Apple TV Plus is free the weekend of January 3rd and 4th and, like a lot of people, I have a suggestion for what you should watch. Most of the suggestions are probably fantastic and worthwhile, as Apple has thrown their trillion dollar weight around the streaming wars and assembled a shockingly good catalogue of original shows. But I think you should ignore all of that and sit down for the single best season of science fiction television. No, not that one. Not that one either. I’m talking about Foundation… season 2.

Oh, you think that’s hyperbolic? Well I’m just getting started. Foundation (season 2) has one of Lee Pace’s best performances, has the best space ship designs this side of Villeneuve’s Dune, has the best romantic scoundrel Han Solo-type since Empire Strikes Back, and has the most bombastic television finale since the Red Wedding. It’s all backed up with an inexplicably lush costume, set, and CGI budget that can’t be explained as anything other than a nine figure tax write off. And you don’t need to have seen a single episode of the first season or read a page of the book to enjoy any of it!

Boxing is a full-body workout. Deceptively so — you’re just moving your arms, how tough could it be, right? But if you’re throwing a punch correctly, you’re putting your entire body into that motion. A boxing punch should involve a whole set of simultaneous movements that engage your legs, your core, your shoulders, and your arms. Fitness Boxing 3 cannot offer the same experience as an in-person trainer correcting your every move. But it does provide a series of easy-to-learn routines and daily workouts that ramp up into a regimen that could whip you into shape about as well as attending regular in-person group boxing classes.

As the first paragraph demonstrates, I’ve taken in-person boxing lessons. (Before I got into boxing, I also taught karate professionally for years; I have a black belt in Uechi-Ryū.) So, I have a lot of opinions about martial arts training. It should therefore come as no surprise that I would recommend you take at least one in-person boxing class if you want to really understand how to maximize the workout that you can get from it. Fitness Boxing 3’s virtual trainers won’t be able to tell if you’re punching incorrectly and not using your entire body to the extent that you should. In fact, when I missed a punch in-game, Fitness Boxing 3 would almost always give me a “Perfect” or at least an “OK” score on it; the motion sensitivity of handheld Joy-Cons is far from pristine. But because I’ve taken boxing classes in real life, I knew when I was doing it right, and so I was able to correct my own form and get a great workout from the routines in this game.

Late last year I learned that jigsaw puzzles are good, actually. Yes, a COVID quarantine was the impetus, but even after the wife and I weren’t forcing ourselves to stay indoors, we still found time to enjoy a good puzzle every few weeks. So it was perfect timing that Wilmot Works It Out, the sequel to 2019’s best game about organizing, was released this fall, because it’s easily the greatest gaming tribute to jigsaw puzzles I’ve played.

In Wilmot Works It Out, the titular Wilmot no longer spends his time at the warehouse, but instead, his home. He’s subscribed to a puzzle of the week club and needs to complete them in the same way he managed his old warehouse. The music is light and airy, and there’s a charming little story about the postal workers who deliver your puzzles. Unlike the first game there’s no time pressure; just puzzle after puzzle after puzzle.

As a child, the woods I lived by had a pond covered in duckweed, and I would go to it and toss rocks into the water. Each time, the stone made a plopping sound and broke the blanket of thousands of tiny green leaves to reveal darkened water. The effect enthralled me, and now, a new game called Naiad somehow captures that childlike bliss that comes with playing in nature’s waters.

Developed by HiWarp, a one-person team based in Spain, Naiad is a game in which I get to play as a forest nymph named Naiad. As Naiad, I navigate through crystalline waters using my control stick and a top-down view. Naiad’s body arches and twirls as I swim through crystalline waters and explore connected streams and ponds. The sound of frogs and splashing water plays, and sticks, logs, flowers, and leaves bobble on top of the water and ornament it with pops of color.

Some people bash their heads against difficult games for glory or for loot, but I’m just trying to survive Awaria so I can kiss another ghost. Łukasz “Vanripper” Piskorz, the developer behind cult hit Helltaker, is back with more cute girls to dangle in front of you in a game designed to make you work for it.

