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Photo by Billy Freeman  on Unsplash Despite earlier speculation by Seamus Blackley of the Xbox’s oncoming demise, less than 24 hours ago new Microsoft Gaming CEO Asha Sharma confirmed that the next Xbox will indeed be a PC hybrid codenamed Project Helix. This makes Sony's sudden, quiet cancellation of PC Ports for heavy-hitters like Ghost of Yōtei and Housemarque's Saros  make more sense. While declining Steam player counts and internal fears of brand dilution are the loudest talking points, looking at the wider industry landscape in 2026 reveals a much more strategic—and defensive—motive. Sony didn't just wake up and decide to abandon the PC market; it is highly probable they had early insider knowledge of Microsoft's Project Helix and Valve's revamped Steam Machine. By connecting the dots, Sony realized that continuing to port their single-player exclusives meant handing premier ammunition directly to their biggest living-room rivals. Blurring the Hardware Lines Steam Machine, via Steam. Microsoft isn't the only company blurring the lines. Valve's announcement of the 2026 Steam Machine fundamentally changes the math for Sony's Steam releases. If Sony had continued its trajectory of porting definitive PlayStation 5 games to PC, they would essentially be giving their competitors their biggest hardware sellers. Sony executives likely saw the writing on the wall: they were spending millions to port their system-selling exclusives, only to risk them becoming a major selling point for the next Xbox or Steam Machine. Unlike Valve's failed attempts a decade ago, the new Steam Machine is armed with the runaway success of the Steam Deck's SteamOS and Proton compatibility layers. It is a compact, 6-inch cube boasting 4K/60fps capabilities that plugs directly into a TV. Valve is no longer just dominating the desktop; they are making a direct, aggressive play for the traditional console space. The Ultimate Trojan Horse Photo by Kerde Severin  on Unsplash By putting God of War , Spider-Man , and Horizon  on Steam, Sony was inadvertently building a spectacular launch library for Valve's new console. The Steam Machine positions itself as a cheaper, more open alternative to a PS5 or PS6. If consumers know they can buy a Steam Machine, access the massive PC gaming library, and play Sony's greatest hits, the incentive to buy PlayStation hardware evaporates. But there’s more to it that benefits Valve greatly. By allowing Steam to run natively on Project Helix, Microsoft is essentially subsidizing Valve’s expansion directly into the traditional console space. Valve no longer needs to rely solely on the success of its own hardware, like the Steam Deck or a dedicated Steam Machine, to capture the living room audience. Instead, Microsoft is shouldering the massive R&D and manufacturing costs of building a high-end hybrid console, while Valve simply sits back and reaps their standard 30% revenue cut from every Steam game purchased to play on it. This move solidifies Valve’s absolute dominance in digital distribution; they get to bypass the console hardware wars entirely and Trojan-horse their storefront into millions of Xbox households, effortlessly pulling traditional console players into the Steam ecosystem without having to build the box themselves. Retreating to the Nintendo Playbook Photo by Petar  on Unsplash Faced with a future where "PC gaming" is just another word for "rival living room consoles," Sony had no choice but to retreat to the classic Nintendo playbook. By locking down their premium, single-player cinematic games exclusively to the PS5, Sony is rebuilding its walled garden just before Microsoft and Valve try to tear it down. While it may sting for PC enthusiasts to lose access to games like Saros , from a pure hardware survival standpoint, Sony's tactical retreat is the only way to protect the PlayStation brand from being commoditized by its own competitors.

Screenshot: Ratcheteer DX. Originally released along with Season 1 of the Playdate, Ratcheteer  has been sitting on my device, mostly unplayed, for the last couple of years. You can’t blame me. Despite the Playdate being a fantastic portable device, I don’t always have time to indulge myself in every game that piques my interest—even if it’s a Playdate Community Game of the Year award winner for 2022. I’m glad, then, that Ratcheteer DX  is releasing for Steam, which gave me a chance to play through the game for the first time. And I can see why it won community favorite. Ratcheteer DX  is an adventure game that is sure to remind some of classic Zelda  games, especially early handheld titles like Link’s Awakening . The title itself is an homage to Link’s Awakening DX  and its leap to color. But instead of being a chosen hero wielding a legendary sword, you’re a lowly mechanic with a wrench. Mankind has been forced into hibernation underground, and when the cryo-colony suffers a catastrophe, it’s up to you to save the day. Screenshot: Ratcheteer DX. In a way, you can describe Ratcheteer DX  as a bite-sized game. You can probably play through it in a few hours. That doesn’t mean it’s light on content, however. According to the Steam store page, there are 250 rooms across 6 regions and 6 dungeons, each with its own boss. Each boss encounter is unique and usually requires a trick to defeat—often utilizing your most recently acquired tool or ability. As someone who spends a lot of time collecting and playing retro games, Ratcheteer DX  is a faithful approximation of one. That could be because it was originally made with some genuine hardware limitations in mind. Because of this, there is little hand-holding, with only vague instructions given by NPCs to guide you to your next objective. Fortunately, the map never feels overly sprawling—especially since you spend a lot of time in caves and tunnels—so finding where to go next can be figured out just by exploring. Screenshot: Ratcheteer DX. There are a fair amount of obstacles in Ratcheteer DX  that can be considered puzzles. However, most are of a more lock-and-key variety: find an item that opens up the next area, rinse and repeat. One of the places I looked for my childhood dopamine hits was finally seeing what can break a certain type of unbreakable rock, or figuring out what those weird floor pads are for. Ratcheteer DX  expertly taps into that exact sort of discovery. It is also a genuinely fun game to play, though its controls can be an acquired taste. If you aren’t fully sold on the retro feel, the movement can feel a bit floaty and sluggish at first. But since Ratcheteer DX  is a combat-lite experience, it’s easy to get used to and never becomes frustrating. Screenshot: Ratcheteer DX. Because Ratcheteer  was originally designed for the Playdate’s tiny screen with a 400x240 resolution, it makes for an excellent portable game. I mostly played it on my Steam Deck, and even there the Deck’s screen felt massive by comparison. But don’t fret about playing on a larger monitor or TV—I just as often played Ratcheteer DX  docked on my 60” TV as I did in handheld mode. In other words: play it on your couch, at your desk, or on the go. Leaning hard into that retro feel, the game offers a few graphical options to change your visual experience. You can swap the color palette to black-and-white, full color, Playdate gray, or a Game Boy-inspired pea soup green. You can also add a line, grid, or dot overlay to give your display a CRT-like texture. Screenshot: Ratcheteer DX. Ratcheteer DX  is a solid game worthy of your attention. I’m glad I finally played through it after letting it languish for years on my Playdate. It might not be a game for the widest possible audience, but if you fall into the niche it's aiming for, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Photos: Aaron Cynic Lunar New Year is a vibrant tradition here in Chicago. Based on the Lunisolar Calendar, and therefore the phases of the moon, the date varies, but the celebration isn't over after one day - it actually spans 15 days, starting on the new moon and ending on the first full moon of the lunar calendar. Photo: Aaron Cynic Chicago's current Chinatown is well established back to a century ago, and it's one of the largest and oldest such Chinese communities in the US. New Year's parades are a must-see, for the color, spectacle and sound, and the whole neighborhood (and beyond) comes out to celebrate. We hope you enjoy a look at the beautiful sights we saw at this year's festival and parade - and if you've got any great stories about Lunar New Year and how you celebrate, sound off in the comments. Photo: Aaron Cynic

This months round up of physical media releases for movies is looking pretty, pretty good. From great new releases coming onto 4K right off the bat to formally streaming only films finally getting their due in full glory, this March is just a perfect little slice of the physical media pie! The Running Man 4K - March 3rd Remakes should be reserved for bad movies that need an upgrade of a more faithful adaptation., This one falls more into the latter as the original The Running Man was a fun campy romp and this is a somewhat tonally dissonant action film. Edgar Wright is a master and while The Running Man doesn't quite live up to his previous outings, its still a fun watch that should shine on 4K. Jurassic Park 4k - March 17 These re releases of the Jurassic Park 4Ks are interesting. They are upgraded with Dolby Vision to give them the best looking picture possible and Dolby Atmos for that immersive sound. They all maintin the Dolby DTS. which was invented specifically for Jurassic Park, so unless there is some crazy DNR applied tot he video, I can't imagine these releases not being worthwhile. Mimic 4K - March 17 Kino Lorber releases always look good but their special features can often leave you wanting more,. This release of Guillermo Del Toro's fist English language film has tons of meat on ther bone with plenty of featurettes, audio commentaries, and two cuts of the film: the Theatrical and Director's Cut both in 4K with Dolby Vision HDR. You couldn't ask for more! Killers of the Flower Moon 4K - March 24 These sorts of releases are what give me hope in this streaming wasteland that we're currently;ly in. So many streaming services lock in their films to their service and rarely push them out on physical. so when Criterion announced that the AppleTV produced Martin Scorcese Killer of the Flower Moon, I was shocked and delighted. This film deserves the full 4K treatment and will be as highlight of this month's Criterion output. Married to the Mob 4K - March 31 Jonathon Demme was a man with range, starting his career off with Roger Corman schlock a ( Caged Heat ) then delving into Academy Award winning masterpieces (to name one Silence of the Lambs ). Some of his best work comes with the more lighthearted affairs like my personal favorite Something Wild  and Married to the Mob . Getting a deluxe treatment from Vinegar Syndrome's Cinématographe line, Married to the Mob  is more than deserving of such a beautiful package and a great way to discover this facet of Demme. Quick Picks! Leprechaun 4K - Just in time for St. Patty's day, a so bad it's good start to a mostly bad franchise of stereotypical horror comedy. ( I like the franchsie but acknowldege its faults) Plus it's on a special steel-book form Lionsgate, who has been putting out some beautiful looking releases. I've not seen She Killed in Ecstasy 4K or Dead Kids 4K , but these seem like good blind buys on name alone! If you haven seen Oscar contenders Marty Supreme or Hamnet , this is a good time to see them in 4k!

