January 18th

Welcome back readers.

The big thing I want to put on your radar this week is that we’ve officially launched our 2026 Fansite Jam! Check out the jam details here, and if you’re looking for inspiration, you can start with our 2024 roundup of fansite submissions. This event runs until February 28, 2026. We’ve already begun to receive submissions, so come see us on our Discord to participate! No judgment if you bounce from the server after the jam.

As a recurring reminder, supporting us through our Patreon allows us to run events like this, not to mention the weekly, monthly, and yearly critical roundups we’re constantly working on.

This Week in Videogame Blogging is a roundup highlighting the most important critical writing on games from the past seven days.

Creating under Conflict

Our opening section this week focuses on game developers in harrowing circumstances with limited access to the Internet and the wider world.

• A Game Developer Without Internet | Insert Credit
  Arash Hackimi details life as a game dev inside Iran amid protests and an internet blackout.
• In Palestine Skating Game, rollerblading is resistance | Huck
  Amaar Chowdhury talks to the developers behind Palestine Skating Game about life and survival in Gaza and the West Bank, Jet Set Radio, and Arabic electronic music (Further Reading: Nicole Carpenter’s previous coverage of Palestine Skating Game and its developers).

“It’s here in the permanence of counterculture and how music binds an emotion to a time and place that Palestine Skating Game aims to etch itself into the mainstream. It’s the same idea found beneath the peeling layers of art on the West Bank walls, of creative resistance refusing erasure through whatever means necessary.”

Steppe Learning Curve

Pathologic 3 is out and it’s begun to attract rich critical writing. Here are two highlights.

• Pathologic 3 is the great Russian novel told as a video game, and a timely critique of intellectualism | Eurogamer
  Andrei Pechalin contemplates the role of the intellectual, in Pathologic 3 and beyond.
• Pathologic 3 weaves gameplay and narrative as tightly as blood and bone | AV Club
  Grace Benfell returns to the Steppe with a different frame of reference and mind (Further Reading: Lotus on Pathologic 2).

“As a trio of games, Pathologic knots together narrative and play, weaving them so that there is practically no distinction. For lack of a better term, these games are literary. They are florid and flowery, twisting their prose between the branches of an ever-growing tree. Yet they are also grueling, demanding a careful understanding of interlocked systems and a quick-handed pursuit of your goals. These games care about all the forms their rhetoric takes. Between the inertial force genre conventions and capitalistic pressure, it is hard to make games that feel this unified, this whole and considered, but Pathologic 3 is evidence that it’s possible.”

Interviews

This is where I’ve grouped together the interview and interview-shaped pieces this week, with a strong subfocus on retro aesthetics.

• How game developers worldwide are reliving Y2K Japan, from Jet Set Radio to Dance Dance Revolution | Rock Paper Shotgun
  Malindy Hetfeld talks to the developers reviving and remixing 2000s-era aesthetics and bringing them to contemporary projects (Further Reading: Alli on the Dreamcast’s Y2K futurism).
• Conversation with Parker Hamilton of DreadXP | Gamesline
  Franny chats with Parker Hamilton about Entropy, worldbuilding, and enriching the PS1 aesthetic with detail (Further Reading: Skeleton on Dread Delusion).
• How Bandcamp became the “headquarters” for video game soundtracks | AV Club
  Wallace Truesdale talks to the artists and composers increasingly turning to Bandcamp to sell their music.

“Given the constantly-bleeding-workers nature of the video game industry over the past couple of years, as well as Spotify’s increasingly negative reputation, Bandcamp seems like the kind of platform that could offer some real support to video game composers and musicians during both certain and uncertain times. And it has for some—but with a few caveats.”

Playing Through It

Our next two picks closely examine personal intersections between play and mental health crises.

• lumines arise is not a substitute for therapy, but my brain sure thinks it is | gAmeDHD
  Colin Clark contrasts Lumines Arise and Tetris Effect, looking inward and outward, drowning out the thoughts and working through them (Further Reading: Giovanni Colantonio on Lumines Arise).
• No Good Options | Stop Caring
  Ashley Schofield muses on Depression Quest, the writing of Hanif Abdurraqib, and lessening the hurts.

“Depression Quest’s epilogue posits that ‘all we can really do with depression [is] just keep moving forward.’ I can’t disagree. In time, I have gotten better. Somewhat. I’ve wanted to, which has been quite a change in itself. I no longer see death as an option, let alone a good one. The economical option more frequently loses out in favour of no option at all. Text is limited to characters on a page, not blood on a blade. I have started spending my Saturday mornings with a therapist. I spill my guts, not my ichor. ‘This year, I’ve started wearing safety belts.’”

Temple of Time

I’ve put a whole bunch of articles together in one section here, but there is still a lose critical throughline in the examination (and sometimes contrast) between play experiences past and present.

• The Letters Of Zelda | Bloomed Wings Blog
  Cind and Madeline Blondeau correspond about their experiences with the Zelda games through the years (Further Reading: Bee Sprawlbug on dissociation, networks of care, and The Legend of Zelda).
• Revisiting the Madhouse | Unwinnable
  J.M. Henson muses on the problems with replaying horror games, RE7, and madhouse difficulty (Further Reading: Emma Kostopolus on RE7 as American folk horror).
• Yakuza Kiwami 3 Feels Like a Completely Different Game, For Both Better and Worse | Inverse
  Hayes Madsen wonders what charms Yakuza 3 loses as RGG gives it the post Like-A-Dragon Kiwami-up (Further Reading: Ashley Schofield on Kiwami 3 and the casting of Teruyuki Kagawa).
• Lösningen (2025) | The Swedish Games
  Fredrik plays an offbeat satirical anti-detective adventure on the Game Boy about Sweden’s most infamous unsolved murder.
• Popful Mail: A Falcom fun-tasy | Kimimi The Game-Eating She-Monster
  Kimimi checks out the energetic, irreverent early 90s action RPG.
• Nooks and Crannies | Unwinnable
  Jay Castello investigates what changes–and what doesn’t–when Ace Attorney detours into walkable spaces (Further Reading: Jay’s previous writing on the Ace Attorney series).
• We’re sorry for Tomb Raider, thank you for buying | GlitchOut
  Oma Keeling stirs the cognitive dissonance as Tomb Raider gets re-mastered.

“We apologise for our racist game, that you have bought, and will play on your machines built out of the racist profit incentive. We preserve it for historical purposes. Except. We don’t. Because. We wanted to upscale. To remaster. That is, to re-master. To master again. To be master once more. We own the ability to apologise for racism and profit from it.”

Critical Chaser

They’re not mad. Please don’t put in the newspaper that they got mad.

• Steam’s most prolific hater has reviewed nearly 20,000 games | Polygon
  Patricia Hernandez paints a portrait of a prolific Steam reviewer with an axe to grind.

“Obey the Fist’s obsession with indies makes a collision course inevitable. Fifteen days into 2026, 493 games have already been published on Valve’s storefront, according to stat tracker SteamDB. That’s about 32 games each day, in a month that’s notoriously slow for significant game releases. Half of all Steam games never get a single review. If you’re the creator of an obscure game that’s barely gotten any traction, you’re definitely going to check out any review. But OTF’s fondness for lengthy and strangely angry evaluations has left many niche developers bewildered. Should they be thankful that their game reached someone at all? Or resentful that a notorious Steam troll is seemingly punching down for clout?”