WRUP: Blizzard Watch is playing a whole lot of Skatebird, which we all know sounds like skateboard

Y’know, this week went by quickly, but I somehow still have that “Friday at the end of a long week” feeling, and it is not making productivity easy. Thankfully, it’s almost the weekend, and productivity can take a backseat for a bit.

A backseat to what? Lots of things! In fact, so many things that the only way to accurately convey them is to dive right in to this week’s WRUP — What aRe yoU Playing? First up: Anna Bell!

Anna Bell: SKATEBIRD.

That’s it, that’s the post, Skatebird.

Beyond that, I’m back into No Man’s Sky with the new Frontiers update. Who knew that fostering settlements in an unforgiving wilderness was so rewarding? (Except Preston Garvey, of course). The Hearth and Home update for Valheim hit on Thursday too, so I may poke into that a bit. Still discouraged by the de facto metals juggling minigame, but I love the cooking and building aspects of the game, so we’ll see how it pans out.

Deb Montague: I’ve been playing “What day is it? What time is it and am I where I’m supposed to be?” I have not had time to play any game which is sad because gaming is relaxing even if Attumen is an unprintable invective. I want to remind everyone that stepping away from the computer and the game are worthy things to do.

Phil Xavier: I’m playing Tales of Arise. You might have heard of it, since it’s been getting some truly incredible reviews — for good reason. The game is great.

It’s a JRPG with an action battle system where you can freely control your character and perform combinations of normal and special attacks, as well as swap between party members, or have party members support you with their own special attacks at the touch of a key. The game looks and sounds absolutely beautiful, and while I’m not too far into the story yet, it’s already engrossing enough that I feel invested in knowing much more about the main characters and their struggles. There is a ton of world building right from the start, which really grabs you. And every minor gameplay element, such as gathering, cooking, searching for cute little owls that reward you with cosmetics, etc., is very well made. 10/10 game for me so far.

Andrew Powers: After previously saying I’d buy the new WarioWare game, Get It Together, I’d mostly hope it would distract my son and he wouldn’t bother me to play my PC. I bought it and an hour later he is at my side, “I beat the game.” There are a lot of minigames and characters to unlock, and he had all of those unlocked by the following morning. I played the game, it has parts that aren’t in the demo, but it is not worth its price. The demo was fun, but a little too much given away there. Otherwise, I still contend that SW:TOR is the greatest video game I’ve played in a long time.

Matthew Rossi: I have been playing the “Find cool pictures and make custom portraits for my characters in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous” game, which is an exceedingly fun and distracting pastime. I’ve been doing that almost more than I’ve actually played the game itself. Almost. Been playing it a lot. It’s really one of the best CRPGs of its kind, a real callback to classic BG/IWD presentation and mechanics, it’s even better than Pillars of Eternity or Tyranny, my two previous favorites.

Aside from that, I’ve started leveling an Orc in WoW.

Cory Taylor: I have become the Tyrannosaurus Best for my devoted Dinomen followers!

Honey, I Joined a Cult is a great little management game and I’ve been having a fun time building up my dinosaur-themed cult into a large organization that will spread the good word about our lord and savior Grimlock. The game just hit early access and already plays pretty well. I can’t wait to see how it improves from here.

Back in Warcraft, my raid continues to progress on the Heroic Sylvanas fight, and I’m hoping that we’ll have defeated her this week. That might be a bit of a longshot though — we still haven’t gotten our whole raid into phase three alive…

Ted Atchley: With the end of the New World open beta, I once again turned my attention to Civ IV. Phillip II is no more and Qin Shi Huang is hanging onto his last city. With the continent mostly secured, I can start spreading my influence across the sea. That might have to wait, as this weekend, I’ll be taking a class called The Elements of an Effective Book Proposal recommended to me by an agent at a writer’s conference this summer.

On the gaming front, my son is getting Luigi’s Mansion 3 for his Switch. If it has any kind of multiplayer, I’ll be in there playing alongside him. Who you gonna call? Ghost Mansion! Finally, on Sunday afternoon, I’ll once again be cheering on my favorite sportsball team. We got the W last week, and we want to get another one Sunday. #KeepPounding!

Mitch “Mitch” Mitchell: I’m… not entirely sure what I’ll be doing this weekend. I started Sekiro last week, and while I’m enjoying it, it’s not quite what I was expecting. So it’s been slower going on that title, but I’m excited to see my girlfriend continue her Mass Effect playthrough. After a small, unexpected assassination on Virmire, we… may have reloaded an old save to grind some more Paragon points. (I knew the moment was coming up, but I forgot you could completely be unable to save that one teammate, so I set the wrong expectations for that one and didn’t feel bad about reloading.)

Outside of that, it’s D&D Sunday for my Strahd campaign, which wrapped a combat-heavy session a few weeks ago and is now getting back to the more roleplay-centric elements. I’m excited for this one >:D

Anna Washenko: I had a plan. It was a really smart plan. The plan was to clear out as much of my queue as possible so that Diablo 2 Resurrected could eat my life and I wouldn’t lose the thread on anything else I was playing. Then this week, I somehow wound up both making a new Skyrim character and starting Fire Emblem: Three Houses. Who needs a plan anyway?

Liz Patt: I am ridiculously curious what Our Fearless Leader has planned for us in Friday night’s D&D game, as last week we tackled a fairly angry ghost in her attic. On the upside, I got to play dolls (really, really badly) with the ghost’s daughter. On the downside, said daughter was super not impressed with my druid’s doll-playing skills. Hey, dollies are rare under the water!

Video-game-wise… let’s see. I’ve pretty much put World of Warcraft on hold until 9.1.5 comes out because holy quality of life, Batman. Still have Ethereal farming to do in D3. I started up Hades again (Yogg bless Switch-to-PC cross-saves). Mindless meditations mid-Minecraft (say that 5x fast).

I’m also watching the end of Lucifer S5 so I can start S6, reading “Certain Dark Things” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and listening to “Dead Beat” (The Dresden Files Book #7) by Jim Butcher. Wait, I’m supposed to sleep somewhere in here? Hahah– zzz….

Elizabeth Harper: I guess I have to play Skatebird because everybody is talking about Skatebird. But before I get into that I have to figure out exactly what we’re doing in D&D tonight.

That’s WRUP for this week! See any games here that stand out to you? Playing your own exciting game(s) this weekend? Let us know in the comments what you’re up to!