Screenshot: Planet of Lana II Planet of Lana  was a game that flew a little under the radar when it released in 2023. It’s part of a platforming adventure game subgenre that was made popular (and possibly originated) by Limbo . I’m talking about the specific type of side-scrolling gameplay that involves pushing around crates and solving other (often physics-based) puzzles to progress. They’re usually pretty narrative-light, with their stories being told through environmental clues or character interactions that feature minimal to no dialogue at all. I think the high-water mark for these games is Inside . I would love to say that Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf  raises the bar—but it is a solid example of its genre, even if it doesn’t redefine it. Planet of Lana II  takes place several years after the first game. The immediate robot threat is gone, and the people have actually started to learn to use the leftover robots as tools to supplement their previously techno-absent lifestyles. The story starts with Lana and her younger sister exploring the ship from the first game as she tries to learn more about her people’s past. Another world-changing series of events unfolds—but this time, it's other humans using technology to strip the world of its resources. Disasters and conflict ensue, taking Lana and her cat-like companion, Mui, far beyond the familiar forests and into snowy mountain peaks, dense urban areas, and deep-sea trenches. Screenshot: Planet of Lana II If you played the original, you’ll be familiar with the core gameplay here, but things have evolved. Lana and Mui are now fully used to robot wrangling, and Mui’s hypnotic abilities have been heavily upgraded. Instead of just directing Mui to waypoints, you can now take direct control of the local wildlife. This means the puzzles have been beefed up significantly. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re harder, but there are far more varieties of them. Taking control of an "ink fish" to stealthily zip through narrow underwater tunnels, or guiding sticky cloud creatures to create flammable fuses, adds a ton of variety to the puzzles. Nothing was ever overly frustrating, however. I never got stuck on a puzzle beyond my ability to get the timing just right or juggle all of the moving parts. Because despite how logically simple they can be to solve, pulling them off often requires precise timing and reflexes. Screenshot: Planet of Lana II Lana herself is also a few years older. That means she’s more capable. She’s faster, able to slide under obstacles, and can dive underwater. She’s also a great swimmer, which is crucial as there are significant underwater sequences. Despite being someone who usually hates water levels, they never overstayed their welcome here. Lana isn’t fully grown up, but she’s definitely willing to kick some butt this time around. There still isn’t any traditional combat in the game—you mostly run from conflict and sneak around enemies—but if the series continues, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see her taking the fight directly to the enemy. Mui is Lana’s ever-present companion, and their bond is the emotional core of the game. I don’t want to give away any major spoilers, but I did get heavily invested in that little creature. In one sequence, when it seems as though Mui is in mortal peril, I actively yelled at my monitor, “Don't you do this to me!” But in normal gameplay, it’s entirely possible to accidentally send Mui to their death, which is a constant consideration when trying to sneak past one-shot kill robots. I did find I was able to cheese certain sections of the game when it came to Mui's pathing. In the previous game, I don’t remember being able to pass a section unless I carefully guided both Lana and Mui to safety. In Planet of Lana II , I sometimes just ran away and then called Mui, hoping for the best. More often than not, Mui magically found their own way back to me—despite there not being an obvious or safe path past the danger. Narratively, one of my biggest gripes is that the main conflict of the game doesn’t stem from the big catastrophic event like it does in the first–at least not directly. Lana’s younger sister gets sick largely because of Lana’s negligence. Lana is reckless throughout the entire first part of the game, facing dangers with her sister and Mui purely out of curiosity—not out of survival or heroism. This leads to an accident that sets up Lana’s quest to find three items from three different regions, and together they will cure her younger sister. The overarching conflict affecting the world doesn’t truly drive the story until at least three-quarters of the way through the runtime, after all of the Macguffin chasing stuff is over.  Screenshot: Planet of Lana II I realized during my playthrough why the story feels almost like a massive retcon, even though it’s technically just filling in details. The original game’s ambiguity invited me to fill in the narrative gaps myself. Because I had unknowingly built up my own headcanon, seeing the sequel explicitly define this world was jarring. It’s akin to watching a movie adaptation of your favorite book and feeling like the director completely miscast the lead roles—it just feels off. While I don't think anything here directly contradicts the first game, the sequel unpacks its lore with a bit of a manic, fan-fiction energy. The writers clearly had a flood of great ideas they wanted to cram in, and while it isn't done poorly, the sudden shift from quiet mystery to explicit exposition comes off as unwieldy. It doesn’t help that you—by design—can’t understand what’s being said between characters. Speech is conveyed through a made-up, untranslated alien language. A message in the game’s opening explicitly states this is done so you can “interpret the story as you want.” It’s a strange choice, considering most of the dialogue's intent is visually explicit. It feels like a flimsy way of saying "we just wanted to use a made-up language." Thankfully, composer Takeshi Furukawa’s sweeping orchestral score successfully steps in to do the heavy emotional lifting where the dialogue cannot. Screenshot: Planet of Lana II Planet of Lana II: Children of the Leaf  has definitely gone for a more epic feel. With roughly twice the gameplay length—around 8 hours versus the previous game’s 4—there is a lot more room for ambition. The door has been left wide open for another sequel, which I genuinely hope we get. It seems like developer Wishfully is intent on building a franchise here, and since their mechanical quality is trending upwards, I’d love to see what’s next for Lana and Mui.

The Pitt. Via HBOMax. Alright. It’s 2pm, we’re coming off of lunch and ok, let’s be honest, in the real world 2pm is generally when that post-lunch sleepiness is setting in, but in this case, I’m hyped. There’s a LOT going on in The Pitt right now, and though I admit to some apprehension as well, I just want to know what’s about to go down. It’s time to look at the recap crystal ball to see what might be important this go-round: We’ve got Dana and our sexual assault victim - we hoped it wasn’t over and this little tease suggests it isn’t. I’m really hoping this hints to her getting as much help as is available to her. We see our deaf patient, frustrated and waiting for someone who can finally actually figure out what’s going on with her. This, frustratingly, and infuriatingly, is apparently surprisingly accurate to the experiences of lots of hearing-impaired and ASL fluent Americans who are just trying to receive equal care. King’s highlighted here, and she’s still freaking about her deposition. But honestly girl, we would be too, and it’s not like her environment really lends itself to finding a way to center, especially if you’re a neurodivergent type, which let’s face it, she is (we are.) Our hospice patient is trying to stay, and so far it’s looking good. I’m going to hold on to hope that she gets to choose her own destiny here, because that’s all that’s left for her at this point and she deserves that dignity. We last flash back to our meeting with Mr. CEO, and we’re re-discovering the horror that is all of the computer/internet related things this ER runs on going to black. And then we fade to black for this recap. Time to join the real world. The Pitt. Via HBOMax. Robby’s PISSED, and I mean all caps. He absolutely cannot fathom how he didn’t get brought into the meeting about his ER being basically thrown back into the dark ages. Dr. Hashimi, who looks like she kinda gets why he’s mad, tries to reassure him (sorta?) that it’s just because she specialized in IT security for the ER at the VA, but y’know, it’s just not really m aking him feel better. He, being the petulant brat he can sometimes be, tries to tell her that since she’s the expert she can just tell everyone what to do, but Hashimi doesn’t really stand for that shit - she’s not a jerk about it, but she always stands up for herself and I think she’s a good foil for Robby when he DOES go petty. Meanwhile, Santos has a driveby “What the FUCK?” that more or less speaks for everyone  Turns out, Robby IS going to tell everyone what to do. Imagine my surprise. There’s some murmurings in the staff that there’s already been a cyberattack on the hospital and the shutdown is less than voluntary but no one’s confirming that and they’re actually trying to quell that. Rumor’s going around that they had an attack, but people are saying it was to prevent one. Seems like it’s gonna be a circulating rumor. The question we’re also trying to get answered is how long? And it looks like it could be up to 24 hours. Whit, who we thought saved the day by taking a photo of the boards they’re now about to recreate in hi-def dry erase, did not take a legible photo. BUT. Joy remembers. All of it? Yep. Turns out she’s unlikeable with a photographic memory. Ok, that’s harsh, especially since she’s saving their bacon, but still. The Pitt. Via HBOMax. Now if you’re wondering, where’s Dana at a time like this because she’s the absolute best person for this job (not a knock on her age, just a nod to experience) then let’s recall that she’s in with our sexual assault victim (her and Babynurse/Emma) and therefore will not be able to put all this chaos in check. This means Princess is in charge. Ok, I’m worried for her cuz I like her but she seems pretty damn competent. Still, I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. The board is almost completely full, and damn, that’s impressive, Joy. 10 points to Gryffindor. (maybe I need a new catchphrase)  We’ve finally, finally got an interpreter for Harlow, our deaf patient. She and Santos have a conversation, and you can tell Santos realizes that her frustration was the equipment not the person and she drops the attitude. They actually communicate and it’s muscle pain in the neck. She asks about screen time and positioning – and we’re all a lot calmer and working together well. I mean, that might not be the point of this scene, but mightn’t it also? Back with Robby, it’s a round of Olds show Gen Z things. He shows them the chart rack, Dr. Al teaches them how to actually use paper and pen ass charts, how triplicate works (though not well enough, this WILL come up later). There are clerks to help with filing, there are bells to indicate…something? I forget already. And there’s a big fat dusty old fax machine plopped right into the middle of the nurse’s station. Oh yeah, we’re going old school. This is how you’re about to be doing labs and x-ray results, kids! The Pitt. Via HBOMax. A break in our walk down memory lane, because Princess gets a call that there’s a trauma coming in. And we meet Howard. Howard’s a pretty big dude, and he’s got abdominal pain. One could make the obvious associations and a fat joke and therefore reinforce the poor standards of care for people of size in American medicine, or, one could introduce himself to the other person in front of him, listen for real, and actually do the work . Which do you think Ogilvie picks? We jump back with Santos and her patient Harlow, where she’s getting injected with an anesthetic and the shot’s hurting her a little more than expected. I don’t know what to make of this, but I’m kind of hoping the point was the breakdown in communication and she’s ok. Now, we’re back with Howard. Howard had a fever, chills and lots of tenderness. They want to do a CT and some further investigation but due to his size they can’t flip him, and the intubation is trickier. He says he’s not sure if he’s over 450, which is the weight limit for the CT scanner.  Ogilvie makes a joke about sending him to the zoo, but as soon as all the eyes in the room turn to him sharply, he clarifies - it’s not a joke, the zoo has a large animal scanner that can accommodate larger weights. It’s still not a thing to say the way he did in front of his patient and Robby chimes in to let him know that another hospital nearby, Presbyterian, has a heavier duty version. Outside at the nurse’s station, Princess is trying to get someone to help with some of her extra work, and take the downtime slips, but no one will, and she’s gonna have to do it herself. This is clearly not how it normally is, and Princess leaving while she’s also in charge of everything in place of Dana worries me. Now, we’re meeting Roxie’s parents. Roxie, if you recall, is our hospice patient. Javadi intercepts them and lets them know she broke her leg and is in a boot, and takes them to see her. They find out she’s staying. They also try to take everyone for ice cream but the oldest child wants to stay in the room. The grandparents have the power of ice cream on their side though and eventually convince everyone to leave and go get some, with a quick father daughter moment between Roxie and him that kills me where he says he’ll bring her some and she squeezes his hand. The Pitt. Via HBOMax. Back with Howard, they’re trying to figure out what medications he’s on. Ogilvie suggests a weight loss pill and everyone in the room, and those of us watching, are ready to lay the smack down. He also makes a comment when Howard says he doesn’t exercise much about how maybe it’s just from the couch to the kitchen. Listen, there’s a way 90s medical dramas would’ve dealt with this and it involves the head cuff, and honestly…he clearly has some sort of issue. This finally pisses Howard off enough for him to explain that it took 25 years and five surgeries to get to this point, and honest to God, you don’t know someone’s story and you should keep your opinions on others bodies to yourself.  