Welcome to your weekly snapshot of the most interesting games and play experiences I'm exploring, from video games to escape rooms to anything in between.
Here's what caught my eye this week:
"Friend slop" is the hot genre. Chaotic, cheap, social co-op games designed to be bought by an entire WhatsApp group at once. Think Peak, Fall Guys, Among Us, Content Warning, R.E.P.O. As far as is known, the term started life on X as a bit of a sneer — "slop" being the gaming internet's favourite pejorative — but it's settled into something more descriptive: low barrier to entry, low price tag, infinitely replayable, designed for screaming at your friends over Discord. GameSpot has rounded up the best ones if you're after recommendations.
I played a friend-slop game: Schedule 1. Me and two mates spent a chunk of our weekend playing Schedule 1 — an open-world drug dealing simulator that's been quietly chewing through the Steam charts (130,000+ concurrent players, 98% positive reviews). You start as a small-time dealer skating around the map flogging substances, and you slowly build a fully automated drug empire. With three of us dividing up production, deliveries, and "avoiding law enforcement", it descended into exactly the kind of funny, chaotic, "what the hell are you doing" experience you get from genuinely good co-op design. Have a look on Steam.
My new website is live. I've finally put up the proper version of danwiseman.co.uk — a home for all the consultancy, design, and tech work I do for game makers. The bit I'm most excited about is the Mystery Chatbot System I've rebuilt specifically for mystery and narrative games. Plug it into your game and your players can interrogate suspects, message informants, or chat with characters in a way that actually feels like playing rather than reading. Have a poke around the demo — and if you're making something that could use it, hit reply.
GameStop tried to buy eBay. eBay said no. This one's hard to summarise without sounding like I made it up. GameStop — yes, the meme-stock GameStop — made a non-binding $56 billion offer for eBay at $125 a share, a 46% premium. The plan, per CEO Ryan Cohen, was to run eBay "a lot more efficiently" (read: cut headcount, slash marketing), use GameStop's 1,600 US stores as authentication and fulfilment hubs, and take a swing at Amazon. eBay's board has politely rejected it as "neither credible nor attractive" — mostly because of the substantial gap between the $20bn financing GameStop has lined up from TD Securities, the $9bn in cash on hand, and… the $56bn price tag. CNBC has the rejection here, and Fortune draws an unflattering comparison to one of the worst business deals of all time if you want the spicier take.
That's your lot. As ever — if you've got a game in the works, a half-baked idea, or just want to argue about whether Among Us is friend slop or not — hit reply.
Dan