Unveiling Our Collective Journey: A Reflection on Engagement and Participation

February 1st

Hello and welcome back to our well-liked feature where we share snippets about some of the games we’ve been enjoying this week. This week, we’re taking refuge from storms and hoping our tiles survive in Dawnfolk; we’ve embarked on a full rendering of Resident Evil Village, yet find ourselves pondering the fate of chickens; and we’re revisiting No Man’s Sky once more as it expands again.

What have you been playing?

Catch up with earlier editions of this column in our What We’ve Been Playing archive.

Dawnfolk demo, PC

Dawnfolk is an intriguingly consuming city-building game that a dear friend from Eurogamer recommended to me. It uses a tile-based format and boasts a beautifully pixelated aesthetic. While it may seem like a typical city builder, it holds a much darker and more complex narrative.

The gameplay revolves around tiles. You start by transforming the tiles under your control into homes and resource-gatherers, as seen in classic city builders. As you build, you gradually expand outward and gain access to more tiles. It’s clever stuff, offering adjacency bonuses for specific structures and little mini-games when attempting to hunt deer in the woodland, fish, or chop down trees.

All of this is enjoyable, but then the game transitions into a different cycle. Occasionally, a storm strikes, revealing a malevolent force at its core. The gameplay shifts from expansion to a state of seeking shelter. The storm approaches, and I find myself hoping not to lose too many tiles or severely damage my economy.

Survive the storm, and you must rebuild—but you also know that another storm is on the horizon. Human existence is a flicker that thrives between moments when nature reasserts its dominance. A fitting name for the game—Dawnfolk—what a beautifully eerie piece of poetry.

-Donlan

No Man’s Sky, PC

Alright, welcome back, Hello Games! Not that I was ever truly out of touch. After struggling to keep up with No Man’s Sky’s relentless barrage of content updates last year, I finally had the opportunity over the Christmas break to dive into its Expedition Redux events and collect the limited-time rewards I might have missed. While limited-time events can often be a bit annoying, it’s a real pity that No Man’s Sky’s Expeditions don’t remain longer, considering how incredibly engaging so many of them are.

Just last year, we encountered tales of an obsessed fisherman, cosmic horror akin to Starship Troopers, chilling whispers from cursed starship crews, and even temporally unstable adventures across a shattered universe. Some of these stories creatively refocus No Man’s Sky’s many systems while also adding narrative layers that enrich its unique and existentially haunting lore. Plus, all of them come with some cool rewards.

But expeditions aren’t why I’m here, despite having rambled for two paragraphs now. I’m really here to discuss No Man’s Sky’s first update of 2025, which, it appears, is a fantastic one. Released this week, it picks up on some long-standing narrative threads and introduces a long-forgotten character into the universe who presents an intriguing question: what if No Man’s Sky granted players the powers of a deity, allowing them to shape the universe to their whims? And having achieved that, I find something genuinely exciting is happening: a tiny yet eternal corner of No Man’s Sky’s universe has come to life solely due to my fleeting desires. Could such god-like abilities be a glimpse into No Man’s Sky’s endgame?

And that’s before we even touch on all the other cool additions. Worlds Part 2, like last year’s first half, is primarily an explorers’ update, and Hello Games’ numerous systemic enhancements have revitalized even the oldest areas. However, it’s the brand-new content that has truly left me breathless this week. Gas giants! Jungles! Planets sprawling with ancient archaeological wonders! And perhaps most exciting of all, genuine water worlds. These endless ocean expanses are daunting enough at first glance, but dive beneath the surface and they are awe-inspiring: unfathomable depths of impenetrable darkness; unimaginable sea pressure.