Author: Christian Donlan

Hello! Our game of the week is Botany Manor. I’ve been looking forward to it since I played the demo, but, in truth, I’ve been looking forward to Matt Wales’ review even more. Matt knows plants – he gets them and appreciates them on the kind of level I aspire to deeply. I was struck…

My half-hour spent playing The Rogue Prince of Persia felt a bit like coming home. And not particularly because of the Prince of Persia bit, if I’m honest. I still love the Prince, but I also appreciate that they feel like Ubisoft’s new minister without portfolio at the moment: they’re a little unmoored, and they…

A few weeks back, I read that the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield has created a virtual exhibition to record the role Animal Crossing: New Horizons played in the early days of COVID lockdown. Oh gosh, those weird, terrifying days! Hunting for toilet roll, struggling to handle my daughter’s homeschooling with lessons over Skype and…

Pepper Grinder is out now, which is wonderful – do give it a look if you’re after a fun, chuggy action game with a touch of Drill Dozer to it. I played the game while surrounded by actual drills, as we’re having our bathroom redone at the moment. We haven’t had builders in the house…

Chug through the earth and navigate ingenious levels in this terrific platformer. Pepper Grinder is one of those 2D platform games with a big idea. And its big idea is brilliant. You’re a tiny character scampering around roomy levels, the camera pulled a good way out, and you have a drill. A drill! You can…

I was scrolling on TikTok the other night when I discovered a new thing to worry about. Is Wordle about to run out words? Well, it’s complicated. And also: no. But it’s also interesting! During a question and answer session on the New York Times’ game’s team’s Tiktok, Wordle editor Tracy Bennett was asked by…

Content Warning is the new Lethal Company – or it is today at least. It’s come out of nowhere, it’s a gorgeously scrappy co-op horror experience, and it excels at creating moments that are frightening but also deeply hilarious. But there’s something extra in the mix with Content Warning. It’s astonishingly wholesome. Well, my second…

This is the second time I’ve written this week’s Game of the Week. The game has remained the same, though. That’s the first part of the trick. Our game this week is, of course, Timemelters, by Autoexec. It’s the spiritual sequel to one of my all time favourites, Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves. In both games…

Occasionally in a game I’ll look up and I’ll notice the clouds. I’ll be shooting someone, or collecting something, or just walking over the crest of a hill as I follow a waypoint marker, and my gaze will drift upwards, entirely unmotivated, and- -And suddenly I’ll see the huge bowl of the sky overhead. Maybe…

Part of the team behind Sang-Froid are back with a spiritual sequel powered by some truly dazzling thinking. In Timemelters, time is a shoelace. It bends and twists. What you’ve done with one part of the lace can effect the other parts in unusual ways. You get loops, but also knots and snarls and tangles.…