJ, or bid for a slot yourself and perform to the world. And this is sadly what will be removed when the game is taken offline. I’ll just have to stick to bedroom mixes for an audience of one: me. Ed Nightingale

Marvel Snap, iOS

Another week, another favourite card in Marvel Snap. This time it’s Scorpion. I have literally no idea who Scorpion is - as far as I can tell, Marvel Snap doesn’t do a great job of telling you where a character comes from, or even who drew the card art, which is a real shame, but granted, I might not have dug deep enough into the app. Anyway, Scorpion’s this green person, and a pleasantly low cost card to play. But when you play Scorpion… Crucially, the way I play (badly), Scorpion is not a game-changer. I like Scorpion because the card is just a bit of a jerk. Scorpion afflicts cards in your opponent’s hand with -1 power. That is, I’d argue, just a jerky thing to do. I don’t know why I like Scorpion so much, really, because I don’t play Marvel Snap as much of a jerk - certainly not as much of a jerk as I am in real life. It’s just nice, early on, to mess with the cards in your opponent’s hand instead of the cards they’ve already put on the table. Scorpion will probably be forgotten by next week, in other words, but that’s the pleasure of this glorious card game. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-19” author: “Amy Castro”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive.

Super Mario Odyssey, Switch

Mummy: You have finished Super Mario Odyssey, Congratulations! How does it feel to have finished the game? Nine-year-old: It feels exciting! Super exciting! Mummy: What was your favourite bit of the game? Nine-year-old: Hmm. It’s a difficult choice, but probably the bit where I captured Bowser [by using Cappy, Mario’s partner in Odyssey]. It was just really cool to be able to breathe fire. It was also super funny seeing Bowser with a moustache and a Mario hat. Mummy: Which was your favourite area in the game? Nine-year-old: Bowser’s Castle! I liked the architecture here, and the captures you could get in this area. And the boss was a fun fight. Bowser’s Kingdom actually took me by surprise. I thought it was going to be hectic and fiery, like the Mario Kart courses, but it is actually pretty nice if you remove the baddies. The Seaside Kingdom was another one I liked because after I defeated the boss I got to play beach volleyball. At first I found Metro Kingdom quite strange. I also found it really strange when I came across a real-life person roaming the Sand Kingdom, which is not fantasy as such but definitely a made up world. I did get used to Metro Kingdom when I was there, though. Mummy: Other than Bowser, what other bosses stood out for you during your playthrough? Nine-year-old: The green broodal [Topper]. It was quite a simple fight, but a fun one. I just really like taking out Bowser’s minions. I also liked the dragon. I was quite scared when I first met it, but when I worked out how to defeat the dragon I felt more confident. Mummy: What was your favourite Cappy capture in the game? Nine-year-old: Probably Chargin’ Chuck. I liked being able to charge around and smash through boulders. It made me feel really strong and excited. Mummy: What was your favourite outfit from the game? My son thinks about this one very carefully before deciding Nine-year-old: I think it has to be Bowser’s suit and top hat. It comes with its own shell, and it is a really nice suit. Also, the hat comes with boxing gloves. Mummy: Would you recommend Super Mario Odyssey to others? Nine-year-old: Definitely!! It is a colourful and vibrant game with good music and the opportunity to really explore all the different kingdoms you visit. Being able to capture other characters with Cappy is amazing - being able to jump as a frog, fly as a Glydon, swim as Cheep Cheep and charge around as a tank is brilliant. Mummy: If you had to rate Super Mario Odyssey out of 10, what would you give it? Nine-year-old: I would give it a nine and a quarter. It is a good game but there are things that could make it better. I wish there were Boos in the game - I didn’t see any. There are also some characters in the game that I would like to be able to capture, but can’t. I would like the chance to capture a Toad from the Mushroom Kingdom. I am not sure what abilities a Toad would have - perhaps you would be able to sneak into secret areas? Mummy: Now you have finished Odyssey, what’s next? Nine-year-old: I want to 100 percent the game. I want to go back to the various kingdoms and collect all of the Power Moons. I also want to buy all the outfits. Mummy: One last, very important question for you - how excited are you for the Super Mario Bros. Movie? Nine-year-old: Super Duper times infinity! Mummy: Can Mummy be your date to the cinema? My son does more deep thinking Nine-year-old: Hmm. Would you pay on my behalf? Mummy (laughing quite a lot): Yes, Mummy will pay. Nine-year-old (with a very big smile on his face): In that case, yes you can be my date. Mummy: Thank you, darling. I appreciate that. Victoria Kennedy

Save Room, Switch

Inventory Tetris is one of games’ brightest ideas, I reckon. Over the years it’s provided many lovely ruminative breaks from the action in survival horrors or a game like Diablo. It works for the same reason that people used to take pictures of the contents of their bags on Flickr, perhaps. Organisation, but also the simple pleasure of seeing how your things reflect the person you are - the person you are in the game, anyway. Save Room, which I have lost a happy hour to this week, is pure inventory Tetris. That’s all there is, and it’s lovely to see a game so beautifully focused. While a moody score plays, I take guns and ammo and eggs and whatnot from the right side of the screen and make it all fit into a space on the left. Sometimes I have to load a gun. Sometimes I have to eat an egg. That’s life, baby. That’s life. I kept worrying that the game would blossom into something more, and lose its lovely narrow-mindedness. That hasn’t happened so far. I love the thought process that gets me through each level, a kind of triage by size. Rifles in first, then the difficult shape of the SMG. All the while I keep an eye on the ammo and eggs - will they be able to plug the gaps I’m leaving? sMore than anything, Save Room is a celebration of the games that lurk within other games, the same way that not stepping on the cracks lurks inside the school run or a trip to Tesco. It’s a treat to lose myself in something like this and emerge, however much time later, with a clearer head and a lighter heart. Chris Donlan

Chained Echoes, Switch

Christmas is a time for comfort and nostalgia and - for me - curling up with a good JRPG. This year that’s set to be Chained Echoes, a new game heavily inspired by the classics Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6. In fact, the game is a love letter to all JRPGs of the past. It’s got sky pirates and anthropomorphised animals; undercover princesses, warring nations and magical technology; a vast fantasy land of dungeons and minigames; and a story that (I suspect, after the ten hours I’ve played so far) transcends time. It’s got the past in its systems too: crystals slotting into armours and weapons like materia and abilities learned through spending experience, all tying together for some satisfying character tinkering. More than spot the reference, though, Chained Echoes has some great ideas of its own. Its Overdrive system adds a twist to battle (as every good JRPG should have), forcing players to balance attack and defence or risk overheating. Its well-written (and often surprisingly dark) story plays with conventions right from its awakening-from-a-dream opening. And it’s all presented through some crisp and clean pixel art with gorgeous vistas, plus suitably adventurous music. And all of this from solo developer Matthias Linda, a seven year in the making passion project. This is a JRPG by a JRPG nerd for fellow JRPG nerds, and I can’t wait to don some sky armour and tuck in to more over the Christmas break. Ed Nightingale

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-05” author: “Mike Henrie”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What we’ve been playing, here’s our archive. It’s only when trying to distill all the information and all the systems that have gathered over the years in Monster Hunter for someone else that I started to really appreciate it all: how there’s no need to be intimidated by all the stores and NPCs in the village, as they’re only really doubling or tripling up on what you’ll find elsewhere, a bit of convenience that can initially cause confusion. How decorations work, what to hunt, what to wear and what not to and how to go about farming your ultimate piece of kit. What I’ve really appreciated, though, is how much fun it is sharing a passion for something with someone else, and helping them find their own way to Monster Hunter’s charms. They’ve only just hit High Rank, so now we’re down to proper business, and even though I’ve hit the somewhat miserly level cap a while ago it’s a pleasure to run through it all again. What a game. What a series! Martin Robinson What a game. I fall out of practice very easily so whenever I return to OlliOlli I need to blast through the tutorial, which is such a thing of joy in itself that it’s never anything but a pleasure. I’ve spent the morning fumbling around various levels and wondering if my virtual skating days are behind me, though. Happily, the Daily Grind was there to make everything better. Not only is this an excellent pun, but today’s daily took me to a snow-blown missile installation somewhere and let me chain together an epic run across staircases, gantries, railings and at least one missile. I didn’t hit the ground until the very end. And when I did, thankfully, I remembered to press B and land perfectly. I’m back. Chris Donlan Just like everyone else, since the start of the pandemic, I’ve been cooped up indoors with only short trips to the shops and the occasional bike ride to break up the monotony. The last big holiday I went on was my honeymoon to Japan and memories of that trip have been popping into my mind with increasing regularity. My wife and I were supposed to return this year but now those distant images tease me like a carrot on a stick. They’re unreachable, unrepeatable. I can’t go back. Or so I thought… You see, Google Earth VR gives you the whole globe to play with. From inside a VR headset, you can survey the planet from space, then zoom all the way down to street level in a matter of seconds. It renders huge portions of the world in 3D too, so big cities, like say, Tokyo for instance, are now more than just the usual flat image you might see on Google maps. With it you can fly between skyscrapers and swoop under bridges, you can see the perspective of the tall buildings against small and you can look at all of this while being aware that there are things like mountain ranges looming in the distance. It’s hard to accurately explain the feeling you get when you play it but it’s like having the whole world at your fingertips, and it brings Google maps to life in such an intoxicating way. Through it I’ve been able to visit those out of reach places that have been haunting me throughout lockdown and it’s brought me a sense of ease that’s helped combat the claustrophobia. I’ve been able to retrace the steps of our honeymoon and find the hotels we stayed in, the random vending machines we bought drinks from and the tiny little alleyways with hidden bars and ramen shops that we found by accident on evening strolls. Not only that but it’s also allowed me to discover new places too. Towns I’ve never been to, villages I never even knew existed and sights I that would probably have never seen in real life. Like, who knew there was an old gold rush town called Chicken in Alaska that was full of rusted and rotting mining equipment? Not many people I would guess, considering it has a population of 17, and not me either. Well, not until yesterday that is, and now I’ve been there, I’ve stood in its town center and I’ve marvelled at its old machinery.
Obviously Google Earth VR is not a patch on real travel but for now it’s as good as I’ll get and what I’m getting is honestly one of the most impressive, and awe inspiring things I’ve ever done in VR. Ian Higton

