My partner expressed an interest in finding a game for both of us to play. She doesn't play many games, and I generally prefer single player games so I find myself at a loss for what's out there that we might like. Hoping the community here can help!

We have played some retro platformers together. Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, that kind of thing. And I know she plays puzzle match games on her phone. Which isn't a lot to go on.

It needs to be a multiplayer PC game that runs on Linux/Proton (if unsure, please suggest your game anyway. It probably does). One machine is a mid-range PC from about 5 years ago. So probably no recent AAA games with high system requirements.

I'm thinking:

• Easy to pick up and play and can offer a satisfying play experience with short play times.
• Cooperative play would be a plus.
• Being able to play with just two people (not forced to play with random people online).

My particularities:

• I won't play a game that requires creating/signing in to an account to play it at all. I can tolerate that requirement for multiplayer play, but I'd rather it just use a Steam account.
• I'd prefer if it didn't install a launcher.
• I'd like it to either have a built in server and/or be selfhostable.

Today's game is some more Halo 2. Me and my friend went ahead and cleared up our last par time on the level Great Journey. It was a whole lot easier than regret, especially after sneaking a banshee in.

As of now i have all Par Times for Halo 2. As a result of this i've started to turn my attention a little to Par Scores.

As such that led to the main screenshot of today. That was from my Cairo Station run. This is a real challenge to get. I first played on normal with 7 skulls turned on, including the one that makes Grunts explode. I made Par Time and only got 9,000.

So i try again on Heroic. only i get crushed under this block twice and sent back to before i cleared the room. Then it happens again. So i end up drawing out the 15 minutes i have to clear the room.

And so i give it one more go, and make it all the way to the room with the bugs, and that draws me from 10 minutes to 14, so i think i need to rethink my entire strategy, as this isn't working out as well as i thought.

Still, it's not all bad, as par time went perfectly while playing with my friend. It was genuinely a pleasant experience. I can't wait to try it with him on CE. I might bring him on for Par Score too, see if we can bring it all the way up.

Even at a casual glance, it's not hard to see the similarities between Minecraft and Hytale, its latest block-based sandbox competitor. As Hytale's early modding scene flourishes, one modder is taking those similarities to their logical endpoint, deciding that if the games overlap so neatly, Minecraft and Hytale players might as well just play together on the same server.

It might sound like black magic, but that didn't prevent modder Sadat Sahib from demonstrating the fruits of his forbidden arts. On Reddit, Sahib posted screenshots of a functioning prototype of Minecraft and Hytale crossplay, casually explaining that he "made Bedrock <-> Hytale <-> Java cross-play possible!"

1 minute of Gameplay Footage! (W.I.P.) pic.twitter.com/Ca6fhcENNtJanuary 19, 2026

"what the fuck," said one redditor. The reply is, by far, the post's highest-rated response.

Not content with immediately baffling an entire community of Hytale players, Sahib then went to X, where he shared a minute-long demo of his work-in-progress crossplay mod. In the video, Sahib has Minecraft and Hytale clients running in windows beside each other, with the same geometry represented in each game's respective blocks and art style. As Sahib moves in the Minecraft client, a player character in the Hytale session mimics those movements. Sahib then tabs over to Hytale, where his movements—and even block placements—are then similarly mirrored in the Minecraft session.

As Sahib explained in replies on Reddit and X, Hytale is serving as the host for the crossplay session, and while block placements are translated to equivalent blocks on the Minecraft side, it seems like only the prototype's Hytale player is capable of placing new blocks. Considering he's handbuilding a bridge between two different games with their own systems and mechanics, it's not surprising that Sahib says "currently many things are Broken."

It's unclear whether Sahib will ever release the crossplay mod for public consumption as he says it's "more of a proof of concept," but he intends to "update it for a good while" to see how much shared functionality he's able to implement. The first big item on his list is to solve shared world generation, as the Minecraft crossplay client is currently limited to loading its immediate surroundings from the Hytale side.

Terrifyingly, Sahib has already made some substantial headway since posting his first look at the crossplay mod. In less than a day, he's uploaded additional demonstration videos to show that he's also added functional cross-game chat, animation synchronization, and combat.

Personally, I'm of the opinion that Sahib's growing power represents a threat to software stability everywhere, but I salute his efforts nonetheless.

2026 games: All the upcoming gamesBest PC games: Our all-time favoritesFree PC games: Freebie festBest FPS games: Finest gunplayBest RPGs: Grand adventuresBest co-op games: Better together

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release date is March 26

Today's game is Halo 2. Big surprise, i know. I'm addicted to this game. Me and My Friend went through Regret to try and get Par Time. We did it again, and again, and again, and again. Until finally we got it.