Awaria is free on Steam and Itch.io, but scoring a smooch from one of its ghost girls is certainly not. Like Helltaker, Awaria looks deceptively simple: You’re a speedy little mechanic stuck in 2D rooms with machines that need fixing. WASD controls move you around as you carry the right parts to the right machines. And then ghosts show up to try to kill you and suddenly you’re dodging attacks like in a bullet-hell shooter.

I have a confession: I’m a rampant roguelike uninstaller.

Almost invariably, I reach a point with games like Balatro, Dead Cells, or Hades when, watching my playtime balloon, I feel the need to remove the temptation to play the game. Roguelikes, almost by definition, pursue an addictive structure that reviewers often describe as the “one more run” feeling, wherein the player feels compelled to begin the loop again (and again, and — you get it). Another common phrase you’ll hear tossed around is the idea that you “lost time” to a game, as though the game has tricked you into giving it more of your life than you were consciously willing to give. For me, this kind of compulsive play leads to something I’ve started to think of as “roguelike dread,” or the feeling that I really need to move on from a potentially infinite game lest it completely take over my life. Usually, that is when I delete it.

Fortnite is no longer just the culture-defining battle royale game. It has since become a platform to host a wide variety of games. Lego Fortnite takes a swipe at Minecraft lovers with survival and clicky crafting mechanics. Fortnite Obby Fun and the recent Lego Fortnite Brick Life bring young players familiar with Roblox into the fold. Fortnite Festival gives fans of rhythm games a regular cadence of contemporary hits to jam out to.

One by one, the devs at Epic Games are crafting modes that slot each type of player into Fortnite’s golden gauntlet, as if the’re collecting fans of specific genres like Thanos does with Infinity Stones. And now, with this latest addition, a team-based shooter called Fortnite Ballistic, Epic has its sights set on fans of gritty first-person shooters. Although the game isn’t as polished as it could be yet — Epic released it in early access on Dec. 11 — it shows the devs’ ambition to bring a new kind of player to the game.

There is a mystery at the heart of Too Much Fun, the new book about the history of the Commodore 64 by the Danish academic and game designer Jesper Juul:

Why is the C64—by far the best-selling home computer of the 80s—so often forgotten in video game histories?

Mythwrecked: Ambrosia Island is like a lot of the games I’m most likely to pick up. It’s got a soothing, whitewashed color palette. The characters seem to be queer. And the gameplay includes a lot of environmental puzzles and jogging around, picking stuff up. It’s perfect for me. But by those metrics, so are a lot of games. So I expected some genre familiarity when I booted it up for the first time. But in reality, Mythwrecked is a breath of fresh air for the genre of chill, cozy role-playing games.

Developed by Polygon Treehouse (no relation) and published by Whitethorn Games, Mythwrecked puts the player in the position of Alex, who gets shipwrecked on a mysterious island that’s inexplicably home to a handful of Greek gods who have no idea who they are or what they’re doing there. While it’s clear that Alex is motivated to get home at first, as she starts running into gods like Hermes, Zeus, Hera, and Aphrodite, she becomes dedicated to helping them recover their memories by doing them favors and finding their lost mementos around the island.

Theaters were unprepared to deal with legions of moviegoers belting their hearts out to Wicked, which in my professional opinion is an oversight in the sheer passion that Wicked specifically inspires. It’s not just a musical for theater fans; it’s a musical with such a far-reaching scope and audience, with music that is just so damn sing-along-able. Even The Rock weighed in on this!

But thankfully, Universal is rectifying this wrong with a series of special sing-along screenings debuting in over 1,000 theaters nationwide starting on Dec. 25. Huzzah! These special screenings will have the lyrics on screen, just in case you don’t know all of the words to “Popular”. (Couldn’t be me.) There will also be a special intro from stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.

