Shhhhh. If we're quiet, we might be able to avoid discourse with this one. If you've spent your weekend playing Hollow Knight: Silksong and found that the likes of enemies inflicting double damage and spawns being miles away put a dampner on the fun, mods can help.

I know, I know, these are videogames and we must take their difficulty with the utmost seriousness. How else are any of us supposed to learn important life lessons, like 'press button dodge at this point', unless we go through hours of frustration trying to beat one boss (or look such info up)? As such, I stress that these mods, like all mods, are entirely optional. No need to shout at people for using them. Save your voice for singing love ballads to Hornet during breaks in the action.

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In good news for those saddened by their inability to stamp on Hitler's head in Indiana Jones And The Great Circle, Machine Games are once again making noises about developing a third Wolfenstein game.

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Alright, sweethearts. What are you waiting for? Breakfast in bed? Another glorious day feeding the Maw. A day feeding the Maw is like a day on the farm - every update's a banquet, every DLC a fortune, every quarterly earnings call a parade. I LOVE the Maw!

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Sundays are for realising that the smell you can smell is that smell. That smell which smells. And how does it smell? It smells smelly. You open the door, and there they are. Anchovies. All waiting to play Hollow Knight: Silksong. No. Stay back. They won't. Into your cardboard box they file, clearly experts in filling tight spaces thanks to their past lives as tinned goods. From upstairs, you hear the unmistakeable sound of roaring laughter, echoing amid the damp paper. "I told you to let me out," bellows a triumphant Adrian Edmondson. "Now you'll pay the price." As the light fades from your eyes, you picture some writings from this week.

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This week went by just like that, didn’t it? Oh. I clicked my fingers as you read the word “that”, so you’d understand how fast this week went by, but you probably didn’t hear it. Alright then, let’s try something else: I’m writing this on Friday, and now it’s the weekend. See? See how fast that was? Better read what we’re playing today quick, or it’ll be December 8th, 2032 before you know it.

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For most of his game-making career, Australian developer dweedes has projected an image of cheeky, punkish rebellion. His website WET GAMIN has accumulated a trove of experimental games over the last decade: short works by various freeware developers that exemplify a scribbly, DIY spirit. Now, making and selling games on Steam under his studio Nonsense Machine, dweedes finds himself in the position of stepping up his commercial and craft ambitions while trying to stay true to his anti-corporate roots.

"I'll put out games for free because it kind of lightens the load off my head," he tells me as we chat over Discord. "I don’t have to market it, I don’t have to invest time in it. I just want to get the idea out, and then people can play it. There’s no quality target, so it’s fun for trying new ideas and throwing whatever you want out and not thinking too hard about it."

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I fear and covet no videogame genre on this Earth like the bullet hell shoot 'em up. I find these scions of the arcades irresistibly beautiful. They look like how I imagine human nervous systems appear to thunder spirits. By the same token, I’m not sure they're actually designed to be processed by the human nervous system. They're the sort of game the androids will play, once they’ve hunted down and incinerated the last of our kind.

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Not long before joining Rock Paper Shotgun, I wrote a feature for Edge magazine about the origins of the very silly term "AAA game". The overall conclusion I came to is that "AAA game" is possibly a boardroom-level borrowing from the credit rating industry and Hollywood, and that it has little meaning beyond "most expensive/biggest".

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