Honestly the Par Time for this level in specific felt tedious to get. We basically had to play perfectly. Which means we had to take shortcuts and nail all our grenade jumps.

Our first attempt we were over by 15 seconds. Us killing eachother probably didn't help either. Like my friend shoved me onto the lift to get it. It was funny though and we had a blast, so it's not too big of a deal.

Our second run was a little better. We killed the prophet but then crashed right at the end. Honestly it was kind of bullshit. We were really proud of that run too. We almost threw in the towel.

There was our final run though which was our success. We got it with almost a minute to spare. On top of that we got so damn efficient at taking out the enemies on the Gondola. Like, watch this kill:

So damn proud of that rocket shot, and got a good laugh out of the Elite getting launched away. A whole lot of good that jetpack did him i guess.

Anyways, the only level after this for Par Time is The Great Journey. And with that i'll have gotten all the Par Times on Halo 2. That leaves Halo CE, Halo 3: ODST, and Halo 4 for Par Times.

Either one or both works.

Mine is completing the Pokedex in the original Pokemon games. All you get is just Professor Oak giving you a wink and a small few second cut scene. And a congratulations text. Imagine spending all of your time then, getting all 151 and even 252 pokemon just for that? Yeah no thanks, I never completed the pokedex.

Going the Joja-Route in Stardew Valley. I say this mainly because, it is what you make of it. You forfeit being able to complete the Community Center by earning things, when you sign your soul away to Joja. What I would've liked is seeing Pierre go out of business completely. I just think that would add a route of depth in the game where you have to make ends meet through Joja because Pierre is permanently closed.

But, that doesn't happen, he'll still be in business despite his depression about Joja running things. Kindof ruins the whole concept of doing it for the achievements even.

My six-year-old asked me how we walk and as I was trying to tell him a literal simple explanation of how our brain tells our muscles to move and lift our leg etc. he lifts his knee and as soon as I see his pose it hits me like HEY there's a game that is about exactly this. QWOP!

Ah ladies and gentleman, take a trip down memory lane to the absurdity and inanity of trying to get your able-bodied runner down the track in his quest for the 100m. My personal best is... 3.7m and I consider that a feat! Ah this game is the best of the Internet.

seems like they're overhauling the game and making big updates

Today's game is Animal Crossing New Leaf. My playtime has kind of been tapering off with this game, as is my usual play style with these games (you can tell because i haven't replaced the hat). I went ahead and built a bridge recently though. I didn't realize there was a ceremony though until just now.

So that means at 10:30 PM, Isabelle gathered everyone in town, and made them crawl out from bed to the bridge, just so i could give a speech.

We also had a new guy move in today. His name is Quillson. No clue about him, but he seems chill, so he can stay. I only really saw him once today though and that was it. Makes me think he's kind of hiding out.

I also started construction of the campsite. I've been hoarding Meow Coupons so hopefully this will go fast, because i'll just turn those into cash and then pay off the campsite.

All of this i got up to in about the last hour or so. I also got tired of all my screenshots getting crunched to hell because of the resolution. So i wrote another script to upscale them with (if i remember correctly) nearest neighbor. It's nothing fancy, literally it can be thrown together in like an hour. But it's super handy so my images aren't being butchered. Though now that i'm looking at it, it makes the pictures seem off. I supposed it's better than compressed to hell and back though

Remember when Apex Legends was shadow dropped? It's a risky move for such a high-profile game to skip all the pre-release marketing hype entirely, but it paid off, and it's clear why Respawn went that route—"photoreal PvP hero shooter" was an eyeroll-inducing prospect even back in 2019, so letting the game speak for itself short-circuited any pre-release angst.

We don't know if the strategy could have been replicated, but would it have been worse than the late Concord's legendary failure or the reaction to the recently announced Highguard, which was the final big reveal at last year's Game Awards? Viewers expecting something like 2023's Monster Hunter Wilds reveal or the one-two Matrix Unreal Engine 5 tech demo and Matrix 4 trailer in 2021 have been taking out their frustrations on Highguard.

The reveal was drowned out by hot takes calling out its "Concord vibes" and it received a ghastly 2,400 dislikes on YouTube compared to around 500 likes when it first dropped. There's been an assumption to some of the criticism that Highguard wanted this smoke, so to speak—an idea that if the Highguard studio hadn't splurged on such an exclusive spot, it wouldn't have earned all this ire.

So I asked my friends on the RetroDECK team if they'd be open to me asking them a few questions about their latest update (which is a full rewrite of RetroDECK), and they were more than happy to.

