“We have received your choices, and your requests will be honored.”

Weirdest response I’ve ever received for rejecting a website’s cookies.

Being the babadook sounds cool

Saying “There were signs of low character” in a solemn voice in 2026 is peak Tim Robinson hot dog man.

Every AI commercial is like "Hey AI, what goes good on a sandwich?" and then the AI is like "Have you considered... cheese?" And then the narrator is like: THE FUTURE IS HERE.

Please do Shartlesville next. The people want to know.

Listen, it's simple.
Too many apostrophes: it's high fantasy.
Too many Xs: it's sci-fi.
Too many Ys: it's cosmic horror.
Too many Zs: It's for kids in the 2000s.

The original Echo Night scared me more than anything else I can remember as a kid, and finding out that there was a sequel this whole time is like hearing the serial killer from your traumatic childhood was released from prison.

This is your semi-annual reminder to play 1000xResist, @sunsetvisitor.studio’s debut and one of the best stories I’ve ever experienced in a game.

Absurdly excited for this!

Assumed it was an intentional alias and genuinely thought it was cool.

As someone who grew up in evangelicalism, I see this as the neo-liberal version of spiritual bypassing.

"It's a shame the youth pastor did what he did to those young girls. It's really going to damage the witness of our church."

The *real* tragedy is an abstraction. The human cost is sidelined.

Peak pundit brain is to take the atrocities in front of you and intellectualize them into a vague, amorphous concept that hides the explicit violence.

However, now that I've finished the trilogy, I can't help but feel like I would have been content with just playing the first. It largely stands on its own, & I don't think the series ever hits the same highs. Time will tell, but that might be my recommendation for anyone interested in Zero Escape.

It's not all bad. The escape room portions are still a lot of fun, and I honestly love when the writers digress into bizarre pseudoscientific asides that feel like mid-game wikipedia excursions. The idiosyncrasies of this series and its willingness to be offputting are its best traits.

Narratively, the game relies on your knowledge of past entries to be compelling, yet the returning characters feel wildly different than their previous incarnations, in ways that are never fully explained.

The central conceit of the nonary games this time is vague and ill-defined, and the third act twists the series is known for aren't terribly interesting and come with a bevy of plot inconsistencies.

If that were the case, though, Uchikoshi would have been better served to narrow the scope and stick to an illustrated, 2D visual novel. Instead, the game opts for full 3D models that feel stiff and lifeless due to the limited animation budget.

Part of me wants to be gracious about the quality and level of polish. From what I've read, ZTD was a labor of love that only exists because its creators fought for this conclusion amid low sales and publisher resistance.

Mea culpas aside, Zero Time Dilemma is certainly the weakest in the trilogy, a game that fails to match the highs of its predecessors and whose scope far exceeds its grasp.

Key art for Zero Time Dilemma. A man is strapped to a chair with a gun pointed at his head, while a woman in a red sweater stands behind him.

#Gamingin2026

15. Zero Time Dilemma
(Spike Chunsoft, 2016)

I'll take some responsibility here. After playing the first 2 Zero Escapes back-to-back in 2023, I waited till now to play the final in the trilogy. And for a series as byzantine as this, I was doomed to be googling recaps the entire time.

I get why this element exists—functioning as both a break from base-building and a space for the narrative to progress—but I feel the game would still play better if it was removed entirely. I definitely had a better time with Cult of the Lamb this go-around, but it still has its shortcomings.

These late-game systems are thought-provoking and got closer to what I was looking for in this style of game. However, that doesn't erase the fact that 50% of your playtime will be spent in a simple and largely uninspiring roguelike.

You can then absolve your followers of that shame and, in so doing, harvest sin that can then be used to improve your camp. The notion that you could manufacture guilt for your own personal gain is...well yeah, let's just say it did a number on me.

Most fascinating to me was the introduction of sin as a gatherable resource. Basically, you can construct buildings designed to make your followers indulge in "carnal" pleasures (taverns, drum circles, mating tents), and when your followers use them, they feel shame.

Once your camp is established—and you're less focused on basic survival needs—the game throws some more chewy thematic systems at you. You can proclaim new doctrines that largely exist for pragmatic and economic purposes. You can praise, berate, imprison, reeducate, and even sacrifice followers.

I spontaneously picked this up a few weeks ago while sick, as I wanted to play something I wouldn't feel bad about only paying partial attention to. And while my complaints from last time largely stand, the game does deliver on its premise more successfully the farther in you get.

Key art for Cult of the Lamb. A lamb with bloody eyes floats in the center of the image, surrounded by their followers, while old gods loom in the background.

#Gamingin2026

14. Cult of the Lamb
(Massive Monster, 2022)

When it first released, I put ~4 hours into Cult of the Lamb before falling off. At the time, I was piqued by the idea of a tongue-in-cheek cult sim, but the hack and slash segments were repetitive & too big a part of the gameplay loop.