And we’ve got a new patient and her wife. Brooke can’t see anything, and as an aside, sudden loss of vision is a real nightmare for me. No pain, but no explanation. Mohan and King are there with Dr. Al. It could be a blood clot or an “eye stroke” and no, I’m not going to google that, so I’ll leave you to it. King, who’s usually pretty great with patients, is actually seeming to scare our patient and her wife just a little bit, and should probably be a little more demure about the differential. Rough day, deposition, I kinda get it. Robby, meanwhile, is checking in on Princess, and finds that the reason no one has drugs is cuz no one has stickers to indicate to the pharmacy they need them. Whoops. The psychiatrist makes a joke about unconscious patients to Javadi, but it’s not landing. He mentions they have someone to talk to Jackson’s parents in more depth though. Back with our vision loss patient, This eye problem is worse than we thought. She needs a CT also.  The Pitt. Via HBOMax. Now we’re rejoining Dana and the sexual assault victim. Well, sort of, because she’s not in the exam room. Dana is obviously the kind of person who’s going to give it as long as possible before she gives up, if she ever does. Luckily, she doesn’t need to wait super long, because Emma and our patient are back. I’m so glad. Dana doesn’t assume that means the exam goes on and offers her food, but she’s determined to keep going.  In an elevator far away, McKay is with Ogilvie and not about to pull punches. She gives him the lecture he deserves on treating patients with respect.  Abot comes in for a brief “Olds showing Gen Z things” segment.  Whitaker comes back in from the ambulance bay, where he was able to get cell service and call Howard’s sister. He’s not super thrilled about that, it seems.  Surgery, meanwhile, is not confident they can operate if they need to, so they’re pulling for family to come through so they’re able to be there just in case. Ogilvie now seems more interested in solving the problem than mocking a fat person finally, so, hopefully that sticks. At the nurse’s station, Princess, who’s decidedly not an old, is having to explain to the clerks that they’ve just messed up all the forms they’ve filled out because they’re using felt tip pens, and we’re dealing with carbon copies, so ballpoint is the only way. Oh, children.  Mind you, we also still have an abandoned baby and a lost patient, because Digby is somewhere. Santos and Hashimi chat about Harlow and it seems like things will be okay there. The Pitt. Via HBOMax. Hashimi gets a call and it’s about sudden onset vision loss lady, cuz she’s got central retinal artery occlusion. I’m not sure what that is but if we have to dissect eyeballs or something, then you’re gonna have to take over for me. More importantly Hashimi has a VA connection for some sort of risky medicine that might actually prove helpful for this I also don’t want to google central retinal artery occlusion, because eyeball trauma is not my thing, but it seems really, really serious. Back with Dana, we’re finishing out the exam, and it’s the cervical and vaginal swabs. No one can deny it’s an arduous, invasive and difficult thing to go through after an assault, but if you had to be with someone, a SANE like Dana and a very empathetic and helpful babynurse are good people to have in your corner. There’s only four more oral swabs to go. Back with Jackson’s parents- our psych explains that it could be bipolar or schizophrenia. The diagnosis isn’t as simple as a scan or blood test, so he’ll need therapy, along with observation on the ward. The parents are pulling for bipolar, but Javadi sort of explains that the best thing to do is hope for happiness. The consult tries to help them reframe this as a new version of their son, and you can see what a blow this could be to family. She tells Jackson’s family about her daughter who’d been studying architecture, but post diagnosis is working at the Giant Eagle where she’s employee of the month, but reassures them that both their lives are full of laughter and love, and that it requires a shift. It’s hard to imagine handling that news gracefully but his parents try their best. Meanwhile, Javadi almost seems wistful for a reason to stop trying so hard, and as fucked up as that might seem, she’s just dealing with so much pressure you can see she’d take any chance for a break. Again, maybe me. They give Howard a communication device that’s pretty cool so he can talk when he’s intubated or otherwise. He’s very good at it.  The Pitt. Via HBOMax. Dana’s got a little more time with our patient, since there’s all the prophylactics and pills she’s gonna now need to take to prevent STIs and pregnancy. She takes all but Plan B because she’s got an IUD. Emma gets sent out of the room, and takes the time to encourage the patient one last time, letting her know how brave she is, and how great Dana is. Our patient agrees, saying she’s really, really glad Dana was there. Aren’t we all. Now, back in with our suddenly blind patient, Dr. Al Hashimi is explaining the risks of the treatment that she’s being offered, which can include death. But, it may save her vision. After a little bit of indecision and wishing her partner could decide for her, she ultimately decides to go for it.  Santos has a new patient, and I love when they challenge someone challenging. We’ve got “The Jackies” who probably wouldn’t want to be called that. There’s Jackie, who we can’t see at first, who’s the patient, slurring her words as though she’s also eating several hot dogs, and Jacquie “with a Q” is along for the ride. They were drinking, and Jackie the patient is bleeding from her mouth a LOT. She insists she didn’t bite her tongue, but survey says, her tongue is bleeding a lot. It’s a deep tongue laceration. So that’s gonna keep bleeding for a while. PSA: tongues bleed a LOT. Robby and Hashimi are otherwise occupied so Langdon is on the job for this, and our adventurous college girls are absolutely satisfied they’re with the hot doctor. A quick check back in with Howard, he’s being intubated, and he’s scared, but he handles it well. They’ve got a really cool scope and we get to see vocal chords. Neato! Honestly, I’m all for the non gorey but still anatomy shots. Dana has finished up with our victim, and she’s got the rape kit ready to be placed in the locked refrigeration unit so the cops can pick it up. She’s doing what she does and training Emma on what needs to be done and how, and as soon as she opens the door, she’s LIVID. The police seem to not have picked up the last one she left in there. Three weeks ago. If you know anything about this character, and if you’d just seen everything that this poor girl has had to go through and understood how hard it can be, you know that Dana is irate, and for good reason. There will be hell to pay, and honestly, good. The Jackies are back now, and are arguing about whose fault the entire ordeal is. Honestly, it’s best to just separate them. Our patient Jackie gets a tongue injection and honestly, that’s a new one for my book of “Do Not.” The eye situation seems to be the highest priority and since I haven’t googled it I’m not 100 percent on board as to why this is so dire. I mean, if pharmaceutical ads are to be believed, and I think, at least for the side effects disclaimer, they should be, almost any medicine that does anything to cure anything serious might also kill you. Still, the way everyone’s acting around her can’t make her feel at ease, cuz it certainly doesn’t help me feel less anxious about her fate. Hashimi has her set up to go in a different room now that the meds have been administered, and assigns King to sit in there with her in case there’s complications. Mel doesn’t want to, and at first I was confused as to why, but given the deposition, it’s probably because complications lead to lawsuits and our poor girl just does NOT want to double do this. The Pitt. Via HBOMax. George is asking for Mohan and to go home. I can’t say I recall where he’s from. Don’t have time to recall because now we’ve got Jackies. Or Jackie. They’ve gotta pull her tongue out more in order to access the parts they have to stitch. Santos and Langdon find themselves working together, and Santos uses this moment to be a jerk to him. And OK, I do understand her beef, but maybe just one of you could try to forgive and support your recovering colleague, eh? Now’s the moment you’ve been waiting for with Dana, because she’s on the phone, and there’s only one possible call she could’ve made. That’s right, she’s on with the police department. And basically, she’s giving them hell. She lets them know in no uncertain terms that if they expect that their people will get priority if they go down on the job (like our cop from an hour ago) then they need to treat rape kits with the proper priority level. Once they’ve been properly told, she hangs up and fixes all the charts that are messed up.  Langdon and McKay get a chance to catch up, and it’s nice to see colleagues supporting each other. They talk about Howard a little bit, but also about being sober. She’s got 9 years, and hopefully will be someone he can confide in and go to for support.  The Pitt. Via HBOMax. Ogilvie and Javadi bump into each other in the hall because they’re both supposed to be on a patient. This guy has a…is that a rash? Because that looks way worse than a rash. YIKES. I have no idea, but Javadi does. Apparently it was sudden onset too. I’ll pass on that forever. I’m liking how this sudden meet-cute has encouraged their collaboration. Ogilvie’s just working together with her, instead of competing. I like it. Pats on the back all around. King is with our eye people. Her bedside manner is off. The nurse reminds her it’s time for another neuro check but someone’s outside the door for Mel, so she steps out while the nurse does the check, and for some reason this makes me sweaty.  It’s another nurse (doctor) who just finished her deposition on the case upstairs. King asks if she should just go up early then (and I feel the wish to get it over with) but she says no. They can’t talk about it technically but the nurse gives her a “monologue” and basically says it was a frivolous malpractice case because the spinal tap was absolutely perfect and they’re arguing reduced capacity but it’s just not real. She’s technically doing Mel a real solid here but she’s so tied up in knots i don’t know if it got through. Howard, Abot and McKay help our big guy lay down. He’s still giving a hearty thumbs up. They use a specialized scale to weigh him, and it comes back 474. This is going to complicate things, as they now can’t put him in the CT, so they will likely need to get him to Presbyterian. This doesn’t seem like a problem, but it feels like it should be given the whole cyberattack thing. Abot volunteers to go with and McKay reassures him that they’re not going to leave his side until he gets to his destination. Back with the Jackies, and Santos has got her tongue. To suture. Joy’s observing and Langdon is the guy in charge, but you wouldn’t know it by the way that they’re talking. They’re taking bets on Jackie’s BAC and talking about how wasted she is with not much thought to the recovering addict in the room. I feel like they see it and they just don’t care.  In other news, we finally have pedes in to see the baby, who just basically has a cold. Rhinovirus. They’re fine to go home, but that’s the rub, isn’t it. But there isn’t really a room for the kiddo, and they can’t put him in the nursery since he’s also sporting a cold. Pedes tells them the baby’s their problem for the night, and Dr. Al protests, but ultimately  - that’s just how it is. Outside the baby’s room, Mohan talks to Al Hashimi about potential fellowships she’s considered, none of which are geriatrics, which Dr. Al suggests, based on seeing her in with older patients.  Meanwhile, Langdon and Joy are working on Ol’ Drunk Tongue. That’s what I’d have called her if we didn’t have ‘The Jackies’ thing going. She keeps saying she didn’t bite her tongue but no one’s listening. If she didn’t though, what exactly did happen? This might get worse before it gets better.  The Pitt. Via HBOMax. We get a glimpse of Howard on his way out, and he looks good, so we’re gonna hope that remains the case. Meanwhile, Digby just walked back in. Apparently, he’d been in with Louie for the last hour. Why they keep playing with my emotions like that. Ogilvie and Javadi come to Robby for icky rash guy, and Joy has the answer. It’s hard to say, and has to do with him making three gallons of margaritas. Now that sounds like a party. Whatever the term I missed is, he got the horrifying rash from squeezing fresh limes in the sun. This ought to be a PSA because may I never get that icky a rash so suddenly when I’m just trying to make three gallons of margaritas. The Pitt. Via HBOMax. Donnie, meanwhile, has lost his cool. 12 people who need meds don’t yet have them. His darty eyes fall on Dana, who actually takes the moment to give the correct answer to Donnie’s “What would we do without you Dana?” comment.  “You’d be curled up in the fetal position crying like babies”  Yeah, I mean, accurate. Though flowers to Princess for taking that on. We’re back with Roxie, who’s still in a ton of pain. Robby ok’s a higher dose of pain meds, up to 12 mg from the 10 she’s already on. When McKay raises an eyebrow, he brings up the doctrine of double effect, which apparently is something they live by in palliative care - and that is that negative side effects are ok if they help with pain, because you treat pain first in a hospice/palliative situation. This has some weight behind it for Roxie’s particular situation, but, again, giving her the agency here is the right idea. The Pitt. Via HBOMax. Other than that, we pan out to a pissy staff flustered over a fax machine and fade to black. Well damn. That’s just how this hour ends. On to the next one. Let’s hope things get figured out fast.