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-09” author: “Joshua Wineman”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What we’ve been playing, here’s our archive. Playing games at near-IMAX proportions was a thrill, and there was always one game that made the leap to the big screen more capably than the rest. We toss around the word cinematic an awful lot in these parts, but Halo’s a series that really deserves the term - playing through Halo 3 in a 200-seater screen is proof of that, its impossible vistas and fizzing clouds of purple laser fire popping like a sci-fi spectacular. It’s where a series of that scope and vision belongs. I’ve no longer got the keys to the cinema, sadly, but thanks to some building work that’s going on at the moment our sofa’s pressed up against the television, my knees almost touching the 55-inch screen. The proper IMAX experience, if you will. It was as good an excuse to play through a Halo campaign the past weekend, though, and it was Reach that did the honours - a more muted Halo, sure, but one with a vision just as grand as anything that went before or came after. It’s an incredible thing. Now I’m just hoping someone’s kind enough to lend me a cinema screen for when Infinite comes out later this year. Martin Robinson This is a game about dealing with the steady onrush of traffic and making sure everyone gets where they’re going without accidents. You’ll have an intersection of some kind and a bunch of lights, each hooked up to a specific button. You press the buttons to change the lights from green to red. Keep traffic on red too long, though, and the drivers might get impatient. I can play this game for many, many hours at a time, lost in some kind of asphalt otherland, sweeping traffic along, almost willing it through the gates to safety. The music is elevator jazz and the colours are all sunset and chrome. A tooltip might read “Sometimes it’s best to do nothing.” This is why I don’t drive - because the whole thing lulls me into a warm state of reverie. In Urban Flow, which should be nail-biting, I can zone out safely. What a lovely game. Chris Donlan Playing it does, unfortunately, maintain that sense of steadfast duty over proper fun: I am playing Halo 5 in order to finish playing Halo 5. It’s good, in its own way - actually probably very good, compared to a lot of other shooters like it, and probably more good than we collectively remember, too. But, alas, it is not Halo good. Post-Bungie Halo remains a playable existential crisis. The standard Assault Rifle feels amazing, which is wrong - the point of this gun is that it feels like tickling enemies with a feather, you’re supposed to want to swap it out for something alien and weird. Halo 5’s is like a cannon. The things that are alien and weird don’t feel very alien or weird - mostly they feel like metal, which we humans have enough of to shoot with, and which feels naff to shoot at. But still, it’s Halo. The multiplayer is ace, ultra-fluid and in places smart in the old ways: minimal visual noise by choice now, rather than early-00s technical constraint, which is a sign that 343 really does get it. We are getting there, with new Halo, and I will finish Halo 5. Chris Tapsell

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-07” author: “Rashida Holland”

I like the rather simple amnesiac story that surrounds it, because it compliments and explains the set-up without getting in the way. I find it neat, literally - neat like a math’s problem. And when you step back a bit, I suppose that’s what Loop Hero is. It’s like an equation you’re forever balancing on the fly. You adjust your numbers in order that they produce more favourable equations than your enemies’, swapping equipment and weapons, and placing tiles, depending on what comes in. I really enjoy the simpleness of it. And I can’t stop bloody playing it. Bertie Purchese Idle Museum Tycoon is not a strategy game - at least I don’t think so. This is where I made three million off a banana peel. Minutes later I emptied a drinks machine and got a billion. You know the deal: you are running a museum, except you aren’t really. You open up the doors and buy galleries that you can then upgrade. You click away and things get shinier and the numbers go up. And the numbers quickly get to a point where the whole thing becomes comedy. Millions for sweeping the floor. A trillion for getting an extra person into the new Egypt exhibition. Idle Museum Tycoon is fearfully well-monetised, and by the end of my evening the real mark of success for me was that I hadn’t dropped real cash on anything I didn’t need but really, really felt like I did. So I won? I’m not sure. Maybe it really is a strategy game. Chris Donlan It’s astonishing, really: one of the buildings clearly pushes me over the edge, but a game rarely ends with fewer than five or six ready to go. And yet I keep playing, because Mini Motorways is so satisfying. This Apple Arcade treat - it’s coming to PC in May - is an absolute classic. You connect homes and stores of the same colour. That’s it. But of course that’s not it, because the colours multiply, and some of them are in awkward places, and then your roads are locked with traffic and…it’s over. I love this, though. Mini Motorways uses stylised maps of real-world cities, so if I ever make it to Manila, I will be ready for the fact that the city is a nightmare, with all those rivers dividing things up. I always run out of bridges in Manila. As well as being educational - sort of - Mini Motorways is just beautiful. Every screenshot I take is my new most favourite screenshot ever. Mini Motorways is great design elevated to actual art. This week I have set myself another challenge. As well as keeping the traffic flowing and the resources piling up, I’ve also tasked myself with knocking down as few of the little circles on the map that represent trees. They’ve always been there, and I’ve always demolished them. Not any more! Roads now curve around them and give them a respectful space to live out their lives in. So far, the result has been total failure. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-14” author: “Mary Jackson”

It’s basically an elaborate reskin of PopCap’s classic match-3, Bejeweled Twist, with some Pokémon-style creature collection, levelling and battling layered on top - and fey, ornate, Final Fantasy-inspired artwork and story layered on top of that. It has to be said, it’s an ugly clash of aesthetics, but a harmonious mesh of ideas. The cleverest thing about it is the way it builds an entirely single-player battle mechanic that’s just you versus the board, so you’re never waiting for an AI to take a turn and your greatest enemy is always just your own lack of foresight or elegance. You can pick Gyromancer up for pennies on Steam and it’s also available - and fully backwards compatible - on Xbox. Oli Welsh And I think Super Metroid might be the most super of the lot. I’ve been playing it on Switch for the last few days - fifteen minutes here and there, from one save room to the next - as a bit of a treat. It’s perfect for this kind of sustained but breezy approach. A few seconds each time to remember how to jump and shoot and switch weapons. A few more seconds to remember where I’m headed now. And then back to it. The atmosphere is still absolutely stellar. The smashed-up lab at the start, the slow reveal of a strange world below the surface of a planet, the bright colours that manage to seem lurid and odd when things get scary, and that wonderful soundtrack, pulling together menace and adventure from scattered beeps and hums. I am not entirely sure I’ve ever actually finished Super Metroid, but now it’s always nearby on the Switch I am going to give it a proper go. Fifteen minutes here and there, from one save room to the next. Chris Donlan Perhaps. No. Actually, it’s that I am playing as a different class. Forged is a robot brawler, with a gun for a chest - I think - and a lot of options close-up. My favourite move is a flurry of metallic fists which not only rips through low-level foes, it also feels fantastic. A skill with a perfect blend of damage and visual flair. It sells the character! Torchlight 3 was never going to be bad, but it did feel a little uninspired at first. I still don’t get why I should be building a fort; now that Forged is here, none of that matters. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-30” author: “Bobby Gilligan”

I never tire of playing around here, spotting the detailing, no two pieces of wood exactly alike, no railing without a twist or a kink in it. And before even that, I love the part of the game where you learn how to handle paint by filling in creature designs in your sketchbook. The paint is lovely - watery and occasionally thick, uneven, the sense of a powder or paste in suspension. You move it, but it moves too - the colour is something you have to tug around on the page. So many special moments. I’m replaying Concrete Genie over the course of this month, one evening at a time. It’s a short game that you have to measure out and savour. It’s transporting. Chris Donlan Perhaps most importantly, though, it’s where you’ll find pixelart of the highest order. If you’re lucky enough to play Garou: Mark of the Wolves with your face pressed up against a 29-inch Nanao MS9 monitor, it’s easy to persuade yourself that this is as technically impressive as games get, and the height of 2D games art. It’s as stunning today as it was way back at the turn of the century. Martin Robinson Honestly, it’s starting to feel personal. The antique chair is what will tie my half modern, half rustic kitchen together perfectly. Currently, I’m having to use an imperial dining chair as a replacement and it throws the whole vibe of the room into disarray. To add a pinch of salt to the wound, it prevents me from receiving a set HHA bonus from the other pieces of antique furniture I already have in place - a fact I think those little tanukis are aware of. Once I thought spending nearly five months looking for the wooden bookshelf DIY recipe, interrupting my villager’s crafting sessions three times a day only to discover they were making a log clock or apple television again, was bad. Simpler times indeed. Thankfully, after learning about my antique chair dilemma, Chris Donlan sent me one in the mail. My kitchen is finally complete, but the betrayal of a local business which I helped establish still lingers. Now I’m left to simply wander the beach until I find the bottle containing the magazine rack DIY recipe and then, maybe, I can finally stop. Lottie Lynn

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-10” author: “Johnny Dillehay”

