What are we all playing this weekend?

Look, I know you've come here purely to read my trite wittering about weather and daylight, but I don't have time for it today. I need to go play Balatro. Every additional word I type is another half-second I could have used to play Balatro. Oh god that was 8 seconds of unBalatro, and for nothing. That's another 6! I must stop this. Go on, tell me, what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!

Alice Bee
has been to Aberdeen, god help her.

Alice0
I'm climbing the ranks of roguelikelike poker game Balatro's difficulty modes. I feel I am starting to reach the point where luck plays a larger element in success, but oh how sweet that success is! My most recent ridiculous run combined the Midas Mask joker (all face cards played become enhanced Gold cards) with the Vampire (remove enhancements from all cards played, gaining permanent 0.2x mult for each) to scale to ridiculous levels. Might swing by the local casino to try this out for realsies on the weekend, bringing my own printed jokers.

Ed
After about 90 hours, I've finally reached the 20 additional hours of Persona 5: Royal's extra semester. If I'm not enjoying that, I'll be diving into some co-op Baldur's Gate 3 or Helldivers 2 if the servers have righted themselves.

Edwin
Edwin: Somebody tipped me off about a very righteous-sounding free edu-sim called Half-Earth Socialism the other week - I'm going to give that a go this weekend. I might also dip a toe in Elden Ring again, now that Shadow Of The Erdtree has a release date, and maybe check out the demo for Clown Meat, which is Super Meat Boy except you are trying "to cheer up the monolithic clown that came from the Depths of Jupiter". Well now.

James
Server issues be damned, I will remain on my Helldivers 2 nonsense. Even though my friends keep wanting to fight the robots, rather than the bugs, despite them not being nearly as fun to shoot or funny to die to.

Jeremy
I’ll be cycling through a few things during the time I have this weekend. There's Balatro, which is a fiendishly fun poker roguelike that I must thank Katherine for introducing me to with her excellent review. Always struggled to understand or care about poker - and I struggle with roguelikes as well to an extent – but this game makes me a believer. Then there's Nightingale, which is finally in early access. The RPS Treehouse have been at odds on certain bits of the game, like its quirky tarot card menus and UI, but I've enjoyed my time with it and am looking forward to building my little slice of life in the Faewilds. Last but not least, I should make some more progress in Elden Ring to prepare for the expansion, and will also test some builds out in Last Epoch if I can. Busy!

Katharine
There are so many new games I want to play at the moment. Nightingale, Last Epoch, Pacific Drive, Banishers and more Balatro... In truth, it will probably just be more Balatro if I'm honest. It's so damn good. I still haven't won a single run yet, but gosh, I cannot stop.

Kiera
is away!

Ollie
Satisfactory has swallowed me whole once more, and has been slowly digesting me for a couple of weeks now. I'm playing a new game with a friend, and among our recent creations is a gigantic mall with a special storage space where we can dump random items, and it automatically sorts them into the right areas and recycles the waste. It's one of my favourite things ever. So satisfying to watch it methodically sort through everything.

But you, reader dear, what are you playing this weekend?