On the day I write this, we are only days away from the release of Palworld. The premise of Palworld is simple: Pokémon meets survival/farming game meets heavy munitions. I concede that Palworld might look like a gimmick, but I can’t help but feel that we teeter collectively on the cusp of something truly remarkable: the defining game of our lifetimes.

This special podcast is brought to you by Mariah Warriner. Mariah looks at a small community of older card players from a small town in rural Saskatchewan, known as the Merrymakers.

As a Canadian child of the early 2000’s I still remember the excitement of getting to boot up the classroom computer and play Oregon Trail. A quest only obtained if you had completed your work before, recess was indoors, or earned as some reward. No matter what, getting to spend 15 minutes of my school day guiding a migrating family through America to eventually die of Dysentery was weirdly a highlight.

I should preface the story I’m about to tell you by saying that Elden Ring is an achievement in game design. It is worth a look at the very least! Everything that follows is from my experience and where I landed on the game over the course of some 80 hours split across two playthroughs

In the leadup to the release of World of Warcraft’s latest expansion I found myself experimenting with new classes. I gravitated towards the hunter, a class that has the ability to tame the wild beasts that roam WoW’s wilderness. While there are a bunch of common animals ready for the taming, there are a few of exotic pets that a hunter can tame.

Friendship has always felt challenging to pin down conceptually. We know when we have one but they are so often implicit and rarely declared. Some are fleeting while others are lasting, some friendships are a gentle breeze over a calm ocean while others are unmitigated disasters that thrive on turbulence.