Time to relax. Pour yourself a glass of something fun, sit in your favorite chair, put your feet up, and let us lead you to the good stuff.

There’s a curation crisis in modern video game coverage. At a point at which it is trivial to gain access to hundreds of games at once, there are precious few and declining ways to help you sort through the noise.

Digital storefronts simply leave it all up to the whim of an algorithm, which is a bit like letting your drunkest, dumbest uncle plan your wedding, while websites obey a similar blind machine god known only as SEO. Personal reports from a team of obsessed weirdos, who have actually played and like the games in question, do not mesh with the plans of either force.

Because we here at Skybox are nothing if not obsessed weirdos, I present you with the semi-regular Nation of Curation: custom recommendations courtesy of our crew, who write about games all day, then log off for the night and keep playing different games. We have a problem! We’re trying to monetize it! Help us! Enjoy!

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My gaming guilty pleasure of late has been Europa Universalis IV. More specifically, it’s the Anbennar mod, which revamps the entire game as an original fantasy setting. I’m a sucker for a good grand strategy romp, and must bow to the desires of controlling a pile of dudes moving around a map like any middle-aged white guy is wont to do. I just find it a lot easier to get immersed in these fictional and fantastical stories rather than the actual, real-world historical analogues. Colonialism is a lot easier to swallow when it’s fictional, and when it’s happening because I’m a nation of kobolds seeking to explore the world and find new dragons to worship. – Kris “Delfeir” Cornelisse

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A round of Magic: The Gathering Arena each morning has become a ritual as frequent as brushing my teeth. Recently, with the Tarkir: Dragonstorm set, it’s felt akin to a last hurrah – despite being fantastic to draft, its story concluding an 11-year-old arc, Magic as I know it is ending with an inescapable intrusion.

A Final Fantasy set is around the corner. Spider-Man is to follow later this year. The series’ lore of dragons and planeswalkers and mythic automatons will strain to coexist with the Green Goblin, Cloud Strife, and whoever comes next. Imagine Final Fantasy replaced, not supplemented, by Kingdom Hearts overnight. The last set before a strange new era of muddled, implausible fiction can’t help feeling bittersweet. I’m playing cards on the Titanic, waiting to see whether it’s an iceberg or FFX’s colossal whale Sin that sinks me first. – Francisco Dominguez

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Outside of work, the game I play the most is Marvel Snap. In fact, Marvel Snap has been my most played game each year ever since it launched in 2022. While my engagement with it persists in part due to wanting to complete daily missions and other tactics common to mobile games, I do genuinely believe it’s one of the best card games ever made. It’s super easy to pick-up-and-play, so I’m always eager to squeeze in a six-turn game wherever I can. Plus, there are so many different deck combinations and the meta is constantly evolving. – Tomas Franzese

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Backpack Battles came bundled with something I got from Steam, I forget what, and it’s a simple toy to putter with after falling out of love with Path of Exile 2, and other, much better casual games. Balatro, Ballionaire, and Nubby’s Number Factory scratched the ‘number go up’ itch, but Backpack Battles provides an element missing from these – beating on people with random objects. It’s an Early Access game, so it’s buggy, poorly optimized, shallow, and relies heavily on random chance, but it’s startlingly engaging, and I find myself losing hours to it and barely realizing. Inventory management as a key mechanic? Actually pretty zen. – Amadeo Garcia III

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Somebody put me on the press review list for Dungeons & Dragons, which effectively guilted me into getting back into the game. I was a 2nd Edition kid, so learning D&D 5E has been a relentless series of culture shocks. Compared to the freewheeling hostility of 2E, which itself was a sidegrade of sorts from Gygax’s original AD&D, 5E is a warm bath and a kind word after a long day.

I’ve been running a weekly 5E campaign online for a small group of friends, including Amadeo, and it is shockingly difficult to challenge them in combat. Even so, I’d forgotten the real rewards of having a regular TTRPG group: the laughs, shared jokes, turning acquaintances into friends, finding out just how unhinged people can get in a fictional environment.

This is why you should greet any attempt to shoehorn genAI into TTRPGs with all the live fire you can manage, by the way. This is a hobby about human communication. Whatever problems you think you have with it, none are solved by removing the humans.  – Thomas Wilde

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Between Skybox, my regular freelance work, industry events (I’ve been to four in the last month, and SGF is right around the corner), and trying to spend time with my wife, I don’t really have a lot of free time. When I do, the last thing I want to do with it is play a game… at least, most of the time. If something’s gonna catch my attention, it’s gotta be breezy and low stakes.

Since the release of Capcom Fighting Collection 2, that thing has been Power Stone 2. It’s fast; it’s fun; it doesn’t take too long; I can jump in with friends if they have a second; it’s easy to pick up and play, so I don’t have to sweat my character choice; and I’ve beaten it a million times. I know how everything works — and could probably quote every line of dialogue. When I was a kid, entire summers were built around Power Stone 2. Playing it again reminds me of that, and the people I played it with. This isn’t the best version of the game for single-player play (that, bafflingly, remains the PSP version), but it’s easy to jump in and do a run… or two, if you’re not careful. – Will Borger

Cartoons by Amadeo Garcia III