What Are We All Playing This Weekend?

I'm feeling out of touch with the world. London is one of three cities in the world where anything happens - along with San Francisco and New York City - so a large chunk of everything I heard used to be directed at me. Everyone wants to talk about London, because isn't London big and great? Edinburgh gets a little less focus. What's happening here? Why does the world not focus on events directly around me? Obviously I'll regret saying this once the Edinburgh Festival kicks off in a few weeks.

But come on, help dear Auntie Alice feel like a real person connected to the world. Tell me: what are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're playing:

Adam: I started playing Odallus: The Dark Call last night. It's wonderful by virtue of being a retro game that actually looks like an old game rather than somebody's idea of what an old game might have been like. Less neon and people shouting RAD, more barbarians and smart enemy patterns. The sprites are huge, chunky things, and the sound effects are a perfect horrorshow of digitised grunts and screams. Because the entire game feels like a genuine relic, the way the player character grabs ledges to pull himself up feels way ahead of its time. I've only just finished the first area but I think I love it.

Alec: I had a bit of a fiddle with Feist because its art style is so very lovely, but then I remembered that jumping puzzles make me want to run into the sea and never return, so I stopped after one level. If you like jumping puzzles then it has particularly attractive things to look at while you fail and fail and fail again, I guess. I'm also trying to get back into the Witcher 3 after leaving it alone for a few weeks, but clearly now I can't remember who anyone is, what I was doing or how to fight a malnourished dog without immediately dying. The new movement in the 1.07 patch is a bit of a treat, though: Geralt feels like a person rather than a milk float with half-flat battery now.

Alice: I'm trying to evade the many deaths of Lakeview Cabin Collection, a curious anthology of... murderous emergent adventure games? Mostly so I can explain them better than that wishy-washy nonsense. They're small sandbox where you and your pals are trapped with horror movie nasties, and need to figure out how you can use objects and the environment to stop them. Oh hey, and I've just remembered I have another episode of Tales from the Borderlands to play too.

Graham: Rocket League, Rocket League, Rocket League. I struggle to articulate the reasons why I enjoy this game so much without sounding simple, but: car go fast very nice; hit ball to score goal very exciting; wizard hat plus rainbows whoosh when boost. It also doesn't hurt that there are so many people playing and the matchmaking is so quick that I can just keep clicking and keep playing without my flow ever being broken.

Philippa: This week I've been indulging in a click-a-thon thanks to Forget Me Not: My Organic Garden. I posted about it in a bit more detail on Friday but it's a game about clicking various things in order to run a greenhouse where the plants produce organs - kidneys, stomachs and hearts - which can make inanimate objects move and bring dead things back to life (sort of). The abundance of clicking means I can also finally watch the final season of Gossip Girl without getting too fidgety and giving up.

I assume John's silence means that he's doing something far more important than sending me e-mails. Saving the world by heaving an erupting volcano into the sun across his broad shoulders, something like that.