I usually don’t do much sampling with Steam Next Fest. I do the odd article here and there, focusing on this demo or that. But this year, I decided to go all in and play as many demos as I could. I think I may have bit off a little more than I could chew—because between my upcoming coverage, the Marathon  server slam, the fact I was sick most of the week, and my cat Mr. Worf demanding my attention, I felt like I was drowning in demos for a long time. My original goal was to play until each demo’s completion, but some of these don’t really end in a reasonable amount of time. After spending several hours in the Vampire Crawlers  demo (purely for fun) fueled entirely by back-to-back cups of coffee from my AeroPress, I realized I needed to put a hard limit on this exercise. You’ll notice that some of these games I have more to say about than others, but I tried to keep the rapid-fire ones as short and digestible as possible. Fallen Tear: The Ascension. Via Steam Fallen Tear: The Ascension Developer: Winter Crew Release Date: March 17, 2026  Great-looking hand-drawn 2D animation, though it feels like it needs a few more frames for a smoother look. Still, it has a wicked style that makes me feel like I’m watching Saturday morning cartoons. If there was an old joke about a Mario game made by EA having excessive narration and options front-loaded, this is that. It has a distinct Monster Hunter  feel in the demo and a very heavy JRPG UI and aesthetic, which is exactly what the developer intended. The combat is tight, and the art makes this an absolute gem. Underkeep. Via Steam. Underkeep Developer: Rake in Grass Release Date: TBA  These types of 90s-style dungeon crawlers seem to be popping up everywhere lately, despite losing mainstream popularity while I was still a kid. Underkeep  does it incredibly well, combining nostalgic grid-based movement with clean tactical, turn-based combat. The four-party system allows for an interesting blend of characters, and it strips out the old-school frustrations while keeping the heart of the genre intact. Screenshot: Voidling Bound. Via Steam. Voidling Bound Developer: Hatchery Games Release Date: June 9, 2026  Think sci-fi Pokémon . The graphics are decent and very stylized. At first, you have very little direction to go on—it kind of looks like the haunted spaceman in a horror movie. But it quickly opens up into a third-person shooter where different alien animals act as different weapons and abilities. There's lots of shooting purple globules, and it's very fun. I really like the concept, especially the heavy monster-taming vibe with branching evolutions and gene-splicing. Screenshot: Scott Pilgrim EX. Via Steam. Scott Pilgrim EX Developer: Tribute Games Release Date: March 3, 2026  A brand new entry in the franchise that serves as a very good beat ‘em up with lots and lots of video game nods. It’s simple, stylish, and effective, capturing that same chaotic energy as the original game but introducing a brand-new storyline and expanded movesets. Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War. Via Steam. Starship Troopers: Ultimate Bug War! Developer: Auroch Digital Release Date: March 16, 2026  Hot on the heels of Helldivers 2  and Starship Troopers: Extermination , this one goes in a completely different direction. It’s a retro-inspired FPS packed with bugs–but like, intentionally. It's clearly trying to get in on that current Helldivers  energy, but I don’t hate it for that. It feels like it’s trying to be a Build Engine (ish)  game, which is a weird but charming stylistic choice—sprites and polygons mixed together in a way that works surprisingly well. Screenshot: EverRail. Via Steam EverRail Developer: Icebird Studios Release Date: Q2 2026  Snowpiercer , the game—sort of. It's a ridiculously cool sci-fi premise where you drive a train through a frozen wasteland and shoot a glider from it to scout ahead. Oof, but this one is rough right now. If this is what they’re putting forward as a demo, I’d be wary of committing money or time to it just yet. Dropping you immediately into janky combat in a survival game isn't the best sign. Still, things can improve, and the core concepts—like maintaining the train engine while fighting off the cold—are so damn cool that I really want to love it. Screenshot: Replaced. Via Steam. Replaced Developer: Sad Cat Studios Release Date: April 14, 2026  I wasn’t sure why this game had the hype it does, but I get it now. It has an exciting, gritty low-poly world. Something about the movement reminds me of stop-motion animation, or the low-frame style of the Spider-Verse  movies. The combat took a second to get used to, but it’s surprisingly good and weighty. The world building is also top notch. Definitely excited for this one. Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes. Via Steam. Battlestar Galactica: Scattered Hopes Developer: Alt Shift Release Date: Q2 2026  Really captures the feeling of the TV show, especially the tense, desperate survival of the first season. It trades heavily on tactical decisions that need to be made under high-pressure battle conditions as you command a Gunstar attempting to rejoin the Galactica . It feels incredibly accurate to the source material. Screenshot: Super Meat Boy 3D. Via Steam. Super Meat Boy 3D Developer: Team Meat / Sluggerfly Release Date: Q1 2026  Am I the only one potentially excited for this? There is something slightly off-putting about the visuals—maybe because they’re so glossy in Unreal Engine 5. It has the trademark tight jumping, but it feels like Meat Boy almost floats a little too easily compared to the snap of the 2D original. Still, it's one to watch. Screenshot: Serpent's Gaze. Via Steam. Serpent’s Gaze Developer: Feeble Minds Release Date: 2026  An interesting take on a soulslike with a lot of fascinating ideas. It’s a bit janky right now, but it has excellent art direction and a clear vision. The demo features an enemy called the Plainshifter, which moves like a literal visual glitch—unlike any enemy I’ve ever faced in a game. Very cool design. It's heading into Early Access, so this demo is just a fraction of its potential. Screenshot: Dungeons of Dusk. Via Steam. Dungeons of Dusk Developer: 68k Studios (New Blood Interactive) Release Date: 2026  Dusk  was great, so I was looking forward to this. Surprisingly, it was the weakest of the dungeon crawlers I played this week. It leans heavily into environmental interactions, but I’m not a fan of the art direction, even if it does intentionally mimic that muddy 90s CD-ROM aesthetic. I wanted to like this one more, but it just didn’t click. I’ll give it another shot when there's more to play. Screenshot: Dinoblade. Via Steam. Dinoblade Developer: Team Spino LLC Release Date: Q3 2026  Like a fever dream. Who wouldn’t want to be a cool dinosaur wielding a giant blade in soulslike combat? Unfortunately, from what I played, it just isn’t ready for public consumption. I dig the idea and hope the vision reaches its full potential, but I walked away from this demo rethinking my priorities. Screenshot: CD-ROM. Via Steam. CD-ROM Developer: monoclelord Release Date: Q1 2026  A look into 90s-era computing, but not really. This is exactly the type of hidden mystery puzzle game I like to solve. You dig through files to unlock clues, utilizing steganography to peel back layers of a larger mystery that make up the "CD-ROM." Screenshot: Darkhaven. Via Steam. Darkhaven Developer: Moonbeast Productions Release Date: TBA  An ARPG featuring deformable terrain. I’m not entirely sure what the point of that is in this genre yet. You could argue it’s an extension of what Diablo 1  and 2  attempted with procedural generation, but so far, it’s a bit of a letdown. It’s very early in development, and with its Kickstarter up in the air, it’s hard to say if it will ever cross the finish line. Screenshot: Hordes of Fate. Via Steam. Hordes of Fate Developer: Spitfire Interactive Release Date: Q2 2026  Based on the Hand of Fate  franchise. It essentially feels like a Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor  clone, mixing the deck-building lore of the original series with the auto-shooter craze. It’s pretty effective, and reminds me a lot of Deep Rock Galactic Survivor . I’m definitely into this one.  Screenshot: Cursed Words. Via Steam Cursed Words Developer: Buried Things Release Date: 2026 A roguelike word game in the vein of Balatro ? Fuck yes. While it didn’t grab me as hard as Balatro  during my very first demo run, neither did Balatro  on my first few playthroughs. It starts out feeling like a simple game of spelling where you form words from adjacent tiles to score points, but between rounds, you spend coins on Stamps and Stickers to completely break the rules of the game with synergies and multipliers. It feels like it might be missing just a tiny bit of visual pizazz right now, but it’s an incredibly solid showing and something I’ll definitely be playing. Screenshot: John Carpenter's Toxic Commando. Via Steam John Carpenter's Toxic Commando Developer: Saber Interactive Release Date: March 12, 2026 Playing this feels like stepping right into an 80s B-movie, which works entirely in its favor thematically. The car is a huge part of the gameplay, which is surprising—it feels like Spintires  meets World War Z . You aren't just driving from point A to point B; you have to manage the vehicle, bring ammo, scrounge for fuel, and hold off literal hordes of mutated monsters. It’s a combination I can absolutely get behind. Screenshot: Clockwork Ambrosia. Via Steam. Clockwork Ambrosia Developer: Realmsoft Release Date: April 2026  A decently made Metroidvania where your default weapon is a customizable firearm. The movement feels a little sticky, but it’s not terrible. It heavily reminds me of a GBA-era Metroidvania in both look and feel. Excited to get my hands on the full version once it's tightened up. Screenshot: Deadhaus Sonata. Via Steam. Deadhaus Sonata Developer: Apocalypse Studios Release Date: 2026  An early look at Denis Dyack’s latest game. Playing as a badass vampire is cool, and it heavily uses its Legacy of Kain  lineage as a selling point. It's so early in development that I’m not entirely sure what to make of it, and I'm guessing the PS2-era aesthetic isn't entirely on purpose yet. I'm hesitantly excited, though I’d honestly rather have an Eternal Darkness  sequel. Screenshot: SpaceCraft. Via Steam. SpaceCraft Developer: Shiro Games Release Date: Q2 2026  Space meets crafting. Get it? I think I’ve been spoiled by Elite Dangerous  and its realistic scale, because everything here feels unrealistically small with very short distances between objects. I felt completely thrown into the deep end; it was the only demo where I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Maybe I was just slap-happy by this point, but I quickly moved on. Screenshot: Moomintroll: Winter's Warmth Moomintroll: Winter's Warmth Developer: Hyper Games Release Date: April 27, 2026   Features a beautiful art style like a storybook, because it is based on one: it's an official adaptation of Tove Jansson's beloved Moomin  IP. It makes me feel nostalgic, despite not having any specific childhood connection to the franchise that I can recall. It's a gorgeous, cozy adventure game from the same team that made Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley . Screenshot: Don't Panic! It is just Turbulence. Via Steam. Don’t Panic! It is just Turbulence Developer: Harmonia Games Release Date: TBA  I love Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes , and this aims for similar asymmetrical co-op gameplay. One person is air traffic control, the other is the pilot, and together you solve puzzles to land safely. Great concept, but the execution is lacking right now. Still, there’s room for improvement, so I’m tentatively waiting for this title. Screenshot: Runt. Via Steam. Runt Developer: Grimtaste Studios Release Date: 2026  In Runt, I was met with a content warning right at the start, making me wonder what spiciness was inside. It's dark, surreal, and compelling. You have to click on specific parts of the screen (like a buckle or a hand) to close your inventory, which makes the UI a little annoying. But the tone is fantastic—"5 days" written in entrails, a promise to fulfill, and then a hard cut to the title screen like high cinema. Screenshot: Armatus. Via Steam. Armatus Developer: Counterplay Games Release Date: 2026 I’m some cool armored dude that is some sort of holy avenger carving a path through demons. Reminds me of Hellgate: London —remember that game? The combat is fast and relies heavily on a fluid dash to navigate encounters, letting you adapt your build on the fly while blasting hellbats. It’s actually incredibly fun and seems very compelling. Definitely looking forward to this. Screenshot: Atmosfar. Via Steam. Atmosfar Developer: Apog Labs Release Date: TBA  I dig the aesthetic, and I really like the scrap-collecting animations. Great title drop, too. However, the rest of the demo felt disjointed, like a bunch of disparate mechanics smacked into one game. Also, the main theme music goes from serviceable to a beacon of annoyance very quickly. Screenshot: Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss Developer: Big Bad Wolf Release Date: April 16, 2026  I like a good Eldritch horror romp, and setting it on a derelict station at the bottom of the sea is a cool move. The reliance on AI and technology themes is interesting. However, I felt like I spent more time watching the demo than playing it. I feel like there’s a story at an epic scale here, but the demo didn’t really show us that. Screenshot: Nox Mortalis. Via Steam. Nox Mortalis Developer: Gemezl Release Date: TBA They absolutely nailed the retro survival horror look they were going for. I kept my pixelation settings cranked up. Screenshot: Outbound. Via Steam. Outbound Developer: Square Glade Games Release Date: TBA  I saw a few articles pop up around Outbound , so I decided to try it out for myself. It’s a cozy game that lets you experience a digitized version of the outdoors. You drive around in an electric camper van, pick up trash, craft materials, and clear paths to keep exploring. Screenshot: Galactic Vault. Via Steam. Galactic Vault Developer: MeepMeep Games Release Date: TBA  A fucking fantastic first-person shooter roguelite. Usually, these don’t feel great to play, but this is so good. You dive into tech vaults and get to customize your guns with endless upgrade combinations—like under-barrel launchers and crazy fire modes—after every single room. Too bad the levels and room layouts are a bit repetitive right now, but the gunplay carries it. Screenshot: Subliminal. Via Steam. Subliminal Developer: Accidental Studios Release Date: TBA  A very realistic-looking Unreal Engine 5 game. It leans heavily into the Backrooms  and liminal space aesthetic, dropping you into fragmented, decaying memories. The core mechanic involves grabbing and manipulating light fixtures to solve perspective-based puzzles to escape whatever entity is stalking you. The lighting tech is genuinely bleeding-edge. Screenshot: 60 Seconds! Souper Scavenger 60 Seconds! Souper Scavenger Developer: Robot Gentleman Release Date: TBA  A very weird endless runner spin-off set in the 60 Seconds!  