The artstyle, which mixes pixel and hand-drawn art perfectly, helps build this atmosphere by invoking the surreal to create a mixture of wonder and fear; one moment I’m fighting a cute rabbit in a turn-based battle, the next I’m being stalked by hands no-one else can see. There’s a slow, crawling, sense of dread running throughout Omori and, the more I play, the more wary I become of completing the simplest of actions, like answering a door or looking in a mirror. Something is wrong, something is infecting the bright magical world I explore, but I don’t know what it is. Yet. Before playing Omori, it’s important to know that the game contains depictions of depression, anxiety, suicide and has bright flashing imagery. Lottie Lynn It’s a useful tool for learning the basics and refining your tactics, but I particularly love Chess Ultra’s gaudy and extravagant settings. One location takes you to a wintry Scottish hunting lodge, another, an opulent LA apartment that wouldn’t be out of place on Selling Sunset. Chess Ultra really conveys the physicality of a chess board in a way few computer chess games do: each board is pockmarked and textured, with items strewn around to encourage you to spin the camera. I’ve spent a lot of time just rotating the boards, and zooming in to admire pieces in the digital firelight. It’s made me realise that moving around a board to examine the problem from a different angle can be enormously useful in getting your brain to make connections - helping you understand how the pieces move, or imagine how your opponent might view the situation. And beyond all that… it just looks quite nice. Emma Kent Already I love the feel of Valheim: it’s rather blocky to look at and a tiny download, all things considered, but there is beauty to its rough landscapes, a real sense of nature in the undulating earth and the fuzzy moon rising over shining water. More than anything, though, I love the rocks I just found. And it seems like this is something only survival games really allow for. Call it serendipity, although that isn’t quite right. I mean the pleasure in finding something that’s just lying around. In other games you earn loot by killing things, and you do in Valheim too. But you also just find stuff. It makes you feel, not powerful or skilled, but lucky. Actually maybe it makes you feel a bit skilled too. The skill here, the knowledge, is not in finding the rocks but knowing that this is stone, and you can build stuff with stone. I can make an axe, and a hammer, and from there I can really get to chopping down trees rather than simply punching them, and I can build a workbench and a bed and the various converging aspects of a house. And I can build a fire pit and actually cook some of this boar stuff I have on me now. It was starting to get a bit smelly, I suspect. You need to sleep and keep warm and eat in Valheim. But back at the start of it you need to understand that a stone is a very useful thing to have with you. Chris Donlan If you feel like you need someone to talk to, the Samaritans are there to help. They can be called, for free, on 116 123 in the UK and Ireland, or emailed on jo@samaritans.org/ie. Lines are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international suicide helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-21” author: “Maurice Lopez”

Honestly, I think Birkett’s earlier games in this genre - casual gaming masterpiece Regency Solitaire and its prequel Shadowhand, which prototyped Ancient Enemy’s more involved solitaire-RPG gameplay - have more character. Their bodice-ripping historical whimsy, slightly gauche art and strong local flavour of southwestern England (Birkett is based in Dorset) make for more distinctive video games than Ancient Enemy’s doomy apocalyptic fantasy setting. But Ancient Enemy is a crisp and beautifully polished design - a more refined version of what Birkett attempted in Shadowhand. The indication of the enemy’s next move is an inspired lift from Slay the Spire that makes fights more predictable and fair, and enables more strategic play. Strategic, that is, within the confines of cruel fate, because this is still a solitaire game where luck can make or break you, where the fall of the cards stands in for the roll of the dice. It’s just that Ancient Enemy gives you just enough tools to be able to bend fate to your will. We could all use a bit of that now, right? Oli Welsh To my surprise and some relief, Final Fantasy 14 has neither taken over my life or put me off MMOs for good, but is holding my interest somewhere in-between. It’s low-key stuff in the opening hours - I’m still at the fetch quests and killing x number of monsters stage - but it feels slick, polished and pretty relaxing. It also works pleasingly well with a controller, with hotbars replacing the series’ traditional command window to help me chain together attacks with my lance as I bash yet another squirrel to smithereens. I’m taking my time with it, but the thing that’s clear from the outset is it’s a love letter to Final Fantasy through and through; the boss music using motifs from the series theme to amp up the drama, fellow players running around with pets from niche references to other games, and that fact it all looks and sounds an awful lot like Final Fantasy 12. I’ve also just picked up some armour which has materia slots, and if someone told me that was a thing, I would have done less deliberating and more playing years ago. It’s early days (and from what I gather, it will take me literal days of playtime to get to the best stuff in the later expansions) and progress is gradual, I’m glad to have at least finally made a start - even if I won’t be caught up with Endwalker until at least 2023. Matt Reynolds He steps back and tilts his head to one side, and then the other. “I feel like I’m there,” he says, and wanders on. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-28” author: “Gregorio Mchugh”

But what really strikes me is the game’s charisma. I expected it to feel a bit known, a bit less interesting, because it’s been and gone now, a hasbeen. But it doesn’t. From the off, this game is dense with detail and humour and life, and interactions I actually stick about to listen to. Oh and there’s a cavalier squirrel riding a skeletal cat, now, for some reason. Because that’s another thing: Larian has added all this extra stuff since I last played, all these ways you can bend the rules to make it more fun. So somehow, it all feels fresh. And I’m falling in love all over again. Bertie Anyway, Mini Motorways has been my little antidote to that: I have created events - Australian Married at First Sight, 7:30pm on E4 - so as to create in between-times, the 15 minutes after I finish dinner or some Zoom yoga or whatever and before I bed in for the night in front of the TV, to fill with Mini Motorways. It’s a beautiful, pastel peach masterpiece of a game, this, its weirdly tactical mechanics everything I love - but I’m not really playing it for that. I’m playing to escape along a narrow, cluttered road to the Blue Factory, just for a little while. Just for 15 minutes, enough to collect my Dot and take it home. Chris Tapsell Snap pictures of all the animals. 60 pics to take. I have taken 59 of them. Now, as I crouch in the marshland, only the house martin is left, and the house martin is overhead, fast and small, making figure-8s or at least something with lots of loops. They don’t stay long enough to get a frame on them, which probably means that there is a trick to it - a specific angle, the right spot, the right time of day. But I am determined to treat this like real life rather than a game. The bird is right here, and I can’t risk moving for a better chance. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-25” author: “Amanda Martin”

There’s a 2am eeriness to my favourites of the genre - the likes of Gradius and Darius - that’s shared with great sci-fi cover art; a sort of vast melancholy that works as a counterpoint to the high energy thrills of playing the thing. X Multiply takes all that to an extreme. Giger-inspired levels are pretty much a prerequisite for shooting games of this era, but none of them are as squishy, as full of dank horror, as X Multiply’s effort. As the opening level, it sets the tone for an enjoyably weird game. Martin Robinson Monkey symbols, for instance, eat nearby coconut symbols, earning you ooh-ooh-oodles of money, but the coconuts eventually disappear. Flowers, on the other hand, stick around, and they can be improved by nearby rain symbols and lightbulbs. Toddlers, true to form, eat candy and destroy pinatas. There are thieves and bounty hunters, golems and grannies. There are all kinds of symbols. It’s quite imaginative. And, yes, I know it’s effectively a slot machine, but it’s a surprisingly compelling mix. There’s a free demo to try, too. Bertie Most entertaining of all is a skill game called Bomb Bouncer, in which you fire your bike down a track, trying to get as far as you can. The gimmick is that the track is lined with explosive barrels, and you can control your flailing, flaming body once it’s been blasted back into the air after impact. We got Gold ages ago, but we’re still at it, ragdolling through the sky, restarting, ragdolling again and restarting again. Just magic. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-29” author: “Evon Keitsock”

I am playing Hyper Scape again. I am terrible at it, and as the audience dwindles it takes longer and longer to get a match going, which is an awful fate for a Battle Royale, which needs so many players. But when the matches do kick off, I feel like this might be an underappreciated charmer. Combat is brisk and movement is wonderfully smooth, but it’s the map that has me: a sort of grey-box take on a European city, right down to a huge model of Notre Dame. Actually, it’s the upgrades. Alongside weapons and health packs, you search the streets of Hyper Scape for the game’s equivalents of magical abilities - invisibility, say, or the ability to throw up a wall between you and your attacker. The very best, though, turns you into a beach ball and lets you bounce through the emptying streets for minutes at a time. Thonk, thonk, thonk. What a strange, stylish treat this game is - don’t miss out. Chris Donlan Debate’s been raging across our Discord and spilling over into WhatsApp, but the chicken-emblazoned art car is finally taking shape - now it’s just about finalising logos, so that our sponsors at the local Morley’s might be satisfied, and so that they might sneak me a free box of hot wings when I pop out for a midnight snack during the race itself. Silly stuff, but it’s precisely why I love running team endurance events in iRacing. It’s not so much about the accuracy of the simulation, how good the damage model is, or any of that jazz - though iRacing does acquit itself well in all those departments - and about how the simple action of sharing a car with six friends for a 24 hour race bleeds out into our lives in the most fascinating ways. That’s the real magic of iRacing right there, as far as I’m concerned. Martin Robinson The twist comes in only having 50 randomly dealt cards to achieve Your goal: setting your civilisation on a course to self-sufficiency and, in the very end, making a rocket to take them out of that place. But have You researched enough things? Have You created and sampled and inspected all the different things You need for them to make vital tools? Is there enough food? Will they survive the winter? It’s hard. I’ve not gotten very far because, as with rogue-like card games, the charm comes from learning a bit more each time you try. Crucially though, I want to play again. Simmiland is bright and colourful and intriguing. It’s a game from the Sokpop collective and it’s £4. Give it a go! Bertie The big changes are persistent armour, a conditions system built around overriding rather than stacking, melee which effectively grants free attacks providing you can shuffle your intended target to the front of the queue, and an ammo reload system that can massively extend the length of your turn if used carefully - all making for an enormously satisfying tactical toolkit with a flavour of its own. Combine that with a fantastically well designed deck - each card as purposeful as it is gloriously thematic - alongside a wealth of different modes, characters, and maps with campaign-specific cards and enemies, and developer Fabled Game Studio has struck pirate gold. There’s a mobile version of Pirates Outlaws costing just shy of £1 if you’re suitably intrigued (with an entirely worthwhile £2.99 in-game resource booster) and a rebalanced, full-price PC version that does away with the monetisation grind altogether. So now you too can make like a pirate and, uh, get hooked. Matt Wales

