What are we all playing this long weekend?
WELL?
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Friday and Monday are bank holidays in the UK, remembering the anniversary of us sicking up a load of Cadbury Creme Eggs. No one remembers how this cycle started but tradition is tradition. Because we're festive sorts and don't want to create any work for those hard-done-by bankers, we're taking the two days off. We're away! Holiday! The weekend is already here! And that's why you won't hear much from us until Tuesday.
What are you playing this long weekend? Here's what we're clicking on.
Adam: EVE Online. It's finally happened and I'm on the inside. Currently I'm just drifting around gathering stories and fact-checking some of the stories I've already heard, but I might be in for the long-haul. I've been impressed by how well the new player experience lowered me into the waters, letting me become familiar with a whole bunch of different aspects before leaving me in the crumbling shark cage, ready to become chum.
Alec: I'll be continuing to locate The Signal From Tolva, which though a game created by murderers is also one that highly effectively blends combat with zen exploration, in particularly delectable environments that blend the brutalist with the scenic. I know I would say that, because it's co-created by my RPS co-founder Jim. but I'm also saying it because I mean it.
Alice: I'm a bit late but planning a good spring clean. I'm especially looking forward to the bathroom, as I do enjoy the sensation as high-friction scale giving way and leaving slick clean tiles. I'll also tidy up my Steam list of games-in-progress, polishing off Night in the Woods, the many minor false endings of Nier: Automata (ps- I adore this game in many ways), Void & Meddler, and maybe a few others. I'm also wrapping up visuals for when Cara and I play songs at an event in Edinburgh next Friday. Or I'll hop on a train tomorrow morning and see where I end up.
Brendan: I'm trundling through a new game of Stellaris, playing as a race of shelled space reptiles called the Tortals. They each live for about 150 years and they are chasing down the Utopian dream of an hyper-multicultural society where everyone is welcome to migrate. This federation we have set up is called the "Galactic Slop Pot". So far we have four distinct races on the planets. However, human beings are one of them, and from what the Tortals have heard, these fleshy fellows don't exactly "do" Utopia.
Graham: My Nintendo Switch finally arrived, which means I've been digging into Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I've just left the Great Plateau, the landmass that forms the game's introduction, but I've been enjoying it from the first couple of minutes. It's been a real pleasure to play one of these expansive, open games and not have to chew through endless cutscene skin and tutorial fat to get to something that tastes like meat.
John: My Easter holidays are going to be spent in a cold-fuelled rush of entertaining a two year old for whom all his usually activities are bloody cancelled. Stupid Jesus.
This will likely not leave a lot of time for games, but I do have a hefty pile of new releases that I want to take a look at. Currently trying to fathom The Sexy Brutale, which I'm hoping isn't about to get too fiddly to be fun.
Philippa: This weekend I will be doing my usual thing of not playing videogames. Videogames get my whole week so I try to keep my weekends for outside things or for games I want to play exclusively as leisure activities. This weekend is a long one in the UK, bookended by Bank Holidays, so I think I'm going to try to spend those middle two days entirely away from screens. It's not for a digital detox, just to stop myself frittering time away and reaching Monday only to think "but what did I do with that lovely time off". The days either side I've not decided what to do with yet. Perhaps some of my own small nature-based projects.
But you, dearest reader, what are you playing?