universe. You’re in a post-apocalypse trying to run, jump, and gather cans of soup to stock your shelter. I can see the attempt at dark humor. The gameplay isn’t the best right out of the gate, but I can see it getting more fun and chaotic as you unlock more power-ups and meet more enemies on your runs. Screenshot: RIG Riot. Via Steam. RIG Riot Developer: Sage Boatman Release Date: TBA  I really wanted to like this game, but the demo was a mess. It’s basically Armored Core  meets Risk of Rain 2 , where you snap together a mech from thousands of permanent parts to fight off waves of enemies. The customization sounds deep, but it's just not executed very well in gameplay yet. I’ll definitely be checking on it moving forward, but the demo made me want to stay away. Screenshot: Driving Rogue. Via Steam. Driving Rogue Developer: Gravity Works Release Date: TBA  A neon-drenched roguelike car racer. It seemed like a great concept on paper—you hit the shop after races to unlock cards and mods to build your car for the longest streak possible. But it’s really just not that great in execution. Fake speed effects and a cheap-sounding soundtrack do nothing but make me want to park this racer for good. Screenshot: Seth. Via Steam. Seth Developer: Chaotic Games Release Date: TBA  Another roguelike FPS, but this time blending sci-fi with Egyptian mythology. You play as Seth, and Anubis won’t let you die because they need your help kicking ass. Not a bad arrangement, and the gameplay is just okay. It features a neat risk/reward mechanic where you have to tear souls from enemies to replenish your shield. It definitely has a lot of attitude and style, reminding me a bit of Hades  in its character interactions. Unfortunately, this one also suffers from incredibly uninteresting levels. Pity. Screenshot: Drill and Delve Drill and Delve Developer: noOne Release Date: TBA   Wow, I was really excited for this one. It's a survival game where you’re a miner trapped underground and have to drill your way out through a fully destructible 3D voxel terrain while managing your oxygen. Sadly, the actual digging mechanic is so bad it sours the whole thing instantly. This one needs some major work before I’d be willing to spend serious time in it. What a shame. Screenshot: Distant Shore: BRETAGNE. Via Steam. Distant Shore: BRETAGNE Developer: DISTANT SHORE Release Date: TBA  An interesting magnetic mechanic drives this whole experience. There is something about the environment and the presentation that makes everything seem surreal. I saw some comparisons to Portal , but with the fluid momentum, it’s much more like The Talos Principle  meets Mirror's Edge . I’m actually really excited for this one. It has some great physics-based puzzles where you use magnetic gauntlets to bend, break, and repel metal obstacles, and the parkour movement feels fantastic. Screenshot: Dosa Divas. Via Steam. Dosa Divas Developer: Outerloop Games Release Date: TBA  I love the art style, and the addition of mechs is always a plus. Cooking Mama ? Holy shit, I don’t even know what’s happening anymore in the absolute best way. You play as two sisters fighting an evil fast-food empire using an ancient spirit-mech named Goddess. It blends satisfying cooking rhythm minigames with spicy turn-based combat, where every attack is based on "flavor profiles" (salty, sweet, spicy) that you use to break enemy defenses. Holy cow, this is fun. Screenshot: Vampire Crawlers. Via Steam. Vampire Crawlers Developer: poncle / Nosebleed Interactive Release Date: 2026 If you were wondering what everyone was playing while the Marathon  server test was going on, my answer is Vampire Crawlers . I lost a terrifying amount of time playing this demo. Holy crap, it is addictive. Poncle has taken the snowballing, dopamine-hit formula of Vampire Survivors  and translated it into a turn-based, first-person dungeon crawler. It loses some of the mindless simplicity of walking around a 2D plane, but what it replaces it with is pure genius. Instead of an auto-shooter, Vampire Crawlers  adds deckbuilding in a way I never would have thought of. You enter the dungeon with a hand of cards based on your chosen Crawler—characters with different base stats and playstyles. The brilliance lies in chaining massive damage multipliers by playing cards in ascending mana in order to wipe out rows of enemies before they can advance on your grid. With added roguelite elements and an absurd amount of unlocks, I had to physically force myself to close the demo.  This might not be the best game for those who want more Vampire: Survivors , because it strays so far from that game’s gameplay.  You can wishlist these and watch them as they develop - that's what we'll be doing.

The Pitt, HBO Max. Welcome back to a crazy Fourth of July shift at The Pitt. It’s like Robby said - I shouldn’t have come in today. Recapping the recap, just to see what we might want to look out for in upcoming episodes: There’s gonna be new Westbridge patients rolling in those doors - not surprisingly, since we’d only seen a few.  Our deaf patient hasn’t really been seen yet, because they’re waiting on an interpreter, but she does at least have a sandwich, and hospital sandwiches just hit different.  We also get brief glimpses of our combative college kid, our diabetic dad, and the hospice seizer, who’s still insisting she doesn’t want to go home, and if I’m being honest, I hope she doesn’t because I still have major red flags going off for her husband. Langdon wants to talk to Robby but we all know how that’s been going. There’s also a flashback to Dr. Hashimi freaking out about the baby, and I still very much need to know what that’s about. But that’s the end of the recap. Unfortunately, that brings us back to Louie’s debrief funeral, but it’s not for long. Robby tucks a picture of his wife in to his hands, which are at his chest, and they’re all heading back to work. The Pitt, HBO Max. Dana, of course, is how you know what the hell is to be done, and she’s got everyone assigned to their next task, with Robby reminding everyone how lucky they are to have her. Couldn’t agree more. Now, I got a little bit spoilered on this episode prior to watching for a very good reason, which is that a fellow colleague who works as a SANE wrote a long and detailed post on why The Pitt had just done an absolutely incredible job handling a hard to handle topic - sexual assault. So when the sexual assault victim arrived, I knew this would be a large part of the focus of the episode, and I knew we’d be learning quite a bit. We don’t get much info on that up front, because we’re still dealing with other things, like our hospice seizer, who McKay’s going after with Robby, but not before Hashimi stops him to give him props on the debrief for Louie. I feel like they already got past the lion’s share of territorial dispute issues, and that’s not as easy to do as it seems. Dana, meanwhile, is on task with our assault victim, and while there’s talk of calling in a SANE, we find out that that’s already something Dana is trained for.  A SANE, by the way, or Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner, is “a registered nurse with advanced training in forensic examinations, evidence collection, and compassionate care for sexual assault survivors. SANEs provide immediate, trauma-informed care in emergency departments, working with law enforcement to improve, document, and preserve evidence.”  The Pitt, HBO Max. The Pitt takes its time with this case, and honestly, it’s a learning experience for me as a viewer, as to all the careful steps taken to help victims, and the specialized training needed for it. Dana’s got babynurse with her, who will be assisting and learning about the role of a SANE, and at least we hope, will follow in McKay’s footsteps and become a SANE herself, as Dana stresses the importance of more nurses having the training. Remember, it’s the 4th of July, hot as hell in the waiting room, and overcrowded from our Westbridge overflow. But Dana and Babynurse, who we need to start calling by her name, since she’s a wonderful new add to the cast. Nurse Emma Nolan (beautifully portrayed by  Laëtitia Hollard) Now honestly, with literally anyone else but Dana handling this, I’d worry. But there’s no better hands to be in than this woman’s, I’m still sure. And we’re off, with Nolan and Evans en route with our assault victim to a room that’s tucked furthest away from the chaos of the ED as possible, and before Dana begins to work with the victim, she’s sure to let Nolan know that if she’s feeling like she can’t continue to work on this case, she is free to leave when she needs to. Just as they’re about to get our victim settled we find someone in the bed - a night shifter, Dr. Ellis, who gets kicked out of her naptime. We’re out too, back with the deaf patient who we don’t have a good read on yet, mostly because no one’s been able to talk to her - a problem that, it turns out, is pretty common in a real ER, and something that deaf advocates have been adamant about making less common. They’ve got a virtual assistant running, so it’s looking good…until he gets disconnected over and over. We find out our patient has a headache and abdominal pain, but no further questions Santos asks, rather gruffly, if I might add, are able to be answered. To her credit, Santos tries writing to communicate while they wait for an in-person interpreter, but SHE does all the writing, and doesn’t seem to be listening very well to the signals our patient’s giving. And while this might seem like it should’ve been the solution, there are in fact, deaf people who do not read and write in English, and even if they do, for whom it is not their first language, since ASL is.  This is important, because patients have a right to be spoken to about their care in their FIRST language, not just a language that they also speak. We’re gonna be waiting at least the rest of this episode to find out what’s really going on here, and I feel bad for our patient. The Pitt, HBO Max. The rest of our combative college kid, Jackson’s family is now here, and they’re in a similar state of disbelief to his sister, Jada. Javadi and Hashimi are both in with them. Jackson’s parents, Demi and Charles, want to take him home and are absolutely infuriated to find that he’s on an involuntary psych hold, at first.  