Minority Mindset

This episode showcases a wildly diverse range of games. You can play as a team of rats running a restaurant, go mushroom hunting with a pig, race subways through New York, or battle massive construction vehicles! Even some of the more popular games, like the recently released The Outer Worlds 2 (which was fun to review, despite its oddities), and PowerWash Simulator 2, have a strange side. Which of these unusual games do you think will be the best?

Okay, so I’m looking for some cool Stranger Things stuff, and there’s a ton out there! I spotted these Funko Itty Bitty Pops that are seriously adorable. They even have a little Byers’ house playset for $24.84 (it was $28!), and it comes with Upside Down Will and Eleven figures. It’s like a little two-sided house! You can get a four-pack with regular Will, Barb, and the Demogorgon for $14.89, plus a mystery figure, and they all come in a little display shelf. I might need to grab both, honestly – it’d be a fun little collection!

It’s been twenty years since the game ‘Canis Canem Edit,’ known as Bully, was first released. Unlike the Grand Theft Auto games its creators are famous for, Bully took place in a boarding school. As the student Jimmy Hopkins, players had to navigate school life, stop bullying, break up social groups, and still keep their grades up.

Escape The Backrooms is a cooperative horror game for up to four players, played from a first-person perspective. After being available as an early access game on Steam for several years, the full version is now here. The game lets you explore many of the different ‘rooms’ and universes created by fans within the Backrooms mythos. Each room offers a unique take on the unsettling feeling of liminal spaces – that in-between feeling of places that are familiar yet strangely off. You’ll find iconic locations like the original yellow labyrinth that started it all, as well as other popular areas like Level Fun, the Poolrooms, and the Grassrooms. A key strength of the game is how many different locations it includes, effectively offering a history lesson on the Backrooms’ creepy universe. Because the Backrooms lore is community-created, it’s often flexible and open to interpretation, and this game embraces that spirit.

Piscatella shared on BlueSky that Pokémon Legends: Z-A had a very strong launch in the US at retail stores. According to data from Circana, where Piscatella is a Senior Director, the game’s first week of physical sales were the highest for any new physical game release since The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom launched in May 2023. Piscatella regularly shares video game industry insights on social media.