You know what’s my favorite level? Sea level. Still, I can understand the allure of mountain climbing. It’s the feeling of being literally and figuratively on top of the world. A selfie on top of a mountain is that one photo everyone has on social media.

That being said, there are not that many mountaineering games and even fewer games about rock climbing. Most games about climbing are drab or intentionally goofy and sadistic, in the vein of Getting Over It and Baby Steps. When I heard that The Game Bakers (Furi, Haven) were making Cairn, a climbing game, I knew they would add just the right amount of pizzazz to the concept.

Confession time: when I tried the demo a few months ago, I absolutely hated it. 

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A couple of huge blockbuster releases this week. The latest Nioh game is here to cater to your ninja fantasies. And the famous Dragon Quest VII gets a remake this week. DQ7 is one of those shorthand names I’ve heard mentioned that I’ve never checked myself, like “Ultima” and “MOO2”. What’s a MOO, anyway?. Wait, I eventually did check out MOO2 and it’s amazing. And now we can all check out a modernized version of DQ7. Hopefully someone will remake Ultima 7 one day so I can finally check that out.

The Dragon’s Quest remake brings to mind a recent headline about the latest Tomb Raider in development, a remake of the original Tomb Raider with its difficulty “tuned to modern tastes”. Should I picture the popularity of Souls-likes lately or a smoother and less difficult game?

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Strange Jigsaws is an apt enough title. Most of these puzzles are iterations on jigsaws, and many of them are nothing if not strange. But this is not a jigsaw puzzle. The average window shopper might mistake it for a lo-fi Glass Masquerade, that series of digital jigsaw puzzles with a luminous stained glass window aesthetic. But the Glass Masquerades live in the category of time-wasters, games you power down your brain to play, much like doing an actual tabletop jigsaw puzzle. Strange Jigsaws is more active, more brain food than mind bath, something you grind and process and digest rather than soak in. 

I kind of wish Strange Jigsaws were called something else, because it’s only tangentially linked to jigsaw puzzling, and it’s more than just a set of puzzles. It’s got a narrative thrust, and it eventually reveals itself as a journey. It’s a guided tour through the mind of a man who doesn’t just make puzzles, but who cannot resist tinkering. Strange Jigsaws is his inner monologue turned outward, the diary of someone who looked at a jigsaw puzzle one day and simply couldn’t keep his hands off it, who couldn’t resist turning jigsaw puzzles into, well, something else entirely.

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I expect a JRPG to take its time getting underway. They tend to open slowly, as they amble casually through their opening hours. They meander among bouts of worldbuilding, new systems tutorials, and character introductions. You’re not really playing a JRPG until you’ve paid several hours of game tax. Even then, there might be several more yet to come. JRPGs are not for the impatient.

But I don’t think I’ve ever played a less eventful first ten hours than the first ten hours of Clair Obscur. I am utterly nonplussed. I simply don’t get it. I don’t understand the lack of worldbuilding, systems, or characters. And what is there seems underdeveloped. The worldbulding is inscrutable and arbitrary, the systems are simple and few, and the characters are glib videogame puppets with luxurious hair and meager motivations. This is the critically acclaimed Clair Obscur: Expedition 33? This is what won our forums’ yearly awards? 

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Welcome to a cold week of hot new releases! The biggest name this week is Code Vein 2, a sequel to a Souls-like that very few people actually clamored for. The original got fair reviews and a mixed reception [ed. note: Tom really liked it!] The release that people have been highly anticipating is Cairn, a realistic simulation about finding the best holds and placing your hands and feet seamlessly with simple controls. 

Size Five Games, the studio behind Time Gentlemen, Please!, Ben There, Dan That! and Lair of the Clockwork God, is releasing a new game this week. They have a sense of humor that really tickles my funny bone, so I’m looking forward to Earth Must Die, a point-and-click adventure where the protagonist refuses to touch anything, and must therefore solve problems indirectly through conversational coercion.

Also of note, is Highguard. We saw a trailer for it at the end of the Game Awards last month, and then the game wasn’t heard from again. Is it being sent out to die? Or are they hoping word of mouth gets the job done after release as was the case with Apex Legends which was a surprise drop? 

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The fact that Pathologic 3 even exists is a small, maggot-infested miracle. For one, there are not many games about curing a plague in a tiny town in the middle of the steppe, a town overflowing with butchers and philosophers where magic realism meets absurdist theatre. The more complicated reason requires a bit of an explanation. Sorry about that. If you can’t stomach a dry intro, you probably won’t like this obtuse game about a plague. Call it a test. Triage.