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-17” author: “Tracy Horner”

Eventually, once you’ve practiced the hard sections long enough, you’ll develop the muscle memory to automatically know the footwork for a song. But practice will also make you better at sight-reading new tracks: I can now bring up a video of DDR on Youtube, and read the arrows as if I were actually dancing it. When you finally crack the code, that’s a pretty cool feeling to have. Emma Kent Martin Robinson Yes, all of that, but something more. If you want to play Electronic Symphony you’re going to have to dust off the Vita. My cartridge has literally never left the slot since it was first put in. I love Sony’s handheld - both a classic and a curio in itself - and now it is purely the Electronic Symphony device. And that’s a very pleasing way for things to end up, if you ask me. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-14” author: “James Pengelly”

There’s something of that to Carto, too, the brilliant top-down adventure game whose map you construct yourself. I started playing it on Xbox Game Pass this week, though it’s available from other good platform stores also. About an hour in, finding myself hooked and unexpectedly engrossed in its story, I sat back and looked at the world map I’d created so far. The handful of tiles I’d been given made up a tiny space - I’d barely gone anywhere! - but I had swapped and rearranged and watched as new tiles appeared as if made out of hidden origami. And I knew each of those map tiles in detail. Carto has plenty to love, as well as just being an excellent little adventure with an eye-catching art style. Its meta take on the building blocks of games is a wonderfully fresh lens through which to view the genre, as well your own small surroundings. Tom Phillips It’s an interesting list that’s on offer, and if like me you’ve an addiction to hoovering up everything that turns up on the eShop you may well have many of these already on your Switch. The Capcom Beat ‘Em-Up Bundle is pulled from with offbeat brawlers like Battle Circuit and Powered Gear, and of course there are a handful of Street Fighter 2 variants to choose from. The real prize, though? It’s Cave’s Progear, here available on console for the first time proper, and thanks to some decent emulation pretty much an essential purchase for the Switch. It’s arcade excellence without compare - and a reminder of the proper meaning of the term arcade. Martin Robinson I had a bunch of these at the time, but the one I love the most is KuBos, from the Art Style series. It’s so good it’s one of the main reasons I still keep my 3DS charged today, so I can always get a round in when I want one. KuBos is a game about climbing on cubes. You spawn on a five-by-five grid and as you walk around, the squares beneath you light up, Billy Jean-style, and you earn points. Then more cubes fall from above, indicated by looming shadows, and eventually old cubes drop away. Onwards, upwards, climb climb climb. KuBos is very good, partly because its controls are a little creaky, so you always feel like you’re just getting away with stuff - just avoiding a drop or being splattered by a falling cube. There are a few other cube types to add variety - one explodes if you don’t get to it in time and another gives you more life when you’re hurt. That’s it. Or for thirteen odd years that’s what I thought was it. But when I decided to write about KuBos this week I did something I had never done before - I read the manual. And it turns out, right, that you can push cubes! All along you’ve been able to push them! And those bomb cubes, if they’re disarmed, give you the power to shunt cubes about more forcefully. Honestly, I had no idea. It’s a bit spooky: this game I thought I knew so well is not actually the game I thought I knew. It’s different. Layers of strategy that I now have to get my head around. Lucky, really, that my 3DS is already charged. Chris Donlan I never played these remakes - I played the originals, and their gen 6 sisters, and so they felt a bit superfluous for me at the time - and I’m torn between kicking myself for not coming to them earlier and loving myself for leaving such a treat to enjoy so late. It’s odd going back to tile-based movement, and it’s a little clunky working your way through the menus now (I’ve renewed admiration for the little shortcuts of later gens - and renewed amazement at how long they took to arrive). But! How good do these games look? How good do they feel?! This Hoenn generation was always about nature, obviously, but the remakes seem to be growing out the sides of the screen. The little wet patches of rain pooling on the grass are so sodden. The grass is so lush. The Sun is burning. Everything is so green, so flushed with colour and life. There’s such attention to the extra things here, the stuff. I’m obsessed with the nautical museum, which is, like, an actual museum. I’m obsessed with watching my footprints fade out of the sand. And there’s such attention to the way it’s all stitched together: a slightly fluid, elastic snap to moving party members in the menu. A bit of jazz to every trainer’s pose when you start a battle. A little panoramic shot from above when you first interact with the signpost of a new town. And 3D! A bit of clownery from Nintendo that, hang on, looks really good? And all that classically Metroidvanian mystery to pull it together. Forgive the pun, but seriously, what a gem. Chris Tapsell

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-17” author: “Felix Swaney”

That surprising bounty of actual historical context is just one of Nebuchadnezzar’s lovely touches, niftily informing the structure and difficulty curve of its main campaign so your Mesopotamian city’s rise from a couple of huts to a sprawling metropolis unfolds through the gradual introduction of chronologically correct new buildings and other mechanical complexities. You’re essentially discovering new stuff at the same time your city’s founders would have done in their own historical timeline. In basic terms, though, Nebuchadnezzar’s gameplay loops are familiar stuff - intentionally so, given it’s openly inspired by the classic 90s city builders of developers like Impressions Games, albeit appropriately finessed for the modern era - charging players with juggling multiple production chains to ensure citizens are sufficiently numerous and adequately satisfied. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure each production chain - irrigating parched land to grow crops to feed animals to make milk to turn into cheese to feed citizens and so on - is self-sustaining, so you can focus on the next closed loop of citizen classes with their own unique needs. And, more importantly, ensure you’re producing enough surplus goods to trade, seeing as it’s the only way to make the money for expansion in-game. In fact, I’d say Nebuchadnezzar is more of a logistical puzzler than a city builder in a lot of ways (certainly, you won’t need to worry about things like health or disaster or taxation here), requiring players to structure their slowly expanding metropolis so the likes of workshops and warehouses are all within reach of one another - a spatial challenge made more interesting by the immutable nature of the landscape. That’s compounded by the fact commodities must be hand-delivered by sellers, each requiring carefully planned player-defined routes. That latter aspect is part of a layer of micromanagement that perhaps won’t be to everyone’s tastes - although I love that I can interact so directly and meaningfully with certain citizens, admiring their beaming portraits when I do so. It gives a welcome level of intimacy missing in some of the more big-picture city builders. Then there’s the inherent repetition of each campaign mission, requiring players to cover the same old steps plus a bit more each time to reach their goal. For me though, that’s part of the charm, and I’ve struggled to wrench myself free of Nebuchadnezzar’s soothingly familiar cycles and logistical tinkering this week, happily losing hours to its gentle rhythm of expansion. A sandbox option is coming “soon”, and I’ll definitely be sticking around to play more. Matt Wales But then last night I decided to do something different. Last night I decided to go it alone. You see, somewhere online I’d stumbled across a screenshot of a fully uncovered Valheim map and right at the bottom, stretching out across the southern border were a network of strange red islands. And I just had to know what they were. So, I loaded up a Karve with a few days worth of food, enough supplies to build a base and a teleporter and then I bid farewell to my friends and launched myself off, into the open ocean. But it turns out solo sailing isn’t as romantic as I’d imagined it. In fact, at times it was bloody hard work! I had to learn how to use tacking against strong winds as mosquitos from nearby Plains bore down on me. Sea monsters circled, roared and then chased me past neverending stretches of swampland. I passed a pair of gigantic living islands that rumbled and vibrated and then disappeared disconcertingly beneath the waves. The further south I went, the more terrifying it became. The thought of losing my loot this far away from my base was a weight on my shoulders that grew heavier with each nautical mile passed. My friends are cool and everything, but I’m not sure they’d spend an hour of their lives sailing across half of the map just to help me get my armour back. Then suddenly, through the mist, I saw an impossibly large mountain looming in the distance. I’d never seen anything quite like it in any of the biomes we’d already explored and once again my curiosity overcame my fear and I pushed on, ever southwards. But what did I find when I finally reached the southern shores? Well, nothing much to be completely honest with you. It turns out that two of the fresh biomes I discovered, The cobweb covered Mistlands and the barren red islands of the Ashlands are actually still WIP. Due to the Early Access nature of the game, these parts of the world are just kind of placeholders at the moment. Nothing new spawns there and there are no unique resources to bring home as souvenirs. So yes, after all that time and effort, the final destination was a little disappointing, but that didn’t matter to me because I’d survived! I made it home safely through my teleporter with all my armour and loot intact and because of that, I’ll always remember my first, epic journey into the unknown with great fondness. Ian Higton What’s immediately striking is how gorgeous it is. I really didn’t expect it. But all of a sudden, there you are, in 14th Century rural France, in autumn, leaves reddening in the fairytale-like forests around you. And the detail this period of time has been recreated with! I think it shows that the developer, Asobo, is French, because there’s a passion for a local history I don’t think you would see from a non-native team. It’s in the costumes, the buildings, the people: it’s everywhere. I love the muddy churned tracks in the village, and the feeling of it being a functioning place. I imagine it’s how it really did look. On top of that, I admire the set-up that sees you as a girl who has to protect her younger brother, not through force, because how could she overpower an adult, but through sneaking. It’s sensible, it’s a different perspective, and I like that, and the performances from the two children, somewhat uncharacteristically for children-in-games, are very likable. The other thing I love are the rats. This is a game about the plague, about the Black Death sweeping through Europe and France, on the back of hundreds of screeching black rats. And they’re everywhere. They burst through walls like water through a crack in a dam, and they erupt from the earth like geysers. And anything the furious, furry blanket covers, it strips away like piranhas in a frenzy. And what a gruesome trail of destruction they leave, either directly or indirectly as people take preventative measures to halt them, like slaughtering all the livestock in the area, resulting in piles of putrefying carcasses, great pools of blood and mud, and everywhere the buzzing with flies. And through all of this - and more threats beside - the two children walk. It’s a pretty relentless ride. I could do with one or two more breathers along the way, here and there. But what an opening. What a powerful, provocative, and intriguing start. And what of the real darkness underneath? I can’t wait to play more. Bertie

