If you're a nerd for database-mystery-type games like The Roottrees Are Dead, got a strong recommend for you: The Archives Of Trevosa, which is a really nice mash-up of "solve the family tree" and "translate a fake language" gameplay. Pretty brisk play, but very fun. jamwitch.itch.io/trevosa

The great thing about booking a flight is when you get to seat selection and there's 3-pt font that says "seat contains a live scorpion" and then a big button that lets you pay $45 to put a door on its cage

Lazy day of podcasting and cook prep and having full-head replacement surgery

Enjoying this press tour so far. www.avclub.com/ben-collins-...

If I was an actor whose whole thing was being very charismatic while not actually having a huge amount of range, I might ask the marketing team for my new movie NOT to advertise that fact so blatantly to millions of people. youtu.be/Pd4Olzi0HEc?...

9 out of 10 sociologists agree that things are going well when the financial incentives for burning down cities start to outweigh the ones for not doing it

If you've been wondering what the new InfoWars will look like (I think Heidecker's given us a sense of what it'll sound like), @plumberduck.bsky.social spoke with @bencollins.bsky.social about the site's not-so-distant future

Supergirl: Strip out the inept action scenes, inelegant exposition, unnecessary side characters, and a needle drop so dopey it had me cackling, and there's a really solid 10 minute character short with a great lead performance in there.

Thinking today about Deltarune and the "won't play it 'til it's finished" crowd. The feeling of hitting the end of a chapter and yearning for more—character beats, answers, jokes, etc.— feels so fundamental to the game's tone. Without the waiting, it's a different emotional palette.

Using the content tools to make this a spoiler (I hope!) but it was very wild to see the screenwriter of Supergirl say her ending was based in part on interpreting the final page of Supergirl: Woman Of Tomorrow in a way that writer Tom King has said he ABSOLUTELY did not intend.

Streaming tonight at 8 p.m. We had a ridiculously fun time trying out Trine last week, so I think we'll keep that rolling - come watch me be the platform-making nerd bullied around by my teammates.

My past self is cool because I'll be scrolling through my ridiculously over-filled work images folder and stumble across one titled "the wrath i will summon will be like hells coldest heart.gif" and then the image will be this

I get the joke but it's very weird to just be scrolling and then suddenly see a building I probably went past a literal thousand times as a kid show up. (It's three blocks from the hospital I was born in, and one over from the former home of Clinton's surprisingly great but now dead video store.)

We're nearing the end of @avclub.com's best-so-far week, but we couldn't close things out without this look at the state of comedies by @erikadams.bsky.social and @schimkowitz.bsky.social

Played through Deltarune Chapter 5 last night. The play and ideas are really solid, but it felt like the script needed like one more pass? Lots of good jokes but the nuts and bolts writing felt slightly off.

Halfway through 2026, I found I really didn't have the juice to do a full and official ranking of the best games of the year so far. So I just tried to capture What It Feels Like These Days.

Genuine question: Have several years of online exposure to The Trolley Problem changed the average response to The Trolley Problem?

Never played it heard it's good

Many things are terrible and getting worse but they can't take looking at tomorrow's date and thinking, "Hey, 6-26-26, that's neat!" from us

There is no greater time (probably) to revisit my primer on Supergirl, which is both a deep-dive on comic book silliness and an explainer on what's great about Woman Of Tomorrow, the primary source for this week's new movie. Dazzle your fellow theatergoers with facts about angelic goo monsters!

I sent my mom a care package of her favorite homebaked cookies this week and decided that wasn't stupid enough

One thing I struggled with with both Hereditary and Midsommar is the lack of agency of its protagonists - they're both movies where the characters are essentially fucked from Minute One. Interesting to see a new wave of horror (Weapons and now Obsession) where stripping away choice IS the horror.

Streaming at 8 tonight, we're going to try Trine because... there aren't that many games with 3-player online co-op.

Streaming at 8 tonight, we will continue to be For The King until a better option of something to be for comes along.

20-plus years of The Onion being online can make you kind of blase about its near-100 percent hit rate but this is a TREMENDOUS joke.

Column this week is about falling in and out of love with 007 First Light, and the limitations of "cool" www.avclub.com/game-theory-...

A modest proposal for Emmy voters: Consider a show that, to paraphrase its creator, is designed to look like a cartoon made by a live-action director with no real drawing skills. www.avclub.com/emmys-2026-a...

I'm not saying I'm really, really strong, but I did pop my NeeDoh cube with my bare hands today.

One of the best tricks Verbinski pulls in The Ring is that you hear Samara's only actual lines of dialogue twice - and he slips a different performance from Daveigh Chase in the second time to amplify the horror. Always struck me how well she nailed the shift. www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGet...

That feeling when you want people to be talking about and analyzing Taskmaster… but not like this, where it feels like the author is inventing things like "Joel Dommett was clearly mad Kumail did a pun because that's his thing." It feels counter to the spirit of the show.

If you’re not reading my reviews this is who you’re hurting

We must resist parasociality on all fronts but I did just watch a clip of Sam Reich calling "Frank's 2000-Inch TV" Weird Al's best (non-parody) song and, Reader, I Felt It.

Disregard previous (now deleted) post: Stream tonight will be a Will solo stream. I'm thinking it might be time to once again be the world's worst trivia host with some Jeopardy! (Still 8 p.m. Pacific, though)

Despite 12 years doing this job, I don't think of myself as having built up much expertise. But I do know a tremendous amount of extremely dumb things about extremely stupid stuff. www.avclub.com/lionsgate-mo...

I just described the entire plot line of the most recent Swan Boy arc to my wife and now I'm In Trouble.

Streaming tonight at 8 p.m.! We will continue to see if three people can meaningfully cooperate to beat For The King. I have my doubts! (This induces drama.)

It's actually pretty wild and subversive that, in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" you never actually find out who framed Roger Rabbit.

I like that the bad guy in the new Bond game is essentially Musk if a team of writers were bending over backwards to give him even a handful of morally ambiguous or sympathetic traits.

I went deep on a question that was itching my brain: Why are Marathon players so instantly murderous? www.avclub.com/game-theory-...

Very straightforward: A married couple has hired Harrison Ford (who in this universe does sex work on Cameo, and is a dog) to help them achieve intimacy because the husband's head was attached to a foot by an avant-garde surgeon after violating Hooters' "When you're here you're NOT family" mandate.

I try not to give in to this sort of thing too much but Josh Hutcherson saying in an interview that TV writers made his character in something a board game geek because he wouldn't shut up about Twilight Imperium is the most relatable a famous has ever been.

What's this? A @sambarsanti.bsky.social byline? On @avclub.com?

Whoa, new Deltarune out in two weeks! I gotta hop back in and get my World's Worst Boyfriend Route playthrough of Chapter 4 done before it lands.

Some days you have to spend a little extra time finding the photo that works with the headline www.avclub.com/spielberg-bo...

As someone who considers Type Help a masterpiece of this nascent deduction game genre—but who also considers its text-based "limitations" to be fundamental to what makes it great—I am really, REALLY curious about how the graphical remake will function. Loved the Roottrees remake, so high hopes.

Our next game, The Incident at Galley House, is coming out July 14, 2026! You can wishlist now on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/3641000/...

On evil board games, drug-trip dolly zooms, and Matthew Rhys' 13-year reign as the most haunted-looking man on television

Many people agree that this is the ideal way to play 007 First Light

New contributions to my collection of Bad Pinball Art Of Very Famous People