Dr. Jefferson handles it well though, and lets them know that he’s reported hearing voices, and he’s going to help the family handle whatever is happening together. Hashimi excuses herself, obviously upset, and locks herself in the bathroom. She makes a phone call out to Pittsburgh Neuroscience for an appointment, and this…this is going to be a big deal at some point, I think. She sets an appointment for herself, urgently, as a patient of Dr. Fairgraves. Mckay and Robby, meanwhile, are with our hospice patient, trying to convince her to go home - and I understand why - with the hospital being so busy and her not being critical, beds need to go to other people. But she really doesn’t want to go, and I seriously think there’s more at play here than we’re seeing. At first it’s just McKay and Robby but Robby gets pulled away and now McKay’s in with the family, including the husband, who’s brought the kids. Does that feel a little manipulative of the dad? I’m still so suspicious of him, and I could be wrong, but I don’t like the feels. The Pitt, HBO Max. We’ve come back around to our sexual assault victim, and I think the best thing to do with these portions of this episode are to encourage you to listen carefully to everything Dana says, because she goes in great detail with the patient about what’s going to happen, what her rights are, and most importantly, that it’s up to her how far the exam goes or doesn’t. What I think is most wonderful about the way this is portrayed is that they don’t pull back from it - if it seems invasive, or too intense, they don’t turn the camera away from it - and while at first I found myself thinking the unblinking, un-commented on nature of it all would frighten potential victims out of doing it, knowledge is power, and knowing what will happen before it happens, I think, wins out. Quick cut back to our hospice patient, and we find out that if she doesn’t want to leave, she can have a room upstairs. Ok, that’s what I’m rooting for in this scenario, and I’m so glad she has that option even as the hall space is even filling up. Meanwhile, an officer who’s been shot is coming in. He’s got a neck wound, and he’s incoming with many of his squad members, including Abot (remember him from last season?) who’s a medic in the squad and naturally, he and Robby go way back and have a rapport.  Back in with our assault patient, Dr. Hashimi’s actually doing the rape kit, and again, handling it extremely well, talking the patient and thus the viewers through all the steps. While our patient has mostly wanted to charge forward, she shows hesitation with her legs being touched, and we find out she’s got bruised up shoulders. She also talks a little bit about what happened - she was at a barbecue with friends and was helping set up - but we don’t stay to find out more. The Pitt, HBO Max. King’s now outside, talking to her sister. Her sister’s excited to see her after shift, but is in pain with a bad stomachache, so King encourages her to go see the nurse at her facility, and promises her ice cream and fireworks later that night.  Around this same time, we find out Mohan’s having some family issues herself, and looks quite distressed during her phone call just outside the ER. The Pitt, HBO Max. In this show, you can’t expect to stand in an ambulance bay for anything without a new patient rolling up, and now we’ve got a 17 year old footballer who was at practice and collapsed. Turns out he’s been playing for four hours in all his gear in super hot weather. So, y’know, that’s actually probably not ideal, but this kid’s got major game face, and wants to head back to the field to do more. I don’t foresee that happening, kiddo, and it’s best if it didn’t. Meanwhile, Joy and Ogilvie, my trouble twins, are together and bitching about something. This time they’re hungry. Whitaker, always with the eerily cheerful disposition and all the answers, shoots them a protein bar and tells them to get used to them, as sometimes it’s the only way to get any food during a shift, like it or not. And we’ve got a runner! Our diabetic dad is trying to leave. Man, don’t do this. You’ve got great kids and a great wife. But he’s also got 100k in debt already, and is calculating the additional time. Mohan’s trying to convince him to stay for at least 12 more hours as he’s still got ketones problems, but it really doesn’t seem like he’s gonna stick. Dammit. Dr. Abot is now formally meeting Hashimi, as formally as you can when being introduced as “Gloria’s new hire”  The Pitt, HBO Max. Our football kid’s up next, and we’ve got Joy and Ogilvie engaging in a battle of the differentials, but spoilers, it’s heat exhaustion. Or so we think so far. We’re back with Dana and Evans and our assault victim, and she’s using a blue light on her skin to find forensic evidence to swab, locating some on her wrist, and also taking photos of any visible injuries. Meanwhile, our police officer’s been saved for now by a snazzy maneuver with a neo-natal 02 mask, and he’s headed to surgery. Hashimi, now actually getting to know Abot, pegs him as having spent time in the Middle East and mentions that she worked with Doctors Without Borders there. And, are they flirting? The Pitt, HBO Max. Javadi’s down with her dad - who’s a dermatologist. I’m so sorry Javadi, I’m afraid you’re doomed with parents with crazy high expectations. He’s got a dermatologist he’s set up a meeting for her with, so like…there’s no way you’re gonna please either of them going emergency medicine, which I think she will. Psych is on the way to help our college kid’s family, but should really consider a pit stop with Javadi so she can vent about her parents, because sheesh. But, back with Jackson, we find out that there is a history of mental illness that the parents didn’t tell their kids about, and their uncle, who committed suicide, may have been mentally ill. This causes a blowup and Jada’s out the door, infuriated and wandering the hospital. In with Dana and Babynurse, we’re working on a mouth swab, and trying to convince our patient to eat - but she’s still insisting on motoring through, and if that’s what’s best for her and her mental health right now, it’s what they’ll do. Out in the halls, there’s a heat exhaustion treatment area set up. Langdon’s idea, says King, pointedly at Robby. She also mentions that the upcoming deposition is still killing her. Robby’s seemingly out of his super cranky era, and back to coaching, and he’s reassuring her that she’s one of the very best students he’s ever worked with. I do love a good affirmation, and King looks rightfully reassured that she’s got this. The Pitt, HBO Max. Back with our hospice patient, we’ve got trouble. The husband’s trying very hard to convince Robby that she’s not mentally sound to make the decision, and…again, I have so many red flags popping up here still. It could be a red herring, but… She, being of sound mind, like she has been this whole time, says she wants to stay. One thing that’s been bothering me this whole time is that they rarely talk to her separately from her husband, and it’s still not happening. The father’s still hard core pushing, and I don’t like it one bit. She’s pushing back though, even as her kids crawl all over her, and she says she doesn’t want to be a living ghost in their home - it upsets her oldest son, but it’s a point I can’t get over. While it might be the right choice for some to die at home, she’s thinking of her kids, clearly, and also what she wants - to not have the home filled with memories of her dying, instead just having memories of their life together. It’s to each their own and again, there’s no wrong choice, but at least in my brain, if she’s of sound mind, which she very much seems to be, then she should be the one making that choice. The Pitt, HBO Max. We’ll have to hold that thought though, because there’s a helicopter on the roof with a trauma patient and Robby’s gotta get to going. It’s a boating accident, with a swimmer vs. a propeller. This sounds gnarly, so if gore’s not what you’re here for, I’d get a snack about now. But guess who else is suiting up to meet the helicopter. If you guessed Langdon, you’ve clearly got the same sort of normal vision I do, but this should be interesting. Let’s hash it out guys.  Ok, or let’s not fucking talk at all. OK, they’re talking a little bit Jake’s good? Yay, we’re talking.  Aww, yelling apologies. That’s nice. Aww, we’re yelling forgiveness. This is what we’re here for! Oh no. That took a dramatic left turn when forgiveness turned into Robby saying “But I’m not sure I want you working in my ER ever again.” Fuck. Oh man.  Gotta focus on the patient though. I mean you said some things. Robby gave a rather mean exit to Dr. Al too. This didn’t go as I hoped. King’s here. Oh man. This is fucked. King reminds Langdon about hemocue cuz langdon’s lost his groove. Dammit. Not really fair to him to be on point right after his former friend and current boss said he’s not sure he wants him back even while they’re working on a level 1 trauma together. Ugh. The Pitt, HBO Max. Back with Dana, where things are being handled the way they should be. I kept thinking as I watched this that the entire process was so long, and so much to endure, and I can see the patient’s hands shaking, but Dana. She reminds the patient that what happened to her won’t define her, and that she can talk to the advocates waiting for her but doesn’t have to. Again, not shying away from how this process can be overwhelming, but also showing how you get through it, and what help is available. Santos is still kinda ignoring the actual patient and getting overly heated about the problem - no interpreter. I fear she’s really been fucking up a lot Princess is going to tell her what’s up, and  Hashimi comes to tell Santos she did a good job on theearlier trauma but I fear the accolades might be replaced shortly by problems. One of our heat stroke victims in the hallway starts seizing and Santos is on the job. No apparent trauma but they need to cool him down with ice packs.  The Pitt, HBO Max. Meanwhile Robby and Langdon are fighting over the boat trauma guy, and it’s not really helping anyone, but we’re lucky since he’s gotta go to CT anyway, and away from this whole drama. We’ve got a new guy who ate a salad that’s not agreeing with him and he also needs cooling.  Meanwhile, we found Jada, and Javadi’s trying to talk her down and recruiting her to help with her brother instead of just be mad her parents withheld information.  Meanwhile, we’re in with diabetic dad…oh no. We’re not. It’s Abot. Well, fuck. The Pitt, HBO Max. Also, Abot got shot at, but he of course doesn’t want to get checked in to get treated for a graze so Javadi’s gonna cover his ass. And help with the wound, clearly. We think they’re in the clear until Robby’s beady little eyes dart in on them. So far though, he’s got nothing to say. Abot and Javadi talk about diabetic dad and he offers to pay for the proper supplies to be ubered to his house. The team’s cooling seizing heat guy,  and he’s fine for now The Pitt, HBO Max. Dr. Al and Santos are talking, and she’s a lot easier on her this time, telling her to keep grinding. Footballer goes neuro. And for all the work Dr. Al’s doing  trying to help Santos feel better she's obsessed with charting. She starts charting again, but the baby's crying. She’s not my first pick for this, but Donnie can’t, and there’s no one else so she’s on duty.  The baby’s just cranky, so…gonna have to deal with that. The nurse peaces out to get Tylenol for kiddo, and now they’re alone. “Starting to understand why you got left here.” she quips to our howling infant. Mean Seconds later though, she’s singing to her. In tagalog? Cool. Oh. And the baby loves it.  Awww, we’ve even got a finger grasp. Are we actually nurturing and vulnerable, Santos? Holy shit. Back with the boat guy, we’re all atwitter. Everyone’s on deck, and surgery calls King Sadness, which is funny but mean. Langdon tries to talk to Robby about things but he’s not having it. I WAS ROOTING FOR YOU! Dr. Hashimi gets called to the C-Suite - so that’s weird The Pitt, HBO Max. Santos says she’s a baby whisperer and now she’s in charge of the baby?  Talk about a plot twist. She’s still waiting on an interpreter for her deaf patient at this point anyway.  Now Robby’s nagging Santos about charting. How’s you and Whit, he asks Weirder than you’d expect, she answers. He’s at Amy’s a lot. Wasn’t Amy pregnant? Are they dating? What’s up with the kid? Whit wants to help everyone, she says. But she’s sus he’s being taken advantage of.  Robby says he’s our Huckleberry, which seems like a gentle reminder to Santos to help him not get taken advantage of, but before all that can keep rolling, the boss arrives. Boss in here.  In with McKay -  Her husband wants Robby to order his wife to go home, but Robby aptly reminds him that she’s the one dying and that respecting her wishes is what to do. It’s a gift to let her do this. And he backs off for now, but man, i still don’t like him. Hrgnghghg. Nearing the very last bit of the episode and our deaf patient has an actual interpreter. Ok, I feel a little better. Hopefully all that waiting wasn’t too detrimental. The Pitt, HBO Max. Back with Dana, we’re rounding the bend on this. An advocate is with our patient telling her that she can report any time. They’re about to do a vaginal exam, but it all comes to a screeching halt, with the patient saying she wants to stop. “He’s my friend, he knows all my friends “It was just dumb” “He was drunk and didn’t mean it”  So Dana stops, waits, and cries silently for her.  Santos, meanwhile, turns out to have been sleeping in the bathroom, and when she gets startled awake and pulls her pants up, we can see scars from self harm. Oh no, baby girl. I hope someone can help you with that. The Pitt, HBO Max. Last but not least, hospital CEO Trent Norris arrives. But why? Well, we now find out that the Westbridge code black was due to a cyber attack, and that they’ve been fending them off all day right here at the Pitt. Oh yeah, and everyone’s gonna have to do everything manually now, because they’re just shutting off any sort of computer things they’ve got to deal with this. Can they do that? Another hospital, Good Dominion, has been hit as well, though patients from there are being routed to another hospital.  So, this sucks, and it happens right away. On top of it, Robby’s pissed, because no one consulted him - just Dr. Al.  And, fade to black. In the case of their computers, literally.  2 pm is probably going to be even worse.