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-13” author: “Nellie Granados”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What we’ve been playing, here’s our archive. Gosh, though, I still love it. Everything in Steep is an event or a challenge. Everywhere is a point of interest or a fast-travel opportunity or a chance to go PvP and level something up. But where the game really comes alive, predictably, is when you turn your back on all that. Pick a starting point and just ski and ski and ski, downwards and downwards, chaining ice and snow and weaving around trees and ending up somewhere lonely and beautiful, somewhere that you know you’ll never find again if you go looking for it. That’s Steep. And it still lives luxuriously in the mind. Chris Donlan But what really makes it stand out as a deck-builder is that it’s not all about combat. You have two decks of cards in the game: one for combat, yes, but another for negotiation. This is a whole different encounter type. Imagine if someone gamified a dialogue scene in a BIoWare game: it’s a tiny bit like that. It works in a broadly similar way: you play cards to create arguments and attack your opponent’s arguments (and there’s a lovely animation which goes with this, as your character acts out the corresponding arguments on the cards as you play them.) It’s more complex than I’ve got time to go into here, but suffice to say it works brilliantly. More importantly: it finally gives a game another active gameplay system, besides combat, to pull on. It’s a stroke of genius. Bertie So much about this game is great. Non-violence for starters! The place is filled with deadly robots, but the most you can do to them is put them to sleep for a few seconds using a computer terminal. Otherwise you’re just jumping around them and trying to avoid them as you search through 1980s furniture for the punchcards. Then there’s that furniture, of course - beautifully realised pixel art bookcases and stereo systems and speakers and arm chairs. This is a lair I could live in. The reason why it’s lovely to play this on Vita though is that the game’s hero has a pocket computer that they use to do various in-game things. And as a kid, the idea of a pocket computer was incredibly appealing. I imagine that the hero’s device looks a bit like a Vita, in fact. So the Vita version is doubly harmonious. What a wonderful game and a wonderful machine. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-26” author: “Ramon Butler”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What we’ve been playing, here’s our archive. I usually start a Mass Effect trilogy run every couple of years - it’s complete comfort food, ticking off every sidequest, taking the same Paragon decisions and dialogue options. But Mass Effect 1 had become increasingly hard going, to the point where not even a pandemic could make me play it again last year with the Legendary Edition imminent on the horizon. Now, thanks to the Legendary Edition, well, Mass Effect 1 is more than bearable. It is enjoyable! And at many times quite beautiful! It’s the shortest and most standalone of the trilogy, with characters such as Garrus yet to evolve into the fan-favourites they become. It has repeated environments, dodgy checkpointing and you can still sometimes land the Mako upside down, forcing a reset. But wow, it has so much potential. The slow burn reveal of the wider Mass Effect story, the history of the galaxy told through the introduction of its numerous races, the bonds that start to form between Shepard and squadmates. Even when it is mechanically dated, it is still better than most other games out there. I just need to reconvince my friends of that again. Tom Phillips Reader, I have killed two people, and also blamed a crime on a seagull. And I’ve been spotted and accused, by the captain, of “audacious murders”. I’ve raced about and covered my tracks badly, and I’ve been impulsively violent. It’s been a treat. What I wasn’t expecting, though, was the trip to the chapel where I ended up talking to God. It must have been God because the voice came from a crucifix and It spoke in all caps, which seems like quite a Godly thing to do with fonts. Was it God? Which God, if so, and what does it mean that I’ve met Them this early on in my cruise? I’ll keep playing - and probably keep audaciously murdering - to try to get to the bottom of this. Christian Donlan But Titanfall 2 is, of course, a hell of a game in its own right. Effect and Cause is often held up as an example of brilliant level design, but another mission really stuck with me, and it was Into The Abyss. The conveyor belt reminded me of the silliness of the droid factory in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, yet the level also has a real air of menace. Hopping down from your Titan reminds you that you’re small and vulnerable, and the mission pushes this idea further: everything is in motion, you’re constantly being thrown in different directions, and you can easily be squashed by massive machines. I felt like a doll being tumbled around inside a doll’s house - something that gets more literal by the end of the mission. And ever so slowly, the tension builds as you ascend: as you’re being raised up to the sky, as the arena is built around you, as the Reapers arrive and you realise you’re definitely in trouble. I spent that fight bravely cowering inside buildings and shrieking as exploding ticks forced me outside. Alongside all that, Titanfall 2’s missions are packed with opportunities and potential routes: they just feel busy. The levels are flexible enough to accommodate whatever movement, guns or strategies you have in mind - I could play it a dozen times and it would feel different with each run. And judging by how much I’m enjoying it so far, I may well do just that. Although next time, I’ll be ready for those damn ticks. Emma Kent

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Laura Kim”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What we’ve been playing, here’s our archive. The Fortune Grind replaces the exit door for a random level with a wheel of fortune which can be spun seven times by hitting it. The longer the chain you can put together leading into the wheel, the higher the multiplier applied to what it spits out, which could be grindstones, or same-coloured Creeps, or enemy Jerks - some benevolent, some hostile, but all affording the possibility for more hits and longer chains. You can see how perfectly this amplifies the game’s already vicious spiral of risk and reward, in a single, bite-sized chunk you can start your day with. It’s brilliant - and I haven’t even mentioned the gameshow jingles and jeering crowd sounds yet. Grindstone is an authentic modern classic. I implore you to try it out - even if an influx of PC players means an end to the unrealistically high leaderboard placings I’ve been enjoying this week… Oli Welsh Chris Tapsell Boob physics aside, I am really enjoying this game so far. I honestly thought this was just going to be one of the on-sale games that I’d play over a weekend and forget about after, but now I’m 20 songs in, my character has some cute bunny girl outfit going on, and Pancake is Love stuck in my head. Felisha Dela Cruz

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-16” author: “Anitra Mckinney”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What we’ve been playing, here’s our archive. Oli Welsh So the jump is bad and the game is too much of a collectathon, and what’s worse it’s a collectathon that’s also about jumping. I don’t care. Tasomachi is a game about exploring - by jumping, by collecting - and it’s a pure pleasure for me to do that. I wander its lonely stretches of buildings, marveling at how evocative everything is. A small square strung with lanterns, the sad beauty of a rusting vending machine. I’m about halfway through and I’m already sad that it will have to end. This is perfect for me, but I know it’s only going to be perfect once. I must never come back. It won’t be the same. Chris Donlan To be completely honest, I worried it would feel old and tired, and taint my memories of the game. But BioWare appears to have done a good job because the remaster doesn’t. It’s not cutting edge, of course, but it looks remarkably smart, and runs crisply. And with that realisation came a big sigh of relief for me: a feeling my cherished memories were safe to be experienced all over again. Bertie

