If you're a nerd of a certain age, I apologise - that headline has probably caused you to rupture something in the wizened meat of your lower back, or the swampy catacombs of your cerebellum. If you aren't, let me explain: Zachtronics are or were a US-based video game developer founded in 2000 by Zach Barth, who put the studio on ice in 2022 and now works at Coincidence Games, a "flexible business framework" involving many former Zachtronics devs. Zachtronics have thrown together all kinds of things - Infiniminer, a block-builder from 2009, is probably the single greatest individual influence on Minecraft, while Eliza is a tremendous visual novel about AI chatbots and labour politics. But if there's a type of game they're known for, it's engineering puzzles and factory games.

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I don’t like to brag, but it turns out that running a museum is actually well easy. Within an hour of sitting down to play Two Point Museum at Gamescom last month, I was running a modest monthly profit, educating the masses about one-fifth of a dinosaur skeleton, and most importantly, had not ordered a single staff member to their death.

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I'm not someone who's ever been on board with the "Can You Pet The Dog?" craze that swept and/or still sweeps video games. As a heartless individual, I am more concerned with whatever the dog's capable of: general savagery, a howl that replenishes my HP bar, letting me climb atop its glorious mane as it strides across the barren wastes. If it's none of these things, I would much rather have a shiny turret on spindly steel legs skitter besides me.

Nomada Studios have, incredibly, thrust their hands into my chest cavity and given me a blood-pumping mechanism. Having spent some time with upcoming action-platformer Neva (the game) and Neva (the dog from the game), I have to admit: I did enjoy petting Neva (the dog).

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This one’s a very simple build at the moment, but neat enough that I wanted to shout it out. Near Mint is a roguelike deckbuilder where you advance through a tower fighting slightly stronger iterations of the exact same skeleton. Ok, nothing too captivating so far. The twist comes from the cards: someone’s left them in their Oodie pouch, spilt BBQ sauce down it, then stuck it in the wash before taking the deck out. Now, all the cards have split apart into three pieces. It’s name-your-own-price on Itch here, and it’ll only take you a couple minutes to get acquainted, but I’ll explain the gist below. Gist is a good word. Satisfying to say. Gist.

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Ever since Crimson Desert dropped that audacious trailer at Gamescom 2023, I’ve yearned to soak in its medieval Just Cause 2 vibes. It’s hard not to be moved by the exaggerated kineticism of it all – the magic-enhanced swordfights, the jumping off cliffs and turning into a flying shadow monster, the ability to drift horses>. Yes. Yes!

I’m therefore somewhat unnerved to report that my enthusiasm has been tempered significantly by actually playing it. I’ve since used all the straws I’ve clutched at to spell out "It’s just a demo" on my floor, but the fear remains that Crimson Desert’s fantastical open-world exploration is going to be interrupted by regular bouts of twangy, unwieldy, unsatisfying combat.

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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! Once again, the dastardly autumn breezes have blown my schedule all out of whack, so no cool industry person this week. Instead, here is a short excerpt from another weird story I starting writing, also containing poultry for some reason.

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Sundays are for eating Biscoff spread and rewatching Better Call Saul, again. Crunchy, ofc. Before that, let’s read some writing that I, Nic Reuben, personally found interesting about games (and game related things!)

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Sad news, all. I'm currently being sued by Nintendo for making myself a nice soft boiled egg for breakfast on Tuesday, the bright yellow yolk of which was apparently too reminiscent of Pikachu’s ballsack. They’ll likely take everything I have, including my typing keyboard, so this is goodbye from me. With my last digital breath, I only wish to inspire a bit more joy in the world, so I’m demanding everyone in the comments give me cat updates whether or not they own a cat. Just make up some lore for the cat you don’t have and tell me about it. Here's what we're all clicking on this weekend.

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God of War Ragnarök initially looks like it has little trouble with squeezing itself into a Steam Deck. Yet like a flask of mead laced with Odin’s raven piss, the seemingly crisp treat of Ragnarök’s handheld performance masks a nasty blend of technical troubles and what is, essentially, an always-online requirement by stealth.

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“We have been sold this myth for a very long time that unions have to be for blue collar workers in an industrial setting in the early 1900s,” Autumn Mitchell tells me. “The very simple definition of a union is just you and your co-workers coming together and forming a collective body. You can do that anywhere.”

A QA tester with Zenimax currently on union leave, Mitchell joined the Communications Workers Of America (CWA) as a full-time organiser after she and her colleagues formed what was, at the time, the biggest union in videogames - ZeniMax Workers United. Now she helps the CWA do what they did for her and her colleagues at Zenimax: provide support, training, resources and guidance for workers in the videogame industry who have decided, for whatever reason, that they want to unionise.

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