Screenshot: Escape from Ever After I wanted to clear some of my early-year backlog as we started to move into the bulk of this year’s releases, and I figured I should finally write about Escape From Ever After . It’s not that I was putting off playing it. In fact, I’ve been steadily putting time into this Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door  clone. Because that’s exactly what it is—and there’s nothing wrong with that, especially if it's exactly what you want. When I say it’s a clone of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (TTYD) , I mean it. Swap out TTYD 's badges for trinkets, flower points for mocha points, and star power for synergy, and you’ll see it’s nearly identical. This extends all the way down to the reactive style of attacks and blocks that help you deal more damage or mitigate incoming hits, respectively. It’s not like anyone is trying to hide it, either. The characters are all paper cut-outs, ostensibly to represent their storybook nature. Screenshot: Escape from Ever After Instead of traveling through a Super Mario Bros. -inspired world, each area is a different storybook to explore. And while I thought the game would stick strictly to fairytales (you know, since it's themed that way, named that way, etc.), it actually pulls from a more eclectic list of literary influences, including H.P. Lovecraft and Robert Louis Stevenson. But despite the eldritch horrors and pirate escapades, Escape From Ever After  is a wholesome, cute game that never takes itself or its stories too seriously. It’s not exactly a humorous game (despite some laughs), but it’s definitely a whimsical one. Screenshot: Escape from Ever After As Flynt, you’re on a mission to defeat Tinder the Dragon. However, your quest is interrupted when you’re both captured by Ever After Inc. and forced into their corporate hierarchy. Alongside Tinder, the Big Bad Wolf, Eva from HR, and Patches, you must work together to take down the corporate giant from the inside. To do that, you’ll go on adventures through storybooks as you perform quests to climb the corporate ladder. Gameplay in Escape From Ever After  is a mixture of exploration, bits of platforming and puzzle-solving, and turn-based combat. While you have an entire party of characters, only two are ever active at one time. You can actively swap between characters in both exploration mode and combat as different situations arise. Each character has a specialty that allows them to interact with the environment to progress. Eva can change animals into springy mushrooms to access higher areas, while Tinder can light fires to burn obstacles or light torches. Screenshot: Escape from Ever After Combat in Escape From Ever After  is probably its main draw, and it’s surprisingly addictive. Each character has access to their own set of trinkets that enable different abilities. If an enemy has a shield, for instance, they can block Flynt’s shield throw, but Eva can turn into a frog and snatch the shield away. As I mentioned before, attacking and blocking have a timed element to them. So even though combat is technically turn-based, there is still an active element that requires you to hit a certain button at a certain time, or do a small quick-time event for maximum effect. While the timing windows for these blocks and attacks can occasionally feel a bit strict—a minor gripe in an otherwise highly polished system—landing a perfect parry or executing a massive synergy attack never stops feeling rewarding. It forces you to stay engaged with every single turn, ensuring the combat never devolves into mindless button-mashing, even when you are just clearing out lower-level enemies while exploring. Screenshot: Escape from Ever After Ultimately, Escape From Ever After  knows exactly what it is and who it is for. It wears its Paper Mario  inspirations proudly on its sleeve, but injects enough of its own distinct identity through its clever corporate satire and literary mashups to avoid feeling like a simple retread. Better yet, the adventure clocks in at a highly digestible 20 to 25 hours. It tells its story, delivers its mechanics, and wraps up before it ever has a chance to overstay its welcome—making it the perfect, whimsical palate cleanser before the rest of the year's heavy-hitting releases arrive. If you’ve been chasing the high of classic turn-based RPGs, Ever After Inc. is a company well worth selling your soul to.

Screenshot: Star Trek Voyager: Across the Unknown If you’re a fan of all things Star Trek, you’ve likely spent plenty of time after rewatching a series wondering how things might’ve turned out if any number of characters made different choices. Thanks to Star Trek Voyager: Across the Unknown , we get that chance. The meat of the game is resource management, ship maintenance and repair. You’re presented with a cutout side view of Voyager, much like a dollhouse. Near the beginning of the game the ship is mostly a wreck, save for a few critical areas like the bridge, the warp core, and the main deflector. A few other areas of the ship like the mess hall, main shuttlebay, weapons stations, and sick bay are pre-built but offline and require repair. Everything else like cargo bays, crew quarters, engineering offices, science labs, and other areas that keep a starship running become buildable after you return life support to a deck and clear out ruined areas. This gives you a lot of choices for what kind of ship you want Voyager to be, but you must make those carefully, as your choices have consequences. Screenshot: Star Trek Voyager: Across the Unknown Gameplay is divided into four main quadrants – the cross-section management of the ship, a text based storyline where you’re presented with choices of what you want the crew to do in various situations, hopping around to planets and points of interest scouring for resources and pieces of the plot via a map of procedurally generated star systems, and ship to ship combat that’s mostly automated. Voyager: Across the Unknown  has a very retro feel to it, but as someone who grew up watching Voyager when it aired, played a lot of text-based RPGs, and loved those books, that’s one of its biggest charms. Screenshot: Star Trek Voyager: Across the Unknown The narrative RPG with choices that move the story forward (or backward, depending on where the bar lands) and mostly automated combat make sitting in the captain’s chair feel real, as it forces you to trust both your crew and your own judgement. For those who’ve watched the show multiple times and have good memories, it makes Voyager’s story that much more enjoyable while also allowing you to chart a different course, should you want to see how things may have played out differently. I ended up with multiple B'Elannas thanks to not having my tech tree upgraded by Faces  (Editor's note: Faces is S1E14's episode which sees normally half human, half Klingon Chief Engineer Belanna Torres being separated into two entities, a full human and full Klingon, by a Vidian scientist) which was a unique and interesting development. You also get to decide how you’d deal with Tuvix. Across the Unknown is at its core, about survival. You’ve got to find and manage multiple resources that can be finite including deuterium to power the ship, duranium to build things, dilithium for both upgrades and warping to new sectors, food, tritanium, and even morale. It can be tricky to strike a harmonious balance between all of these things, making the right decisions for upgrades, warding off random attacks from various enemies, and picking the right heroes for away missions. I’ve destroyed the ship and crew multiple times thanks to asteroid fields, running out of necessary resources before I could obtain more, and faced at least one mutiny. The game isn’t without its flaws, most notably the lack of the option for a manual save. While this seems to be a feature rather than a bug in order to prevent save scumming and increase the difficulty, I found myself having to restart the game entirely from the beginning more than once after being caught in a death spiral. Screenshot: Star Trek Voyager: Across the Unknown This became a pretty rough slog, as the text based portions of the story have a limited amount of outcomes. While I love and have rewatched Voyager multiple times over the last couple of decades, repeating the same parts of the story just to fix a couple of bad choices not far down the road from Caretaker became tedious. Developer gameXcite though, has said they would address this in an upcoming patch, so hopefully my future playthroughs will go a little more smoothly. It’s fantastic that both Tim Russ and Robert Duncan McNeill reprised their roles to do voiceovers – mostly in the form of log entries – for the game, but it really would’ve benefited if we could’ve had more voiceovers from more actors on the show. In all, Across the Unknown is a very solid game if you’re a fan of Voyager and narrative RPGs, and has plenty of opportunities to revisit more stories in the Delta quadrant. Just be sure to keep on a pot of coffee.

Screenshot: Senara: The Sacrament I’m an absolute sucker for old school survival horror, and based on my time with the Steam Next Fest demo for Senara: The Sacrament , that’s exactly what developer Influsion Inc. is going for. But instead of relying on retro aesthetics, they want to up the scares with "hyper-realistic" graphics that do their best to mimic real life. This isn’t the first look we’ve gotten at the Senara  world. There’s a standalone prologue that was released way back in 2024 called Before the Dawn . If you’ve played that, you’ll be familiar with what Influsion is showcasing here. That means lots of “this door is locked from the other side” and key hunting. The Steam store page promises puzzle-solving and exploration-based design—and I’ve definitely done a lot of exploring on the titular cargo ship. Screenshot: Senara: The Sacrament See, the Senara  isn’t just a normal vessel—it’s a floating ritual site used by a fanatical cult to summon their dark magics. Or something along those lines. It’s really just an excuse to make a scary game set on a massive cargo ship that is surprisingly detailed. I mean, there must be some real maritime enthusiasts at Influsion, because their attempt at “hyper-realism” translates to a hyper-detailed environment. (It turns out, the studio actually used LiDAR scanning and their background in industrial "digital twins" to map a real 1:1 replica of a 6,000-ton ship into the game). And while I hate to criticize a game based on a demo—and an in-development demo at that—I have to assume it's meant to showcase some of the best of what the final product will have to offer. I doubt that’s what this demo does; instead, it puts you at the slow beginnings of a game. Yes, everything looks “real,” but it all ends up feeling very office-casual and modern, which it turns out isn’t very scary. Even when I finally came across evidence of a disturbance and some gore, I just wasn’t feeling the tension. Screenshot: Senara: The Sacrament I can see Senara: The Sacrament  as, potentially, a very scary game. Throw in some great sound design, a bit more suspense, and you have a stew going. But the demo just didn’t convince me this is a game I want to play anymore. Even when a monster was finally revealed, it was underwhelming, with little to no audio to really sell the effect. Screenshot: Senara: The Sacrament I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how Senara: The Sacrament  eventually turns out, but right now, the demo has me feeling like this one might be dead in the water.