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-11” author: “Steven Herrick”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. Good Sudoku (I’ve been enjoying the complete “Good Sudoku+” edition on Apple Arcade) may similarly scandalise purists in the way it gives you powerful visualisation and auto-completion tools to help you solve the classic number puzzles in blisteringly short times. But its ultimate goal is quite different - not to change sudoku, but to teach it. As a novice, I can say that it clearly works… up to a point. I’ve sped up to Expert level but got rather stuck there. I love that I’m now conversant in such arcane sudoku techniques as the Naked Pair, Locked Candidate and Pointing Triple, but while I understand them, I still find the more advanced ones difficult to spot on the grid. So I use hints, but what to do about the fact I feel like I’m cheating? Gage has me covered here, too, in Eternal mode, where you lose hearts for mistakes and for hint usage, and your heart total persists from one puzzle to the next. Survival sudoku. Roguelike sudoku. It’s not for the faint of heart, but I’m in. Oli Welsh You play as a sort of Shadow-like superhero character investigating a city that’s gone terribly awry. The game has a wonderful pulpy feel to it, and the mechanics are gloriously odd. Given the fact this is a 1992 NES game I expected a sort of scrolling beat-’em-up. Sometimes you do fight people, but more often it’s a point-and-click adventure game in which you use items, combine them, and solve puzzles. The key people who made this went on to make the SNES Shadowrun, and perhaps that’s the best way to understand what Nightshade is. It’s quirky and humorous and dark and moody, and it’s the sort of game that wants more from games than the simple genres allow for. Dive in. It’s kind of wonderful. Chris Donlan Today it was an artist. I went for an aimless wander and encountered a disappointed painter, doubting themselves as so many in A Short Hike do, worrying about the future and looking for the perfect spot to work in. I followed them about for a bit and then abandoned the thread to be picked up another day. I wandered over a graveyard, found a few last coins - there are still some scattered about - and stopped on a hill to watcher joggers go past. This stopping feels like the most miraculous part. A Short Hike is dense with things to do, but it’s also an ideal game to rest and watch things happen around you. After a few minutes the joggers were all gone, and I headed down the mountain towards home. I wonder where I’ll end up next time I play. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-29” author: “John Bielinski”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. This might be one of the finest, most compact strategy games ever made. You’re building a base across the stars, trying to reach and research a series of Monoliths. The tiles you need for your base come in the form of Tetris pieces, and the gimmick is that you get the pieces in a randomised order, but can choose which room you build with each one. You’ll need a variety of rooms for gathering resources, but you’ll also need a branching network of corridors so your minions can move between rooms and eventually reach those Monoliths. Then you’ll need a room to make more minions, and, oh yes, weapon rooms for when the regular alien attacks occur. It’s wild how engrossing this is - a perfect balance of resource management and minion management, as you move your adorable troops between one task and the next. All while the bar slowly fills up, meaning that you’re in for another wave of baddies to fend off. It’s the short blanket theory that gives football its peculiar spark, I guess - there’s always more that you want to do than you can do competently and safely. Give it a go - but be prepared to lose an afternoon to its dark magic. So I had a choice last night: spend money on Spelunky or Spelunky 2, both of which have just landed on the Switch. Both are classics, but the arrival of Spelunky 2 has changed the original Spelunky somewhat, making it a kinder thing, a comforting platformer where even the wildest possibilities are somehow comprehensible. Inevitably I went for Spelunky 2: crueller, deeper, and crucially more mysterious. I’ve been playing for hours now, and it works a treat: smooth and readable, and glowing on that handheld screen. Spelunky in all its glory, but in the garden, on the bus, perched in the kitchen. How do they do it? I have yet to make it to the boss battle, I should add. Die After Sunset, for all its pleasant seaside looks, can actually be a bit overwhelming. That’s to its credit - a good roguelike knows when to swamp you and whittle away at your health bar when you’re distracted by something else. Less to its credit, movement feels a bit light and skittish at present, and the whole business of having a secondary attack on the left trigger might take a bit of getting used to. Overall, I was enthused though. And I can’t wait to play more when the full game is finally out. Which is probably a good outcome for a free playtest, I reckon?

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-08” author: “Su Smith”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. And I don’t know how you do this - how you make a game so precise and so filled with stuff to do, and yet so perfect for a form of endless, aimless play that feels like doodling. Doodling games: Burnout Paradise, Grow Home, Crackdown. There’s a genre for sure. A genre I will never tire of. Chris Donlan It’s that same impeccable sense of place that helped make 2015’s Axiom Verge one of the very best of the glut of Metroidvanias we’ve seen in recent years. The work of solo developer Thomas Happ, Axiom Verge was a deliciously icy adventure, its otherworld of Sudra a thing of inky 8-bit horror. Bustling with ideas, a glitchy style of its own and some impeccable pacing, it’s earnt a fair following in the years since. Which makes Axiom Verge 2’s willingness to forge a different path for itself all the bolder. Out go the dank caverns of the original, and in comes a new, lighter aesthetic and a very different kind of chill, its own world of Kiengir a cold expanse dense with secrets. Out go the ingenious guns of the original and in comes a stripped back melee system that makes this feel more indebted to Castlevania than Metroid. Is it a better game than the original Axiom Verge? I’m not sure, though after half a dozen hours with it I’m fairly certain it also belongs up there with the very best Metroidvanias. Martin Robinson Not in The Ramp, though. The Ramp has the best grind noise in any skating game, or maybe I just think that because I am so comprehensively horrible at pulling the maneuver off in this particular skating game. That makes me want to hear that sound all the more - to grind for five, ten, twenty seconds! I think the empty pool is my best bet. And my nemesis is the little ladder that interrupts the smooth edge that is perfect for grinding. Each morning, five minutes of this - a grind, then a fall, a grind then a stop as I run out of momentum. But I’m getting there. And I have bursts of that perfect sound effect to keep me going. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-19” author: “Terri Esposito”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. I love this stuff because it reminds me of my introduction to games, back in the early 1980s with my brothers’ Commodore 64. Back then the best games were room-based platformers, and they often create a singular sense of place - quite eerie and claustrophobic, a kind of atmosphere of sheer mystery in these early games that I have been chasing ever since. The best of these - Impossible Mission, Jet Set Willy - created a sense that the individual screens came together to form a single place - a place that you travelled through, but whose totality remained strangely unseen. Castle of the Pixel Skulls doesn’t seem to do that so far - it’s more about challenges - but it’s enough to transport me back anyway, back to the start of games when they were a proper kind of magic. Chris Donlan Lately I’ve been looking to give myself an extra challenge - beyond all the options Hades already gives you - and this has taken the form of themed runs. Or meme runs, as they’re also called. This involves picking often suboptimal or humorous builds, and seeing how far you can take them. So far I’ve tried my hand at a “Beyblade”-themed run, as inspired by this Reddit user, to turn myself and all my abilities into a series of whirling circles. (A combination of the Guan Yu spear and Blade Rift abilities worked surprisingly well - talk about Ares of effect.) Less successful were my attempts to stick with the abilities of only one god (I had the most luck with Demeter, by the way), but I managed a complete run when trying to collect as much Charon’s Obol as possible - combining it with perks that increased my damage based on this. This all showcases the sheer flexibility and creativity of Hades’ combat system, and how navigating the chaos of the game’s RNG system is half the fun. An attempt to create order from chaos, if you will. I now have plans to do a pass-the-controller run with a friend, in which each of us deliberately picks the worst boons to see how far we can get with a terrible build. Losing has never been so entertaining. Emma Kent You probably know this already, but Killer Sudoku is excellent. It’s the normal game - you still have to get the numbers 1-9 in every row, column and 3X3 square - but the board is also split up into complex shapes that all have their own number targets. So crossing two different 3X3 squares is a sort of L shape that needs the numbers inside to add up to 25. And on and on. At first, playing on Easy, it almost seemed like a con. It was so much easier than normal Sudoku, because here was this extra source of information to lean into when filling out the grid. But my friend told me to only play on Hard mode, and the genius of the game suddenly burns bright: Killer Sudoku’s twist is that it drops you into grids with very few numbers in at the start, and it can do this because, hey, it is giving you an extra source of information to lean into. I am hooked. And I can’t see this ending any time soon. Please join me, if you haven’t already. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-19” author: “George Mclain”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. I shouldn’t have, though. Mystic Pillars is all about bringing down a series of pillars by moving a specific number of beads onto them. The number of beads each pillar requires is clearly displayed, and the fun comes from understanding the way that the beads move over distances from one pillar to another, and then fitting all that understanding into the number of moves each puzzle gives you. It’s fun, but it’s also completely fascinating, as the game’s narrative takes you through a story set in ancient India, and the art brings a beautiful sense of character and dynamism to proceedings. I would have a hard time explaining to you how I have completed some of the challenges, but I love the fact that the game has exposed this terrifying gap in my mind, between what the wordless brain understands and what it can easily express. One of the things I’ve noticed playing through the early stages of the third game on Switch this week, is just how different Luigi is to Mario. He’s always been different of course, first the odd jump and then the fact that he’s sort of a scaredy-cat, but the main difference I’m detecting now is a difference regarding the player’s relationship. When you play Mario, you become Mario: the fun of the game comes from perfectly understanding his particular weight and how the physics of his universe all come together to bring out the best in him. What you do and what Mario do become completely impossible to separate. It’s one of the great harmonies in games. When you play Luigi, in Luigi’s Mansion at least, it’s a bit more complicated. You control Luigi, and yet part of you is separated, because part of the fun comes from watching Luigi perform. You get to move Luigi around this world of moving parts and basically see what he does when he interacts with stuff. The delight comes from the surprise of what happens on screen as much as what you’re aiming to do. This is a deeper truth about the Mansion games, I guess: they’re basically activity bears. Each room is filled with stuff to mess around with and experiment. Clothes on runners, curtains, dust sheets, chairs and tables and far more exotic items. And when it messes with you - using the fixed perspective, say, to weaponise the wall that you can never actually see for yourself directly - it messes with you in the same playful, tactile, gimmicky way. I don’t mean gimmick as a criticism, incidentally: Luigi’s Mansion games are filled with the very best kinds of gimmicks there are. What I had forgotten was the feeling of rage this game encourages. The slamming and the rushing and the last minute triggering of each move - it works its way straight to a dark part of the emotional spectrum. I finish a round and discover I have had my teeth clenched together tightly all the time I’ve been playing. Thumper was a treat in VR, and now it’s a treat here, the opposite of VR. Thumper on the bus, in between Zooms, when you can’t drift off to sleep immediately. Another lovely addition to Apple Arcade, but one that’s lovely in a deeply horrible way, of course.