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2XKO is the big triple A release this week, as well as the port of Final Fantasy VII Remake to the Xbox and Switch 2. But a lot of the smaller games coming this week look really attractive and polished. MIO: Memories in Orbit looks like a neat Metroidvania, and Gooey looks like a cool 2D platformer. TR-49 looks like an intriguing new game from Inkle concerning WW2 cryptography. Hermit and Pig and Escape The Ever After seem to set RPGs in contemporary settings (kind of) to go for laughs. And MAVRIX seems like a really thrilling bicycle game that would be a red alert wallet threat to me if it wasn’t still going to be Early Access even after it hits consoles this week.

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It was on a Monday, April second — I was cruising in the vicinity of Betelgeuse — when a meteor no larger than a lima bean pierced the hull, shattered the drive regulator and part of the rudder, as a result of which the rocket lost all maneuverability. I put on my spacesuit, went outside and tried to fix the mechanism, but found I couldn’t possibly attach the spare rudder — which I’d had the foresight to bring along — without the help of another man. The constructors had foolishly designed the rocket in such a way, that it took one person to hold the head of the bolt in place with a wrench, and another to tighten the nut. I didn’t realize this at first and spent several hours trying to grip the wrench with my feet while using both hands to screw on the nut at the other end.

–Stanislaw Lem, Star Diaries, “The 7th Voyage of Ijon Tichy” (1957)

Lem, who is often referred to as a “science fiction” writer, has anticipated cooperative videogame puzzles years before videogames have even been invented. Our hero, Ijon Tichy, has encountered a situation in which you need another player present. Coincidentally, this is how The Alters opens. And in both cases, another player isn’t available. Because the Alters is single player only, and Star Diaries isn’t even a videogame! So what now? 

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We’re at the point in January where we see some big releases. Like the Switch 2 version of Animal Crossing, the game that was all the rage during the pandemic. And a Trails JRPG set on a planet that’s about to go into space for the first time. I thought Trails RPGs were set in fantasy worlds?

On the indie games front, I have some serious nostalgia for playing Lemmings back in 1991, so the Lemmings-style game Craftlings has caught my eye. It seems to bring a lot more complexity to the Lemmings gameplay. 

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As we cast back our thoughts to which games we enjoyed the most in 2025 so we can vote in the Quarterlies, new games continue to vie for our attention. I don’t know much about the Pathologic series, but from what I understand it’s well regarded. A sequel is coming this week. Spear looks like a neat action-platform puzzler that came out in May 2025 for the PC and is well regarded, and it caught my eye for the Xbox port coming this week. To my eyes, the most striking game from this week’s slate is Past Fate, an MMORPG that’s coming to early access this week and seems to go for a very bleak look and feel.

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As Killian Maddox strolls out into the parking lot with his groceries, his mind squirms with the enormity of what-ifs and could-haves. If only he had… What might have happened if… It could have been that… But out of the turmoil, he comes to a decision and a halt, all at once. A car’s tires screech mildly, followed by the unmistakable car-on-car tump of a fender bender. 

Surely the sound effect is something Magazine Dreams director Elijah Bynum added in post-production. The timing is just too perfect. It happens exactly as Killian makes his decision. The effect onscreen is almost invisible, but it’s there: Maddox’s resolve has all the force and nuance of a minor car accident.

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Consoles may not have announced any releases this week, but PC indies have some gas left in the 2025 tank. How about combining tower defense and match3 games? Or an RPG where you play the worst knight in the kingdom? A new minimalist puzzle game? A bullet hell with a name google refuses to not correct? How about a metroidvania? Already too many of those? Then how about a Christmas-themed Papers, Please clone about giving gifts to kids released five days after Christmas? Missed it by that much!

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You are in a dingy cell with a toilet, an ATM and a slot machine. Win enough money to pay an ever-increasing debt or the floor literally drops under you. Maybe you’ll earn the key to escape, maybe not. It sounds like the pitch for Saw XIV, but this is CloverPit, one of the bigger roguelike hits of 2025.

CloverPit is pure distilled “roguelikiness”. All the excitement of choosing perks, levelling up and creating a build, only to lose everything and start over again… all without having to deal with anything as pesky as a main gameplay loop. This is the game’s biggest strength and its biggest flaw.

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Another week filled with releases no one’s heard of. Another week where the wallet threat is mostly game sales. Although some of the elevator pitches for this week’s games make them sound pretty cool though, so keep reading and don’t assume your wallet is entirely safe.

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For the most part, The Sheltering Desert is a survival adventure about two men who take refuge in the Namib desert during World War II. But on a deeper and perhaps more fundamental level, it’s a story of transformation. Of what happens when your life is dictated by the demands and rhythms of a harsh wilderness. It’s the story of decivilization, or perhaps recivilization. Learning to live life by different rules.  

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