An eerie wind blows through the treehouse this weekend. The floorboards creak, though no one stands upon them. The fairy lights flicker, though they have not been plugged in since January. The screens in the corner where we all pretend to work lie cracked and cold. Here's what some of us - those who remain - are clicking on.

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Elden Ring Nightreign might replace its source material’s sprawling RPG exploration with a mad dash around tightly-nestled hotspots, but under the bonnet, this is still essentially just Elden Ring with a quicker sprint and character models of hitherto-unseen birdpeople. Even the system requirements are, save for a minor CPU bump, a copy and paste job, confirming the feathers aren’t even that high-poly.

As a result, this spinoff runs equally well on the Steam Deck, even appearing to take advantage of the same SteamOS/Proton tweak that made Elden Ring less stutter-prone on Valve’s handheld specifically. My Steam Deck settings guide for the base game works here too, though having been yanked around Limveld at greave-splintering speeds by loothounds Nic and Ollie, I actually think further quality cuts could be prudent. This is FromSoft at their paciest, and it makes sense to help framerates keep up.

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"Greebling" is George Lucas's term for the decoration of spacecraft models with showy, superfluous details - clumps of antennae, bulky rivets, bulging pipes, anything that whiffs of function. Speaking as the human grown from the ashes of a child who once built the Death Star out of LEGO, I do enjoy a good greeble now and then, but it very easily becomes a parody of itself - like turning a machine inside out, but none of the exposed parts are meaningfully connected. Liliana, founder of Eridanus Industries and lead developer of space tactics sim Nebulous: Fleet Command, has more practical objections to greebling, based on her eight years in the US Navy: excess surface details are an absolute dust trap for radar waves.

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There exists in this world much which, if stripped of even one of its components, would be rendered naught but a frail illusion. Roast pork without applesauce? An insult to god and man alike. A sword without a hilt? Merely sharpened iron, stripped of use or dignity. As our band of eight rode into Heuwiller - Thillmann at the head as befitted his command, Slackbladder at the back as befitted our nostrils - a dark cloud fell upon us. For what is a village without a single poxy alehouse in sight? Nary a trough full of fermented carrot juice. It was going to be a long day.

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The dirt-speckled WRC racing games that were dumped by Electronic Arts a few weeks ago have already found a new partner in Nacon. The French publishers are promising a "complete reboot" of the rally game series, and have exclusive rights on the grubby wheelspinners until at least 2032. This isn't the first time the publisher have had stewardship of the WRC either, so it all kinda makes sense.

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I woke up at 6 AM and wrote an entire news article yesterday before realising it was a bank holiday, only noticing when I entered the treehouse to find nothing but a solitary squirrel gnawing on a discarded Snickers. Today, that squirrel is dead, and it is time to work again. Here's a hissing tide of PC games slithering their way out of non-existence this week.

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Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - our regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books! I am still cross-referencing my way through Blood Meridian, both incredibly vivid prose-poetic alchemy of the profound and harrowingly mundane, and also a bit like if a bible ate a pulp paperback then shat out a second, stupider bible with at least twice the people getting severed dicks shoved in their mouths. I love literature so much.

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Sundays are for doing all the errands and prep you won't have time for in the week because it's half-term. But we can also sneak in some downtime for reading and watching fine video games writing.

Criticism is cruelty, writes game developer Oma Keeling. This isn't an argument against criticism, but a plea for a more honest embrace of why we write and enjoy writing critically. As someone who, through The Sunday Papers, seems to forever be arguing for a more ruthless games press, I appreciated this.

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It is said that all people of culture spice the nectar of their leisure by seeking out peculiar and invigorating company, that they may burgeon and prosper from their example. I, on the other hand, like to start my days off by soliciting opinions from some total barmpots to remind me that I'm pretty normal, actually. On which note, it's time to talk about our weekend gaming activities.

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Memorial Day weekend is here and the sales seem to be spilling out even for PC gamers. To be fair, these sales are typically a great time to find a reasonable discount on the latest gaming PCs, laptops, and everything else. While it’s not as dramatic as, say, Black Friday or Prime Day, there are still some proper savings to be had if you know where to look.

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