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-09” author: “Robert Bostic”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. The desire to get to this point is what, I believe, fuels an RPG - what fuels many games, maybe. It’s a desire to take something weak and sloppy, like a ragtag band of starter adventurers, and make them strong and precise. To turn them into a well oiled fighting machine. But the question I’ve been pondering recently is, ‘Do I actually want that?’ Because, I now believe, it fundamentally changes the game. I hit this tipping point in early-game Divinity: Original Sin 2 recently (I’ve been steadily chipping away at it for a few weeks now). I went from being menaced by the powerful Fort Joy Magisters, to being able to defeat them. The moment I realised I could do this, I was thrilled. I was so excited I killed them all. Suddenly, I was in charge. What bothered me afterwards, though, standing in an eerily quiet Fort Joy, was a feeling I had passed my challenge threshold for good. A feeling I would forever be one step ahead of what the game would throw at me. It was almost imperceptible, but it seemed to bear out, and steadily, my interest in the game began to wane. I’ve felt this before. I felt it keenly in the Elder Scrolls games, I felt it keenly in Empire of Sin last year. That moment where you tip the balance and effectively beat the game, and then what happens next, really, is a formality. I’m not saying there are no challenges left in Divinity: Original Sin 2, and I know I can simply turn up the difficulty to produce a new threshold to step over. But it’s curious, isn’t it? Have you felt it too? Bertie But even I realise Zool perhaps suffers more than most due to its speed - it was billed as a Sonic competitor at the time - seeing you dash into tiny hazards with alarming regularity. Thankfully, the Steam remaster does a great job of sanding off the rough edges - zooming out the perspective to better suit modern displays, introducing better checkpointing and adding a double jump to help you scale its candy- and stereo-covered platforms - meaning it’s finally possible to complete and appreciate how weird Zool gets in a single sitting. I’d recommend it if you too have a fondness for the Amiga, £8 and a couple of hours to spare, and credit goes to Sumo Games Academy - an initiative to help new developers break into the industry - for successfully modernising a game while keeping its essence intact. I hope Zool Redimensioned is successful enough that more of Gremlin’s back catalogue can be faithfully revived. How about Bounder? Loaded? And if Zool can work today without Chupa Chups, why not Lotus Turbo Challenge? Matt Reynolds Turns out Deltarune Chapter 2 is an utter, crazy, delight. From the random explosions to the Queen’s, this chapter’s antagonist of a kind, hilarious dialogue, Deltarune captures what made Undertale great, while also proving itself to be unique. The soundtrack is also brilliant - my personal favourites being Big Shot and My Castle Town. Best of all, however, the combat system is more refined compared to Chapter 1. The bullet hell segments continue to meld well with the turn based combat, but, now, gathering Tension Points for spells by grazing bullets feels more natural. This encouraged me to play a little more dangerously - edging closer to attacks I might have previously avoided. The monsters you encounter also have a more surreal style. My favourite is Poppus who is, as you can probably guess, the living embodiment of a pop-up ad and, just like the real thing, selecting the ‘Click’ act will only summon more! When placed together the two chapters feel like they form the beginning of a fairy tale, with a horror story hidden within its heart. You see, there is something lurking beneath the cheerful aesthetic of Hometown and the Dark World’s quirky tone. It hasn’t taken full form yet, choosing instead to linger in a set of red doors, tidbits of information appearing where they shouldn’t and a particular character who seems to, at times, look and talk directly to the player. It’s a sinister sensation which grows even closer if you decide to wander down the hidden Weird, or Snowgrave, route. When exploring this route I found my perspective of Deltarune’s mechanics, and their implications, twisting further. It left me feeling both intrigued and worried about how future chapters will proceed. Lottie Lynn

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-25” author: “William Cuevas”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. I’m not the only newcomer in the group: some had never even heard of D&D before, not that it matters of course. The beauty of the game is that as long as you have a DM who knows what they’re doing, and by design they normally do, then they can lead you through almost anything. All you need is a willing imagination to play along. We’re having a whale of a time, which probably isn’t the correct reaction for a Ravenloft campaign, for this is the darker side of D&D, steeped in horror, and whatever specific form you want that to be. So far, we’ve been sliced open by marionettes and then turned into marionettes, before returning to our bodies and finding our way to a whole other realm, a place of carnivorous hags and murderous fisherpeople. And vampires and vampire hunters. Count Strahd von Zarovich is who we’re ultimately aiming to kill, for he rules the land, horribly, but it could be weeks and months before we achieve that in real-world terms - in game-time, it’s not even been a week for our characters. But I’m fine with that. Every week, we do something we will talk about for days afterwards, and when we meet each other outside of the house, what will happen next week is all we seem to talk about, much to the mystified looks of our friends. Bertie I would love to tell you that the game is as lovely as the conceit - and maybe it is! But for the first few hours it’s hard to see past fiddly controls - it can be so hard to highlight the correct vacant lot - and bewildering menus. I am quite long-sighted, so I never know how useful this kind of feedback is, but I found the text far too small too. Such a shame. Because there is care and love here - a brilliant idea that perhaps blossoms into a sort of playful study of the forces of gentrification and all that topical jazz. Place buildings, get the best out of them by making sure they’re in the right spot and have the right neighbours, level things up and then watch as the complexity starts to emerge. It sound fantastic. And the delivery - the visual conceit - is wonderful. I like to think I can deal with the attendant faff, and I guess I’ll just have to play more and hope it eventually clicks. Chris Donlan It sounds overly simple and it is, but it perfectly suits what developer Beethoven & Dinosaur set out to achieve. In the Artful Escape, teen folk musician Francis Vendetti goes on an intergalactic adventure in order to escape the trappings of his small-town life and discover who he really is: not a folk musician at all, but a rock god. Vendetti is propelled forward on this coming of age adventure, hurled through space and time, past angry fists and snooty fashionistas, riding The Cosmic Lung towards self-discovery, and so it feels natural to push forward on the thumbstick. Vendetti, like you, is along for the ride - and there’s no getting off. It’s weird and wonderful, every level a spectacular sight packed with strange creatures who react to the sound of your guitar. The music is wonderful - really, it’s amazing! - and there were moments I stopped moving and just held X to wail, transfixed. The Artful Escape is a little sickly sweet in places, with dialogue that sometimes veers into Garden State territory, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome, clocking in at just a few hours. Do not take this runtime as some sort of slight: The Artful Escape is perfectly paced, each of its levels playing out like a track on that record you listened to during your early teens that, every now and then, you remember with a smile and an almost tear. The first thing I did when I finished was start over again. I imagine The Artful Escape will be something I dip back into every now and again, whenever my soul needs a jolt. Wes