NetEase Games’ Marvel Rivals will justifiably live in the shadow of Overwatch. Marvel’s new free-to-play, hero-based team shooter features many parallels to Blizzard Entertainment’s 8-year-old game, thanks to similar game rules and a selection of superheroes that sometimes feel like legally distinct versions of Overwatch characters. The experience of playing Marvel Rivals at launch feels a lot like Overwatch’s salad days: fun, fresh, and wildly unbalanced.

As Overwatch 2’s recent Classic mode reminded us, some players want precisely that.

Director Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow is a cute animal romp about an adorable black kitty — that also happens to be a tense adventure set in a strange, post-apocalyptic world, and one of Polygon’s top 10 movies of 2024. Flow is Zilbalodis’ second feature film, and it’s the natural evolution of his first movie Away, which also follows a main character on a wordless journey, determined to get somewhere and away from something. Away is the perfect complement to Flow, and it’s a gorgeous and surreal adventure in its own right that you can watch for free right now.

Away was a solo project, with Zilbalodis doing all the animation, screenwriting, and music by himself. Like Flow, it has no dialogue, as the story is told only through the animation and music. Away follows a lone boy trekking across a mysterious landscape, at first on foot and then on a motorcycle. Initially, he has no set destination in mind – he’s simply determined to outpace a large shadowy figure that seems to suck all the life from the creatures it encounters. Eventually, the boy discovers a map and sets course for what appears to be some sort of human civilization in the distance.

I’ve played so many survival and crafting games that I have the opening routine down to a science. Here’s how it usually goes: I wake up in a new environment and get straight to punching trees. Sometimes, I don’t even get to punch trees — I have to pick up sticks and rocks and make a makeshift axe, and then I can start chopping down trees to get logs. I am so tired of punching trees and gathering sticks. Overthrown, a wacky kingdom-building simulator designed to be enjoyed with friends, manages to shake up that stale formula.

The first thing I do in Overthrown is claim a crown marked with a beam of light, which seems like a poor system of government, but it lets me find my footing. Then, I have to start getting some wood to start building my settlement. Sure enough, I have to punch trees, but developer Brimstone made the basic movement and combat of this game smooth and quick. So I don’t just punch trees; I combo-strike them, spin dash into them, and beat the shit out of those mighty oaks. I don’t have to upgrade my axe to level 3 to attack a big tree; I just need to pummel it persistently.

Earlier this year, a video of Deborah Ann Woll teaching Jon Bernthal how to play Dungeons & Dragons went ultra-viral, causing millions of people to go “Maybe I’d like this D&D thing after all.” It also caused hordes of tabletop gamers to wish that they could find a way to convince their friends and family to get RPGs without bouncing off hours-long character creations and arcane rules. Even if they do agree to play, scheduling — that great beast — gets in the way when all you want to do is play right now. Fortunately, independent game designer Clément Domergue has the answer.

Wanna play right now? is a free to download game that takes the basic ethos of tabletop role-playing and distills them into an approachable 22-page book. Taking the lead from Deborah Ann Woll’s immediate immersive prompt, the game has 10 one-page adventures with a structure that puts players into the action immediately. Set in different traditional fantasy scenarios like Woll’s original monologue about a Moonless Wood (which itself is included in the adventures), the book gives DMs a short paragraph that sets the scene, introduces a conflict, and asks the all-important question: What do you do?

Restoration Games’ Crossbows & Catapults: Fortress War shows the scrappy little board game publisher at its very best — hunting down older, long-forgotten games and giving them a fresh coat of paint for modern audiences. Its latest effort is perfect for families with young children, and easily bridges the gap between hardcore fans of the tabletop hobby and the kids who love them. But the big box of plastic may prove a bit too pricey for some.

Published in 1983, the original Crossbows and Catapults was a big hit at retail, straddling the line between a novel toy and a dexterity-based board game. Players compete to land their caroms — chunky plastic disks — on their opponent’s treasure horde, or use those same caroms to knock over a central tower. The mechanisms for flinging those caroms are little plastic siege weapons, including a ballista and a catapult powered by rubber bands.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle kicks off a brand-new adventure with nostalgia. The start of the game, serving as a tutorial, is pretty much a one-to-one re-creation of the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark. You get to incarnate Indy, but only slightly — you’re constantly interrupted with cutscenes featuring dialogue and camera frames matched to the original film. It’s a showcase of how, 40 years later, CG technology can recreate movies to a painstaking degree of fidelity.

