Beckett is weeeeeeird. It’s a story-driven sort of adventure, except what it really is, is a scuttling little cockroach, and the cockroach smokes 40 Lambert & Butler a day and hasn’t washed in a week. And has depression, probably.

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As its name might suggest, free game Seeds Of Love is a hybrid farming-romance sim. What the name doesn t give away is that it also sneaks in some rhythm game elements, and how well you re able to keep time with the tunes will affect protagonist Mar a s emotions. And it turns out that it s difficult to make friends if you re always grumpy over your lack of groove. Take a look at Mar a s many moods in the trailer below, including some truly inspired pun-based flirtation.

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Co-op heist em up Payday 2 has escalated over its many years of swiping things, going from simple bank robbery to lifting your own presidential pardon out of the White House. Now, though, it s ascended into its true form: a visual novel. Experience the thrill of theft as it was meant to be: in text, everything hinging on your mouse pointer hovering over two options, deciding which to explore.

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Screenshot Saturday! The day where game developers get a chance to self-promote freely thanks to the power of a Twitter hashtag asking them to do so, and the rest of us get to look on in awe of the magic of how the sausage gets made. This week: a stranded cottage in the woods, an angry kitty, and some snap-together architecture.

Sundays are for meeting potential new housemates and trying not to squirm out of your shoes. These meet ups are like job interviews for personalities. It’s disgusting. Here’s the best writing about videogames from the past week.

Let’s kick off with an astounding article from Laura Hudson in the Guardian, who spoke to female developers around the world making games that convey the devastating impact of regressive abortion laws. It’s a powerful showcase of how games can be used to challenge preconceptions, and a travesty that the people who most need perspective will never play the damn things.

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The organisers of speedrunning marathon Games Done Quick have breezed past their previous charity fundraising record, gathering $3,003,889 ( 2.4m) across the week-long event. They d already set their own speed record by hitting $1 million on Thursday the biggest rush of donations always comes at the end so it s a multi-record setting event and all in order to give people medical care. Everyone bask in the feel-good glow for a minute.

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It s heatwave season here in the UK, so I would like nothing more than to be lounging in the soft grass, perhaps in the shade of a statue or pressed against its cool stone plinth. Meditative craft-o-ritual Stones Of Solace wants to evoke that same feeling, and it s lovely, if somewhat disappointing that we don t yet have the technology to bring through the physical sensations to go with. Still, you can get an iced drink and come take a breather at the altar of the trailer, featuring a sweet fennec fox.

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Games Done Quick, the marathon that raises millions of dollars for charity twice per year, and speedrunning more generally, owes its existence to glitches. Though runners show off their skill and dedication, almost all of them rely on the game behaving in unintended ways, doing things that people playing casually would never experience.

Despite this, runners often make off-hand comments about the games being broken, or worse, the developers being lazy. The latter is obviously generally untrue and unfair. But spare a thought for the humble glitch itself, and how they make this whole wonderful endeavour possible.

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In 2019, there are exactly two directions for developers to take Flappy Bird remakes. One, as Alice O wrote about recently, is to transfer it onto hardware that lived and died long before we were ever cursed by this dead-eyed avian. The other, obviously, is to blend in the new hot sensation. Welcome, Flappy Royale.

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Hola, jugadores. I rarely see videogames in Spanish. It’s understandable: English-speaking countries make up a significant portion of marketing demographics and sales for big-budget games. But even in the indie-sphere, where I do most of my trawling, I wasn’t finding much. I knew that this was an oversight on my part — I live in a majority English-speaking country and the development circles I operate in are majority English-speaking, too. If I wasn’t finding Spanish language games, it’s because I wasn’t looking hard enough. So I set off on a week-long journey to find some stellar, free, Spanish indie games. They’re from several different countries, continents, and backgrounds. I hope you enjoy what I found.

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