The Pitt. HBO Max Well, it’s high noon. Let’s do our recap recap. Back with our deaf friend first. They’ve sure spent a lot of time on combative college kid without us actually knowing why yet, and he’s the second to reappear on our screen. Then we get a glimpse of our malnourished prisoner and our leg disabled hospice patient before we’re with Louie. Oh, Louie.  Other than the recap there’s no time lost between last time and this, and we’re doing compressions on Louie. Langdon and Robby are both seeming frantic but not getting in each others way. Oh wait, I spoke too soon. Louie’s got lungs full of blood. Dammit. The Pitt. HBO Max Our baby nurse is handling lunchers - ones waiting for rooms and ones not admitted, but just as she’s passing by she gets manhandled by someone wanting food. Dana has NONE of it and immediately shoves the assault PSA doc in his face, telling him he’d better comply. She takes baby nurse by Louie’s room, and it’s just in time for everyone to decide there’s nothing that can be done. This hits everyone really hard, and Langdon asks for a debrief, but a motorcycle accident is incoming, and they’re gonna take a minute to clean Louie up before a little gathering to say goodbye. Alawi wants to do the cleanup but she seems very distressed, so Dana tells her to take ten and takes over. We’ve finally got a conscious combative kid, and the psych can actually figure out what’s up. Jackson’s saying that there’s people telling him they don’t want him to pass the bar. Jada’s already in hard denial that this may be a mental health issue so they boot her from the room so the psych has room to work. News of Louie’s spreading, with Alawi letting Nurse Princess know what happened, and Alawi’s going to clean up again. Princess offers to go with her but they’re interrupted, and Alawi heads off alone. A scream comes from another room and it’s hospice seizer. Every time she moves her leg it’s pure agony. This time it’s only herself and Nurse Princess. She makes mention of her husband’s devotion and she’s not as effusive as she was before. 20 years of marriage, and I’m still kind of suspecting there’s something amiss. She mentions that the light left his eyes, and asks Princess how she handles caring for people day in and day out, as she’s emptying her bedpan. Princess just says she goes home and leaves it behind for Love Island. McKay comes in and gives her some ketamine to help with the pain. Our patient asks after her husband, who’s not back yet, and seems relieved to hear he’s not, saying it’s good to have space sometimes. Curious and curiouser. The Pitt. HBO Max Out on the floor Princess is scolding Donnie for his caffeine intake…and spreading the news. It’s taking down the whole staff, as he was such a frequent flier. Debrief in the viewing room is planned for later. Princess tries to fix it with news of a birthday party for Javadi, put on by her and Perlah.  Hashimi’s on task, discussing the prisoner’s condition with King and Mohan. They talk about reasons for the presenting malnutrition up to and including just getting out to medical. The differential for malnutrition is interesting with causes ranging from cancer to adhd meds and more.  Robby checks in on what’s where, and we find out there’s 10 Westbridge patients they’ve taken on so far, with more potentially in the waiting room. He wants to kick the prisoner out after two hours if nothing more happens but Hashimi wants a CT result first.  This could be major fireworks since Robby’s in A MOOD, shall we say, but Dana. The Pitt. HBO Max Can we talk about how Dana basically holds the entire place together? Not only does she route things back to front, regulate dysregulated docs, and look after patients, she also battles dueling egos and handles every major crisis given with the proper amount of smarts and sass. The entire ER would fall apart without her. She delicately gets our prisoner his time in a different room, though it’s closer to the front and has no privacy. Hashimi balks at treating him like a monkey in a cage, but Dana’s got a little more history with it and they err on the side of safety - in sight. Ogilvie gets the news about Louie and it takes him two seconds to shrug it off as just another alcoholic, and it’s just about then that Whitaker comes back…to check on Louie. “He croaked” quips Ogilvie, and I’dve punched him could I have reached him. Whitaker takes off running to the room, and Alawi curses him under her breath. Whitaker’s broken by this, but Langdon’s in the room to help him through it. They find a picture of his wife, and Langdon, being an absolute angel, offers Whitaker the job to call the wife - which I think is actually really nice, but Whitaker declines.  He calls the number he has but it leads to Dana’s desk, sadly. They were his family. Alawi’s still about to go in and get his body ready, but Dana’s back to taking her off the job, offering up our baby nurse instead to learn. The Pitt. HBO Max The interpreter’s at the desk too, saying it’s too busy and she’s gonna need a hand. Apparently there’s a girl who’s been here 5 hours who never heard her name being called because deaf. We find out here that Princess knows six languages, one of which is rusty ASL, but she’s not sure she can help. After a little back and forth in a few languages to brag to each other, we’re off to work. Dana’s super mad when she sees a bunch of donuts coming in, despite everyone else’s excitement. At one point she even calls them blood donuts, so when Donnie comes at her with one in his teeth she’s quick to quip “et tu, Donnie?” I mean, I get her point. They’re not paying more, they’re not protecting more, but they will send donuts. It’s the pizza party problem we all know too well in our day job desk lives. With Dana at full crank, we get a stunt biker in costume who fell off a pyramid, and Dana’s recruiting Robby to join his circus since there’s an opening. My god I love this woman. He was wearing a helmet and seems bothered to be fussed over, but that’s usually when they start bleeding and dying rapidly, so let’s just wait and see. Robby asks for Whitaker to pull him out of Louie’s room for a while and give him a break from the trauma and now we’re seeing a glimpse of the doctor we know instead of the one we wanted to slap in the face last episode. Santos is half asleep trying to hear Whitaker out, but it’s better they both get the boot.  The Pitt. HBO Max Dana and baby nurse are about to get to cleaning Louie up. I can’t say I’m looking forward to this, but again, Dana’s three thousand percent the person you’d want to help you through something like this. Katherine LaNasa pulls off subtle emotion beautifully and you can see the sorrow bleeding through the instructions and steady working hands.  Baby nurse asks the questions no one usually does - does he have family? What happens if no one claims him? When they go to roll him he makes a noise, scaring poor babynurse, but it’s not a miraculous resurrection -just a fact of life. Or a pain in the ass, as Dana characterizes it in this particular instance.  Santos and Whit and Joy and Alawi and …well, most everyone, is busy with motorcycle guy and so far he’s a good teaching case but nothing catastrophic seems evident.  The Pitt. HBO Max Back with the prisoner, the jaw is broken but everything seems straight other than the malnutrition. He won’t be able to eat anything solid for a few weeks and you can see why that’ll be a huge issue. The guard is still in there while they’re quizzing him about nutrition and yet another system falls apart in front of u s. Once we roll motorcycle guy we find a big gash. So he’s off to surgery. This gives Robby the chance to check up on leg lady, and unfortunately, she’s getting an above the knee amputation. That.sucks . Robby also uses this moment to check in with Whitaker on Louie, and Whitaker tells him about some past trauma with people like Louie - an uncle who drank himself to death. This is gonna be rough on him. He offers a listening ear and I’m gonna hope Whit takes him up on it. We find ourselves in a break room, as if anyone takes a break, and Langdon’s there with Dana, who’s avoided blood donuts but is after a drink. Langdon’s depressed as hell, and says he basically got nut punched on his first day back, but Dana says it’s not his fault. He asks if she was gonna quit, and you can see he’s thinking about it. He’s also thinking about amends, and Dana makes it blissfully easy on him, reminding him of his good wife and worth. Dammit. Someone peeling onions. I see a bowl in front of our new patient Rocky so I’m intentionally looking away, because no to that. He’s evidently been in a hot dog eating contest and like, no, I do not want to see this happening. So, you watch that at your own leisure. Al Hashimi’s up with King and Santos and they want to keep the prisoner in a bed for a few days to help with malnutrition. Robby’s uncharacteristically cold towards this. He says with Westbridge, full beds and psych full they can’t take him on, but they compromise with having Robby call the prison doctor to discuss.  The Pitt. HBO Max Princess catches Dr. Al up on our combative college kid and it’s as bad as you’d think. He’s been experiencing auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions for months, and they’re calling his parents while his sister tries to talk with him and come to terms with what’s happening herself. Back with Mrs. Hamler, who we’ve been calling the hospice seizer, we’re checking on her pain. They’re saying they can let her go back into home care, and she’s resisting, saying the husband needs a break. I really hope that someone’s taking the hint I think she’s giving. She even tries to send him ahead to get the house ready. The death doula receives what she’s relaying and he actually does get out. And we leave this room for Donnie with a hallway patient. They love the in-episode cliffhanger. Princess is all over this episode, and now she’s in with our deaf friend, trying to sign with her. Her name is Harlow, and she has a headache, stomach ache and may have passed out. But we’re not 100 percent because she can’t quite grasp it all.  Back to motorcycle acrobat and Robby’s bonding over bikes. He’s got a collar coming off, and they’re doing further assessments. A nurse walks through casually dropping the knowledge all the other little doctors were gonna have to fight to come up with, and who is that girl. Back with our barfing boy, it just keeps coming. This is not my episode. You guys watch it. Santos escaped the room with our biker, and they’re injecting the open lac on the biker’s nee with fluorosceine, which, COOL! It’s glowing! If stuff glows there’s a leak. Nurse knows all the things is on the case and they debate a little about giving him penicillin as he’s had a reaction to amoxicillin in the past, but they go with the nurse and hang it anyway, with benadryl and epi on standby. Babynurse and Dana are having Louie looking much better, but there’s more work to do, something that surprises babynurse. But dried blood on the face, neck and hands can be triggering and as Dana notes, “if anyone comes, they shouldn’t have to see that.” She mentions that local unhoused sometimes come to pay respects and gives more instruction including to leave out one arm out of the sheets, so loved ones can hold their hand. Again with the onions. Turns out Robby and the death doula are thick as thieves, and the morphine pump is delayed. McKay asks if they should keep her a little longer, but Robby says they can give her a BIG PILL and send her on her way.  The Pitt. HBO Max Surgery’s down on the ER floor and angry. They’ve got an ileus that had an appendectomy no one reported and now they they’re headhunting Santos.  She blames the AI tool for hallucinating a false appendectomy and now Hashimi’s taking the heat, but surgery is PISSED with a capital...well, you can see. Dr. Santos is easy breezy despite it all. Perlah comes by with a 5 hour energy but I don’t think sleepiness i gonna be what gets her in the end. Whitaker is teaching on stitching and procedure, but Donnie has a recommendation, and he gets out of the way to let him shine, since as a triage nurse, he does more stitches a day than probably any of the rest of them. Up close stitching. Another thing I’m trying not to see. Donnie was an early favorite, and it’s really nice to see them tapping him in as an expert for the doctors in training to learn from.  Back with another consummate professional, Dana’s helping babynurse get Louie to his “sorta” final resting place and baby nurse asks the big question: “What’s the hardest part of this job?’ I think, probably, she’s staring it down, but I’m not the literal best person at this job ever, so let’s see what Dana says. She mentions it being thankless, and that’s something we can pay forward as viewers to the real world nurses who feel unthanked, so let’s make that a takeaway. Maybe it wasn’t the hardest question. She asks why she keeps coming back, and Dana can’t answer. Listen, my entire world folds if Dana leaves this show, so…let’s hope she has an answer eventually.  Back on the floor, Robby and Hashimi are having it out over our prisoner. The med staff is saying everything’s great, but she doesn’t want to send him. Hashimi doesn’t keep her cool when Robby says it’s not about social justice, and I honestly am on her side on this. THe prison hasn’t taken care of him and the difference can be made if he stays. She even brings up Digby. I hope this isn’t over, for this prisoner’s sake. Jada’s talking to Princess and Javadi about her brother, and I guess his girlfriend got in touch, and wants to see him. Jada’s parents have a ton of questions and she's melting down. Javadi makes the mistake of saying that something’s wrong with him, and she loses it. Princess takes her somewhere quiet and cradles her while she cries. This is a truly tragic case. The Pitt. HBO Max We’re finally back with abandoned baby, who’s smiling and taking formula. Hashimi almost kills the mood when she says the kiddo’s too young to smile, but then concedes parents report kids as young as 4 weeks smiling socially. It’s a nice give. Meanwhile, Dana meets prisoner, and they’re from the same part of town, and even know the same bars.  Donnie ducks into the room with our motorcycle guy, and Joy and Whitaker get props for a great job finishing out the stitches, and a little advice to add a neoprene sleeve. Love to see the teamwork. He reveals to our guy that they’re first week, and while Ogilvie effusively blurts out that he thinks he was born to do this, Joy literally buzzes out and says she wants to do pathology cuz she likes medical mysteries but isn’t great with people. I mean, we did notice. But now I’m gonna miss her a little.  Motor acrobat wants a smaller splint so he can ride. Don’t they all. Whitaker’s like “no.” He promises not to fall again but Whitaker’s not buying it. Robby’s called in because his pulse ox is down to 85%, and he’s gonna have to stay. Who was there? Not Dana the whole time. Definitely. It’s fine. Don’t dwell. The Pitt. HBO Max Our hospice seizer is about to leave. She can’t leave. She wants to stay. FINALLY. She said the words.  Robby did catch Dana, and he’s really pulling at her to tell him what she did, but again, SHE DID NOTHING. Babynurse and Langdon meet up and he asks how it’s going. She says pretty good, hasn’t killed anyone yet…and then realizes who she’s talking to and what he’s been through today.  Well, we all learn about sticking our foot in our mouth. Luckily Langdon’s easygoing about it, cuz, and I reiterate, I don’t think he’s a bad guy.  She also admits she’s a little afraid of Dana, but Langdon assures her she’s just tough on the outside, and warm and gooey inside. I mean, aren’t we all? But like, literally? The Pitt. HBO Max It’s time for the debrief for Louie, and I’m not emotionally prepared. Dana stays back but most everyone else heads in. Ogilvie’s just hanging outside the door. It's a decent memorial service, with everyone sharing memories of him. We find out Robby knew his wife. Or at least knew of him, and knew a lot more about him to boot. Turns out, he did change his ways for a bit, when his wife got pregnant, and when she and the baby died in an accident, went back down. It’s a horrible story, and one that goes to show you never know what’s going on behind the scenes, or what someone’s struggling with.  With that said, if you’re struggling, you’re not alone. Remember to reach out. Remember that you deserve help, and have worth.  And that’s our show, until next time.