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-09” author: “Travis Zane”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. It’s lovely stuff, playing a sort of unbaked cookie of a little fellow, falling through dirty pixelart spaces that feel like Metroid one moment and the Addams Family the next. I like to play with the VBoy filter that dunks the whole game into the doomy Cold War red visuals of the Virtual Boy. It makes a game that’s gleefully oppressive just that little bit worse - by which I mean better. I missed Downwell on iOS, but its arrival a while back on Switch is oddly perfect. The perfect game to play between other games - just as long as the ankles hold up. Chris Donlan And, of course, the first thing to remember is that the first night with iRacing after any time away is mostly admin - dusting down the rig and making sure everything works (I keep mine in a shed, so there’s always a handful of snails who are attempting to stow away for the ride too), updating the build then remembering to resubscribe to Craig’s Setup Shop, and all that’s before I’ve even got around to browsing Trading Paints to see which livery I might run. After an hour or two of all that, though, I was wrestling the new 992 Porsche Cup car around the freshly laid virtual tarmac of the Hungaroring. I’m not sure if iRacing precisely plan out which new cars will accompany which new tracks, but there’s a beautiful synergy between this pairing: the Hungaroring is famously one big go kart track, and the Porsche Cup car is one big, bruising go kart, the only difference being the small matter of some 520 horsepower under your right foot. It’s a hoot, in short, not quite as deathly as its 991 predecessor but still one of the quickest ways to get your heartrate pounding in virtual racing thanks to its theatrics. And who knows? Maybe I might even get around to racing the thing this season. Martin Robinson So much of that is down to the performance of Logan Cunningham - has any one person had such an impact on a game since the days of the first Halo with that thundering, wailing score? - but Bastion is far more than just a game with an ingenious narration. Returning to it this week I’ve been pulled straight back in. And there’s so much beauty everywhere. Most of all, it’s fascinating to play Bastion after Hades and to see how much of the DNA was already in place. Bows and shields, the thud of impact, the way that some enemies like to float and swarm. There is Hades everywhere in Bastion, right down to the many ways you can tinker with your arsenal and your powers. What’s missing - or rather what wasn’t appropriate yet - is the movement. In Hades you slide across the ground like you’re skidding over shiny parquet in socks. In Bastion, with the rugged earth coming up to meet you as you move, it’s all much slower, with a greater sense of the hardscrabble of each step. Perfect. It’s almost infuriating. Supergiant is such a magical developer, it’s like the team is so poised you can never see the wheels going around. Even Hades, which was Early Access when it launched, was so astonishingly polished at the very start, when so many other games are flopping around helplessly like surprised fish on the deck of a trawler somewhere. Bastion is a delight - and it’s also a weirdly perfect primer in what was to come. And it makes me think: what’s next, and which parts of what’s next are already here in Bastion for me to see? Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-01” author: “Whitney Mcnish”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. I was struggling a bit with Back 4 Blood. I was playing in co-op but wasn’t having much fun. It seemed to lack ideas and repeat itself. It was a bit - cardinal sin - boring. But then, there was the bar. You know you’re in for a big fight because the place is an arsenal, guns and grenades everywhere. And there’s a prompt on the jukebox telling you that when you turn it on, the zombie horde will approach. None of this is out-of-the-box thinking for a zombie game: defending a stronghold while undead pour in from various entry points is standard stuff. Here, though, it really worked. As the music blared, the place erupted in gory splatter. It felt like being in one of those outrageous moments of carnage in a zombie film, where the sound effects are muted and the music comes in over the top, as if you’re watching some kind of horrendous ballet. It was breathless - I don’t think I breathed for about seven minutes (unlikely, Bertie). And when it was done, I blurted to the person I was playing with, excited, “That’s more like it!” Back 4 Blood hasn’t quite hit the same heights again for me yet, but there’s time. And my faith has been somewhat restored, because I know it can do it. Here’s hoping. Bertie Then I started to have fun. I get that bosses are ultimately about pattern learning, and I get that this isn’t new to Metroid Dread. But while playing these bosses, learning the patterns and leaping around their dangerous bits, I’ve started to see the whole thing as a dance - a different dance that you learn for each boss. Step here, jump, twist, shoot, jump, twist duck. As such, it’s become something that properly does what a boss should do. The bosses here are a chance to use the game’s tools in a different way, to be precise instead of exploratory, and to watch instead of just wonder and wander. I’m about half way through now and still making quite slow process, but no matter. I’m in for the ride at this point. Chris Donlan As such, I understand totally why Crackdown 3 has done the things it’s done - why the world is so busy with things to tick off, and why they’ve given you unlocks that flare things like traversal and whatnot in interesting ways. But each of these things, each of these good ideas, takes something crucial away. The busy stuff in the world means that Crackdown 3 is elbowy and lacking in that secret ingredient to the first game: empty space. The updates to traversal and everything bring nuance to a game that exists as an example of the pleasures of having no nuance in the first place. A dumb jump. A flailing grab. That’s Crackdown. It’s somehow not as good when you can boost in mid-air and propel yourself upwards. The feeling I’m always left with is that this is a valiant effort - a smart team giving its all for a brief that is ultimately impossible to fulfil. As I said I ducked back in, jumped around a bit and swept up a few last orbs. I hope I remember to come back again at some point. Chris Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-29” author: “Ronald Main”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. (I will also openly admit to flat envy over the perfect creative studio our painter lives in.) The game gradually creates a sweet tone until it unveils the silent tension it’s been constructing through acts of repetition. It’s here where you start to question exactly what kind of game you’re playing, before the threads Behind The Frame have been spinning knot themselves together. While you might have already figured out the game’s secret, the beautiful, expectedly animated, sequence is a joy to experience. Like art itself, Behind the Frame focuses on a pinprick of time; exploring a memory of what once was and why it was so vital for the creator to so carefully record it. It leaves you immersed in a happiness kindly tinged by sadness. Lottie Lynn This is one of those invisible jobs that makes the world around you seem correct: whether by machine or professional, for hundreds of years we have been quietly arranging text so it pleases the eye. I think - I say that, I haven’t thought about it very much - that it’s typography’s version of proprioception, the spooky neurological sense that our limbs are where we believe they are. Kerning has been part of your world for as long as you’ve been reading. And Kern Type has been part of mine for an age too. Every now and then I remember that this beautiful web game exists and then I rush back to play it for an hour. Here is a word - drag the letters to get the spacing so it looks good. How close did you get to the true answer? Reader, I used to be good at this, and I am good at it no longer. I have played for twenty minutes this morning and that sound you can hear is Claude Garamond screaming at what I have done to his font. You can lose proprioception, so maybe you can lose the instinct to kern. Whatever’s happened to me, do have fun with this beautiful game. Chris Donlan Perhaps unsurprisingly, it features cute animal characters, oddball plots, funny dialogue and heartfelt themes of family and friendship. This time though, it’s set in space, where you’re the newest employee at a friendly neighbour shipyard. You’re in charge of building 2D spaceships to a set of increasingly stringent requirements, starting with a handful of subsystems like fuel, engines and command modules and gradually incorporating more novel stuff like cloaking fields, armour, computer-y bits for AIs, weapons and warp drives. Each part has its own characteristics - where it can be placed, how much energy it uses, whether it produces or suffers from radiation - so you’ve got to experiment and think about what bits should go where. For example, a comms dish helps you meet communications requirements and adds armour to the bit of the ship it’s on, but needs a clear line to the outside world, generates heat and is radiation-sensitive - so you’ve got to find the perfect place for it each time you’re asked to include one. This complexity makes it really rewarding to create an efficient and good-looking ship that also meets the customer’s demands. Each mission adds a few new elements to play with and is bookended by cute story beats, all set to a cheerful lo-fi spacey soundtrack. Building ships to the requirements and under budget gives you some space cash to play with, which you can use on unlocking new parts. After the campaign - roughly four hours - there are daily challenges where you’re competing against everyone else to deliver a working ship for minimal budget, plus randomly-generated single-player ships. This has been enough to keep me booting up the game each day, if only to hear the brilliant soundtrack for a few minutes while I tinker around with new ship layouts and reminisce about that web comic I read all those years ago. The game’s not had much mainstream attention, but all 101 of its user reviews on Steam have been positive - so I’d encourage you to check it out if you’re in the mood for something sweet and spacey. Will Judd

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-10” author: “Renee Matthews”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. The third chapter’s opening was a bit stodgier, but now I’m playing the game’s third island, the feelings I had back at the start of the second chapter remain: I will wander around and remember a place on the old island I loved, and have a lovely little pang of melancholy that I will not see it again. Fortnite is full of this stuff, of course: it is constantly offering new things because it is so happy to plough old things up and replace them. As I wander across the new island I’m stunned by how beautifully things have been put together - the landmarks, the sight lines, the easy shift from one kind of terrain to another. But I am haunted, in the best possible way, by things that are no longer there. Loot Lake, Tilted Towers, Lazy Lake, Pleasant Park… Donlan The best of those sights are the Remnants: towering…colossi whose shadows (sorry) loom over the world. Destroying enough anomalies to take on these bosses is a simple structural device but the battles themselves form a thrilling climax as the music soars and you leap and grind and skate your way over each Remnant like a scuttling ant. They’re a natural extension of the platforming, the ultimate test of your abilities. Much like Hyper Light Drifter before was a pastiche of Zelda, Solar Ash is easily described as Jet Set Radio meets Shadow of the Colossus. And like the latter, there are some frustrations despite its beauty. The camera sometimes has a mind of its own and Rei’s lack of shadow makes it difficult to judge where she’ll land next. But this is a game that thrives on its atmosphere. Its surreal space world is a bright splash of magenta, and the score (once again from Disasterpeace) shimmers and whirs like the best of Vangelis (Donlan was right). Gameplay might be pinched from elsewhere, but nothing else quite feels like Solar Ash. Ed Nightingale It’s a one-hit-kill affair where you’re deadly but gloriously fragile, setting the Neo Tokyo night ablaze with slashes of a sabre and blasts from a gun. I play it for a couple of minutes each week without getting any better at it, but it brings such a wonderful fury into my life through my fingertips - it’s truly maddening. Do you remember Super Crate Box? You can’t get that on Switch, as far as I can tell - thankfully I have the perfect version on Vita - but Akane, while being nothing like it, is totally just like it. Stabbing the button wildly, going from freewheeling life to shocking death and back again. What a treat. Donlan

title: “What We Ve Been Playing” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-06” author: “Christopher Donson”

If you fancy catching up on some of the older editions of What We’ve Been Playing, here’s our archive. The game is movement - that’s all you really do. You’re a piece of alien technology (I think) capable of rolling as a ball and then flattening into a pancake shape and gliding through the sky. When you pull the right trigger, you pull on gravity, and you can thunder down hills to pick up momentum. When you pull the right trigger, you soar up into the air and glide. That’s all you know. That’s all you really need to know. Your sense of play does the rest. How fast can you make this craft go? How high can you make it go? How smoothly can you fly it without any falling-down downtimes? This is all you’ll care about to begin with. It’s only after a bit of time that you’ll start wondering where you are (Jupiter?) and what you’re actually doing, and the game drips clues in about this at around the same time. It’s just so freeing to be able to pick up and go in a game like this, and to be able to go so fast, without having to worry about question marks. Just to be, just to play, just to move. It’s almost mesmerising. It’s actually a bit of a shame when a sort of game structure begins to emerge. Bertie It’s one of those magical games where the world tells you so much as you move through it. Not in heavy-handed ways, with emails to read and voice logs and all that jazz. Just in the little details. A secret area will have a skeleton slumped in a corner. An underground complex will have rooms whose precise purpose it’s a pleasure to wonder about. And the combat is a dream. In Solar Ash, combat’s really there to give you something more to think about as you move around - it’s an element of movement, almost, like part of a dance routine. In Hyper Light Drifter you can get into real trouble if you don’t control the space around you, and your arsenal ties together in simple, satisfying ways - melee recharges your ranged weapon, your ranged weapon gives you a bit of space and a bit of time. It’s a delight to come back, to see that before Heart Machine mastered 3D space, the team did a pretty good job with 2D space. Incredible. Donlan And yet! After months and countless bite-sizes sessions with G-Darius, I’m really beginning to love it - its energy and abundance of ideas makes it feel like this own series’ Gradius 5, a grandee that may well prove to be a personal favourite Darius game. It’s a funny thing - I’d have quite happily turned my back on G-Darius after the first playthrough of it, but all these months later it’s quite possibly become one of my favourite games of the year. Martin