Hello reader who is also a reader, and welcome back to Booked For The Week - the only regular Sunday chat with a selection of cool industry folks about books that has no conception of space, time, responsibility or consistency. Also, I can't read. Still, I'm feeling confident we can get through this together. In that, I have no other choice. This week, it's editor and author for books like Digital Love and Well Played, and writer on games like Orion Trail and Bramblewood, Heidi McDonald! Cheers Heidi! Mind if we have a nose at your bookshelf?

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Sundays are for looking up the average costs of raising a child, then researching the startup investment required for a currywurst food truck, then wondering how your spouse would react to some kind of Powerpoint pitch deck. Maybe while serving them one of those little cardboard trays, with a sausage in it.

German gastronomy dreams promptly shattered, seems like there’s little else to do but read some of the best games- and not-games-related writing from this past week.

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I'm very sorry, Mungrul and other pixel-combers - I have once again failed to hide a smiley face in the header image for our latest weekend Wappity. Instead, I have cheekily hidden a few upside-down frowns in the curiously tart and succulent descriptions of my absent colleagues, below.

As for those of us who were not absent when this round-up was rounded up on Friday, here's what we're all doing this weekend.

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A group of game industry folks including Reigns studio Nerial, Saturnalia creators Santa Ragione and Streets Of Rage 4 outfit Lizardcube have launched Palestinian Voices in Gaming, an international volunteer network to support current and emerging independent Palestinian developers.

First convened in May 2024, the network are currently looking to connect Palestinian game devs with volunteers and funding partners. They'll provide administrative help to any developer trying to get access to funding, and assistance managing resources and volunteer contributions, once secured. They aim to follow and boost each project from "production to announcement to publication", and are already working with a range of smaller independent games, many of which explore recollections of pain and loss through speculative fiction and fantasy.

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"The following is a work of fiction," opens Don't Get Your Hopes Up. "Amsterdam does not exist". This was news to me, having a distinct memory of my mum on holiday, grinningly sending me a photo of her first time encountering a SMEG fridge in the wild. I'll put aside my own opinions re: places that are real for now, though, since I wouldn't necessarily put it past the planet to swallow up entire capital cities for the lols right now. Just leave De Poezenboot alone, yeah?

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To invert or not to invert? The question of whether to flip the Y-axis in games is often answered with recollections of childhood habits and/or varyingly smug declarations of which joystick setting is 'better'. Now, though, a cognitive research study posits that our control preferences are less about whether or not we played GoldenEye after school and more about the innate quirks of our brains.

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