Happy Friday–or whatever day it is that you happen to be reading this. As it’s the end of the week, we here at Kotaku have pooled together some recommendations for what to spend your hard-earned free time on, especially if you’re skipping out on any Halloween parties this weekend.
This week we’ve got a deckbuilding roguelike for you to jump into that isn’t Balatro, a narrative-focused game featuring Aaron Paul, a trip back to a sleepy slaughterfest of a town in 1960s Japan, and a wonderful science-experiment-meets-amusement-park that totally won’t go wrong.
Slots & Daggers
Play it on: PC
Current goal: get diamond + rotating saw + the skulls
More Balatro-slop has arrived! I’m joking of course, sort of, mostly. Slots & Daggers is a tactical deckbuilding roguelike in which you curate a build, pull a lever, and pray for success. Except that as with any good slot-machine-style roguelike, there’s actually a whole lot of strategizing and decision-making that goes into each run. You activate hidden bonuses depending on the combinations you roll and unlock more tools, including different slot machines with unique buffs, the more you play.
Like one of the most underrated aspects of Balatro, however, one of the things that makes Slots & Daggers stand out from all the other RNG auto-battlers is how nice and engaging the presentation is. The visual effects, sounds, and interactions between each mechanic make every pull feel satisfying in and of itself. It’s part of the charm that helps mask the psychological manipulation underpinning its gameplay. Will it keep me hooked as much as Balatro? Probably not. But after a few hours it still has me coming back, and it probably will until I feel like I’ve cracked the larger code. — Ethan Gach
Dispatch
Play it on: PS5, PC
Current goal: Get started
It is very difficult for me to drag myself away from Pokémon Legends: Z-A right now, but I worry that if I don’t get to Dispatch before its next episodes are released, I’ll just keep falling behind until the episodic adventure game ends up being a week-long playthrough instead of something I can touch on for one night here and there over the next few weeks.
The superhero workplace comedy is from AdHoc Studio, a team made up of several developers from TellTale’s heyday, and as a big fan of that studio’s output, I’m interested to see what they’ve been cooking. The eight-episode series is releasing two episodes every week from now until November 12, so the waits between episodes won’t be as painfully long as they were back in the TellTale days. I don’t know a ton about it, but I do know it’s got one hell of a voice cast, including Aaron Paul, Laura Bailey, and Jeffrey Wright, among many others. I’ll come back to Lumiose later. There are too many games coming out right now that demand my attention. — Kenneth Shepard
Silent Hill f
I’ve taken a small break from unlocking all of Silent Hill f’s multiple endings. There’s just so much stuff out there worth playing that it’s hard to dedicate myself to just one game every single weekend. But whether it’s just my own intrinsic desire to see more of this story or it’s because I just watched protagonist Hinako’s Japanese voice actress have a hilariously freaked-out stream sesh with the game, I feel the urge for more fog and misery.
Read More: Silent Hill f Actor Looks Completely Freaked Out While Streaming The Game For The First Time
Recently, I was warned by a family member to avoid a certain ending on Lost in the Fog, the game’s toughest difficulty. Silent Hill f has a looooot of combat. And though Hinako’s a beast who can strike terror into the bloody hearts of even the foggiest monsters, my reaction time and fortitude only go so far. I’ve been told that the game’s second ending, with its brutal final boss battle, might not be worth the struggle it demands on Lost in the Fog.
But I still have a whole playthrough to go through on this difficulty, and I have a sense of how to avoid that ending for now. Meanwhile, I’m trying to gauge just how much this game will test my patience. I’ve got a good hang of the combat by now, but Lost in the Fog doesn’t play around. – Claire Jackson
Jurassic World Evolution 3
Play it on: Xbox, PS5, PC
Current goal: Avoid the same mistakes that others made
Jurassic World Evolution 3, the latest entry in Frontier’s dinosaur park sim series, is finally here, and I’ve been playing a lot of it. This is easily the best one yet, featuring so many quality-of-life features and smart changes compared to the last two games.
And now in JWE3, you can create male dinos and provide nests so that the animals can naturally breed. This means baby dinos! I recently got some baby Spinosaurs, and they are so adorable. Also very deadly and about the size of a jeep, but still, so cute. I can’t wait to build up a five-star park, make a new save, delete all the fences and let the dinos run wild. I mean, you have to do that. I’ve been feeding unlucky tourists to hungry raptors since Operation Genesis back in 2003. – Zack Zwiezen
And that wraps our picks! What are you playing?
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