On August 10th 1993 a tap started running somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean and it never really stopped, says the elevator pitch* for The Things We Lost In The Flood. The bottles came not long after. From this premise you create a boat, the only way to navigate this watery world, and set off among roofs and pylon tips, finding messages from other players (but not the players themselves, it seems) as you go.

*it s a tweet, which I am surprised hasn t replaced the proverbial elevator in this phrase yet anyway.

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Mind out if you run into Windows Solitaire or Mortal Kombat down the shops, cos they re famous now and I bet it s gone right to their heads. Specifically, they ve been inducted into the World Video Game Hall Of Fame, a list operated by The Strong, a New York based museum of play. I assume it was Alec s fairly recent Have You Played? about the digital card game that tipped them over the edge.

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Cute-o-colourful idle-ish gather em up Forager will continue to grow through the rest of the year. Developers HopFrog have crafted a roadmap for updates that will focus on increasing gameplay length and adding replayability. Everything from quality of life changes to mod support to multiplayer is scheduled for the upcoming months, so there’ll be plenty of ways to continue hoovering up every last resource in your quest to become the ultimate foraging machine.

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Chris Wilson, co-founder of Grinding Gear Games and lead developer on their free-to-play action RPG Path Of Exile recently took to Reddit to explain the studio s current workload and priorities, including a healthy work/life balance for their employees. Some studios make their teams work 14 hour days to pack every patch full of the most fixes and improvements possible, he wrote. I will not run this company that way.

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Goodness gracious me alive, look, it’s Ludum Dare time! Ludum Dare is a biannual (as in happening twice-a-year) game jam, and probably one of the world’s largest and longest-running game jams. Who am I to say otherwise? It says so right on their website. I am always amazed by the sheer creativity and talent which comes out of each Ludum Dare, and this go around is no exception. Not only are the games looking great, but the theme for this iteration of the jam is “Your life is currency,” which delights the Marx scholar in me. Das kapital, y’all.

Here are some of my top picks from the jam lineup so far.

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Monday is the belated May Day holiday here in the UK, so we won’t be back in full force until Tuesday. We’ll be busy dancing around the maypole, drinking real ale, and feeling slightly afraid of Morris dancers. You hey-nonny-nonny near me and I’ll kick those bells up your arse.

What are you playing this weekend? Here’s what we’re clicking on!

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After spending half an hour with Bizarrioware – a Wario Ware-ish free collection of microgames by The Strangest – I feel scared and confused. Today’s release is free, and very early, full of half-finished menus, a bellowing announcer and ten tiny games of wildly varying coherence that have me wondering whether I’m getting it or not. You’ll definitely want a gamepad if you want to give this a try, or possibly two, as it seems geared for competitive play, with many games being scored, rather than binary win/losses. Give it a try on Itch for yourself here, and see the trailer below.

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As rough as its launch may have been, Fallout 76 remains a very popular game, with a large, dedicated and increasingly moneyed and geared player-base. Next week’s big update for the game, due on May 7th, is bringing player-run stores to Appalachia, allowing you to set up automated vending systems for other players to buy your excess junk and ammo from, while siphoning off 10% of the sale to curb virtual inflation. Bethesda are also cribbing some notes from Destiny, and letting players trade in unwanted Legendary items for a new currency, used to buy more desirable rare gear.

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When I first tried playing the demo for Soulash, an upcoming roguelike by Wizards Of The Code, I thought the controls were broken. I’d hit the key to move up, and my character would hop to the side. Turns out I’m just an idiot, and this is a roguelike where facing matters. WASD controls hop you around, Q and E turn your abstract character, and the mouse handles most else. It adds some smart tactical wrinkles, including hiding from enemies, and a sense of hearing that shows you vague indicators of activity happening out of your field of view. Give it a try for yourself, here on Itch.

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From the few rounds I spent with it pre-release, Call Of Duty: Black Ops 4‘s battle royale mode – Blackout – was a lot of fun, speaking as someone not particularly into Battle Royales. Today, you can snag Treyarch’s big-budget manshoot for $12 (roughly 9.12), along with the game’s other PvP modes in the cut-down Battle Edition, heading up this month’s Humble Monthly. While it lacks the co-op zombie bits from the multiplayer-only package, there is the option to upgrade to undeads for cheap. Plus, this is just the first game in the mystery bundle, with the remaining games due to unlock on June 7th.

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