Sundays are for prepping for a Christmas break, by scheduling and editing, writing and shopping, fretting and food ordering. Best keep ourselves off the naughty list by first reading a round up of the week’s best (mostly) games writing.

• After receiving a stay of execution earlier this year, Computer & Video Games is now coming to an end. Its editors past and present gathered to share their memories of working for the magazine and site these past 33 years.

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Gunmancy. Froggoths. Pop-culture cheekiness. Sentient snot.> Yes, my friends, Cosmic Star Heroine is already looking like a star. If you’re wondering what I’m blathering about, Zeboyd Games recently released half an hour’s worth of gameplay footage, all from the alpha version of the upcoming turn-based RPG, which draws inspiration from the likes of Chrono Trigger.

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Legend of Grimrock 2 sure was very good, everyone can agree. It took the style and mechanics of the original and expanded them in every direction, and the result is something that is definitely the best… something or other.

John: Ooh, this was a tough game. A lovely, tough game. Not just because it starts you off far too weak and dumps you in the middle of a vast labyrinth of levels with no sensible way to know which bits are going to be too difficult, but also because the puzzles require an extension be built on your brain.

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Preservation efforts? A park to contain all the beauties of the prehistoric world? Nah. We’ll just shoot ‘em all. Freshly arrived in the Early Access folder, The Hunter: Primal errs on the meaner side of the equation, the side that involves gore and goop and other things that could possibly drip from dinosaur-y insides. Here, you play as a hunter, a bipedal predator who must figure out how to survive a primitive yet gorgeous-looking island and its coterie of deadly dinosaurs, while putting together the biggest stack of trophies this side of the planet.

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Free Twine game My Father’s Long, Long Legs manages to capture some of the uncanny horror of Junji Ito’s Uzumaki using nothing more than a fine selection of words and some cleverly applied sound effects. There are no jump scares here, just a gradual build toward…something. The story gains much of its power through the distorted vagueness of the threat – if it is truly a threat at all – and the obscure reasons for the changes that are occurring.

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What are you playing this weekend? No, shut up. I don’t want to hear it. Call up some friends, get them over, tell them to bring snacks and drink, and play Sportsfriends until Fanta drips down your giggling chins. The bundle of J.S Joust and other ace local multiplayer games finally arrived on PC last night, after yonks of only being found at games events (well, and PlayStations, later). They are great and this is what you’re playing this weekend and no, I don’t even want to hear it.

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And just like that, the year is over, leaving us a year closer to death, and a year richer in experience. There’s something gorgeously wistful about endings, really. No matter what kind they are. Between you and me, I have a habit of never truly finishing a game. I always leave it just before the last boss, the last fight before the curtains close. It lets me pretend that the adventure isn’t over and I can go back. What about you? Do you have any rituals to deal with endings? (Also, Merry Christmas and have a great New year, everyone.) This week’s bloody adorable plushie is from Melody.

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I’m looking forward to inXile’s Torment: Tides of Numenera, like nearly everyone else who works at RPS. The difference is that I never played Planescape: Torment, the game Tides aims to spiritually succeed. Instead my interest comes from the other end of its name, since I’ve been playing Numenera, the Monte Cook pen-and-paper RPG that gives this new game its setting and some of its mechanics.

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I think I could be a little bit in love with Zombie Vikings, which chucks bearded Nordic glory out of the window in favor of something wonderfully, messily … different>. Described as a “four-player co-op stab-you-in-a-gut-a-thon,” it’s the story of how Loki steals Odin’s last remaining eye and how the All-Father, embarrassed and determined to be not-blind again, summons four of the “most fearsome Zombie Vikings” to retrieve his missing organ.

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Come on dear, come tell your Auntie Alice what you’ve been up to. Oh I know, Auntie Alice is a hunched old maid and her hands are withered like bark, but don’t mind the leaves in her hair. Don’t. Don’t mind them. Don’t mind. Don’t even… pretend they’re not there. It’s fine. Come on, scooch up and tell me: what are you playing this weekend? Failing that, write your response on a leaf and gently blow it to the wind; I’ll find it.

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