What are we all playing this weekend?

After a week of leaks, confirmations, trailers, and announcements, somehow it still isn't E3 yet. The video game industry's main marketing-o-press-a-rama officially starts on Tuesday, though most of the exciting stuff happens before the expo in Los Angeles even opens. EA, Microsoft, Bethesda, and Devolver Digital have their press conferences this weekend, which will of course be livestreamed for all to see, then more will follow on Monday (not to forget Nintendo on Tuesday, who are always a delightful palate cleanser even if not RPS-relevant). Anyway! Enough about futuregames.

What are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!

Alec: After the best part of a fortnight with the increasingly whoops-a-daisy Vampyr, I'm keen to dabble in a what I am given to understand will be an altogether less time-wasting take on occult shenanigans, the well-received Cultist Simulator.

No, don't be silly, I'll be at another of my kid's friend's birthday party. Class sizes these days, Christ alive.

Alice: I'm still so keen on Slay The Spire's third character, a versatile little wizard robot named The Defect. They can build runs in so many delightfully fiendish directions. I'm happy when I build a cascading torrent of spells and abilities that make a single turn go on for minutes, I'm happy when I'm a frenzied murderbot ripping into enemies with little attacks that loop and chain into bloodbaths, and I'm happy just zorping ice and lightning around. What a pleasant wizard.

Beyond that, I need to spend a lot of time outdoors (ideally in water and/or sunshine) before E3 leaves me wrecked me for the next fortnight.

Brendan: I'm going to E3! So I'll be playing Jetlag. It's a good thing I'll have a whole weekend to recover before the - ah. No. I'll be at EA's presentation early Saturday morning to cast a sleepy eye over their latest Madden tech, and I won't stop looking at games until the following Friday. Send me your thoughts and prayers. That's the currency of the US, I think.

Graham: This weekend I shall play the "watching the E3 conferences" drinking game. Someone says "we've listened to your feedback"? Drink. Someone says "for the fans"? Drink. Someone says "no lootboxes" to uproarious applause? Drink. "Battle royale mode", drink. Awkward scripted multiplayer session? Drink. There are more. The real challenge is to live to see the next morning.

John: On PC I keep dabbling with Moonlighter in spare time, not that it really justifies such persistent attention. It's become a sort of fiddle while watching TV shows.

I finished God Of War last weekend, and wanting for something else to play on the sofa, realised I could finally catch up with cool kids of last decade and play the Uncharted games, so bought that triple pack. That'll likely be my weekend playing, in the odd grabbed moments.

Katharine: In an attempt to escape the imminent E3 madness, I'll be growing beanstalks and escaping to the moon once again this weekend with the delightful Grow Up. At that kind of altitude, I'll be able to watch all the E3 press conferences without having to deal with 2am wake-up calls and staying up way past my bedtime, and the reactionary roar of 'WHERE IS MY SWITCH ANIMAL CROSSING GODDAMNIT?' will be nothing but a mere whisper on the dead, sterile breeze.

Matt: I'm still summoning stuff and getting eaten by it in Cultist Simulator, and getting punked by more bunkers than I'm punking in Bunker Punks.

I might play a bit more Realm Royale, too, which feels like a refreshing change of pace from Plunkbat. Which I'm also going to play.

Matthew: I'm going to try the Sniper Assassin minigame thing announced with Hitman 2 the other day. I got a fair bit of mileage out of the similar Sniper Challenge back in the Absolution days (maybe the only good bit to come out of that game?) so hoping this has similar depth. And if I get bored of that I'm doing a high chaos run of Vampyr, in homage to the terrifying din of E3.

But you, dearest reader, what are you playing?