The Video Games You Should Play This Weekend – April 24

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Vampire Crawlers

As a diehard Vampire Survivors fan, I was intrigued to see Poncle's next project emerge as a dungeon-crawling deckbuilder. Vampire Crawlers brings over many of the same characters, weapons, powers, conventions, and enemies, but through recontextualizing them in this way, it flips the entire experience on its head. I'm having a blast exploring these maps in the first-person view, taking on swarms of enemies, pilfering loot, and building an ultimate deck en route to my ultimate demise at the hands of the monsters with whom I've spent tens of hours slaying in Poncle's previous smash-hit title. I haven't spent enough time in Vampire Crawlers to render my final verdict, but my early impressions are positive.

Sayonara Wild Hearts & Lorelei And The Laser Eyes

Earlier this week, Annapurna announced its plans to release some of its games on Switch 2 and that two would be available immediately: Sayonara Wild Hearts and Lorelei And The Laser Eyes. I reviewed both of these games and you can find them by following the links. I like Sayonara Wild Hearts and listen to its soundtrack often. I particularly like its rendition of Clair de lune. The game feels like playing through an interactive music video.

I feel stronger, however, about Lorelei And The Laser Eyes. When it was released in 2024, I booted it up not with the intention to play and beat it, but rather just to check it out so I could talk about it a little on a podcast. I was so quickly enamored with it, however, that I played through the whole game and wrote a review for it, which is not something I often do. It's just a great, moody, rewarding puzzle game with an interesting story that examines the ideas behind creating art and the value of doing so. If you happened to miss it in 2024 and you have a Switch 2 (and you like puzzles) I can't recommend it enough.

Diablo IV

With next week's launch of Diablo IV’s second big story expansion, Lord of Hatred, this weekend is a great opportunity to return to Sanctuary. Whether it’s to shake off any rust, catch up on the story via the base campaign or the Vessel of Hatred expansion, or to stop Lilith for the first time, the existing package is already a strong experience worth playing. It’s also a good chance to re-familiarize yourself with the available content and features to appreciate what Lord of Hatred brings to the table (spoiler: it’s a fun expansion, as explained in my review).

Titanium Court

I often contend to anyone who will listen that 2015's You Must Build A Boat from designer Luca Redwood, to this day, is my favorite mobile game. It is the sequel to the also-excellent 10000000 and combines a great-feeling match-three puzzle game with some simple base building and RPG mechanics. Since playing those games, I have always been on the lookout for games that take match-three mechanics and combine them with rewarding upgrade systems in a comparable way.

I am not far into Titanium Court, but it has the potential to hit those same high notes that I loved from Redwood's games, and it is wrapped in a clever narrative package that I am already fairly charmed by. In Titanium Court, you play a match-three puzzle game to collect resources and defend your home castle. Moving tiles feels good, and watching the defense battles play out as a result of the arrangement of the tiles is an interesting palette cleanser. I need to play more (and can now that Saros is kind of behind me), but I am enjoying it so far.

And while we're kind of on the topic of Luca Redwood games, you should also check out Photographs, a great little puzzle game with small short stories that have really stuck with me even after all these years.