For context, RetroDECK is a Flatpak-distributed retro gaming platform designed to bundle clients, multi-emulators, game engines, tools, ports and emulators into a single, self-contained application. Built around the ES-DE frontend and targeting platforms like the Steam Deck and desktop Linux, its aim is simple in concept: make endless retro gaming easy to install, easy to remove, and easy to maintain, without requiring users to manually piece together emulators, dependencies, and configurations.

I've used RetroDECK for years now on my Steam Deck, and absolutely swear by it over the alternatives. I love their work, and definitely encourage you to try it if you haven't already :)

Anyway, if you're interested in the details on what went into it, you can read my little article on it here with this link. In a day or two I'll be sharing the full 'interview' (it was shortish, by my own standards) with the team as well.

Here's a little edit, my full questions and answers with the devs is available to read with the following link:

https://gardinerbryant.com/retrodeck-thtalking-about-their-bigget-update-yet/

Today's game is Halo 3: ODST. Me and my friend were going to continue Halo 4 on the Masterchief saga, but another friend ended up joining us. So we decided to do ODST. We made it pretty far in, i forgot how long this game could feel though.

We played the Uplift Reserve and our friend decided he would just jump on top of the Warthog, somehow we made it through the whole level like that. Surprisingly he only fell off once.

There of course was also the Time Honored tradition of killing eachother in a Halo game. I feel like it's a little harder in ODST, i'm not sure why though. I think it's the way health is handled and their not being a visual indicator for the "Shield" (Stamina in this game).

I also noticed that a lot of these levels, in retrospect, seem kind of speed orientated. Like i can just run through them to the end. It's not really a complaint or anything, but just something i noticed.

We ended on Kizingo Blvd, where we crashed at the very end. We decided that was a good point to end off at on the night. It was fun getting to play this. Halo 3 ODST is probably my least played game. I've got like 50 playthroughs of Halo 3 and Reach, and then ODST I have 3. Once on Legendary Co-Op, another on Normal with My Brother, and another on Normal with a friend. This will make 4th hopefully.

This might be unpopular, but it feels like the “redemption” story around No Man’s Sky has become more of a cultural comfort narrative than an honest look at what happened.

Let’s be real — most of those updates were just delivering delayed promises, not generosity. The game we were originally sold was missing a lot of advertised features, and Hello Games never actually apologized for lying. On top of that, every update brings more bugs and half-fixed systems, and the community acts like free beta testers for Light No Fire, while still framing it all as “passion” and “commitment.”

It’s like Hello Games built a shoddy, unfinished building, declared it open anyway, and then decided to use it as a testing ground for their next building — and somehow it wins “Best Ongoing Building” every year.

So why do people keep buying into this narrative? Because it’s a comfortable story? Or is it somekind of parasocial relationship going on there?

NMS made 78 million in 2016, this can't be compared to a failed AAA game or indies where devs walk away from financial failure, another emotional argument?

https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2016/09/30/august-2016-digital-sales-report-no-mans-sky-generated-78-million/)

According to the number of upvotes, it seems that their angst is a reflection of the game industry in general. Hello Games had indeed performed to expectations by not walking away, but does that warrant mythologising the redemption arc? Even when the state of the game is buggy?

Today’s game is Red Dead Online. I mentioned yesterday that I’ve been packing a lot to move, so you know what the perfect way to unwind is? My favorite multiplayer Fishing/Hunting/Gambling sim with my best friend.

I ended up catching this huge 14 lbs fish (at least I think that’s big for a fish). It’s a Muskie. I’m not really sure what you do with these in online but I’ve been parading it around on my horse.

Me and my friend ended up moving to a lake to fish after that, but I forgot it’s that lead poisoned lake. He thought I was doing a bit until I took him into the caves. Then he accidentally fell on me and pushed me into a pit in the caves, killing me.

The only real way to cope with my death was to go get shit faced, so that’s what I did. I went to Van Horn and just drank a ton of liquor until I passed out. Then I went on a rampage.

I kept that up for the rest of the night until the entire town was gone and i had a shootout in a graveyard. That’s where I had decided to end. Honestly quite the escalation from fishing.

Good to know, but sad that it has to be said.

Fallout Shelter (working title) is a new reality competition series based on the hit Amazon drama and computer game of the same name. The dwellers (contestants) live together in a top-secret vault, where they will compete in a series of games that tests the seven core attributes from the Fallout world. Strength, perception, endurance, charisma, intelligence, agility and luck (S.P.E.C.I.A.L).

The series will not only test dwellers’ core attributes, but also their loyalty and alliances. It’s a game of power dynamics, popularity and social strategy which will ultimately result in a huge cash prize, but do you have what it takes to be the most S.P.E.C.I.A.L?.

I am sort of speechless, but for all the wrong reasons.