This sequence’s presence is passed off as a flashback dream for Indy. The rest of The Great Circle takes place a year after the events of the homaged movie. But even if the tribute is a commendable effort, it sets a precedent for the experience as a whole. The clear obsession to deliver a cinematic story around the character of Indiana Jones constantly clashes with this modern video game rendition of the films. Which is a shame, because there are plenty of interesting ideas when you actually have control.

There’s a lofty reason for all the water in Monument Valley 3, next week’s long-awaited sequel to the beloved puzzle game series about climbing optical illusions.

And there’s a personal motivation.

Do what you love, they say, and you’ll never work a day in your life. In the indie game Ikeelya, I’m doing that by balancing my day job as a patient, relentless assassin with my true love — crafting cozy living rooms. Ikeelya mixes the joy of browsing an Ikea catalog with the pressure of being a sniper. It’s almost like two games in one, connected by the thread of our hapless protagonist and a polite but nosy neighbor.

In Ikeelya, you step into the shoes of Barry, a grown-ass man who lives in an empty apartment worthy of r/malelivingspaces. I’m broke as a joke, so I have to take an assassination contract. These contracts are pretty quick to complete. I sit and wait for the target to emerge, take aim, and fire. Every time I miss, my shadowy boss yells at me and deducts some of my pay, so it’s in my best interest to make every job quick and clean.

There’s darkness around the edges of Infinity Nikki’s idyllic townscapes and romantic dresses, a traumatic scarring that’s left the pastoral fantasyland of Wishfield — the starting region in Infinity Nikki’s larger world of Miraland — on edge. For every beautiful gown and pup with twee, cable-knit fur, Wishfield has a cruel, devastating reality: Violence in a neighboring region has left Wishfield harboring war refugees, and mysterious trinkets that prey on people’s hopes and dreams have citizens falling into incurable comas.

The war, ironically, is the backdrop of Infinity Nikki, a table setting for the desperate world. Instead, Infinity Nikki’s story centers on the coma incidents, which bring Nikki across Wishfield’s several different locations in search of answers. She’ll find glimmering fish shaped like luxury handbags, the ghosts of worn clothing, humans imprisoned by adorable fairies, and a stunningly complex plan to exploit the residents of Wishfield’s wishes.

Thirty hours into my Fantasian Neo Dimension playthrough, I found myself in a surreal landscape, a twisted amalgamation dotted by ghostly white corruption known as Mechteria. My Dimengeon device, a contraption that allows me to “bank” monster encounters, was nearly overflowing, so I had to take out over 40 enemies in a single battle. I continued to advance, thinking that the threats had been eliminated, yet numerous encounters piled up within mere seconds.

Fantasian Neo Dimension certainly presents a challenge, even for the most ardent fans of turn-based role-playing games, such as myself. Developed by Mistwalker and released in two parts for Apple Arcade back in 2021, Fantasian is a collaboration between two giants of the industry: Final Fantasy series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and renowned composer Nobuo Uematsu. Now, this new rerelease for Windows PC and consoles boasts 4K resolution support, along with battle themes from previous Final Fantasy titles, given that Square Enix is handling publishing duties.

You don’t have enough Irish-language hip-hop in your life. That’s just a simple fact. But thankfully, Netflix has added the most interesting and unique music biopic of the year to help fill in that gap for you.

Kneecap follows the semi-mythical origins of the Irish-language rap group of the same name. The film starts out centering on two teenagers, Liam and Naoise, living in Belfast in the late 2010s. Naoise’s father, Arlo (Michael Fassbender), a former IRA member who went into hiding, taught the boys Irish at a young age, but while he did it to preserve some sense of national identity in the boys, they mostly use it to stick it to any authority they can find. Somewhere in the middle of all their teenage shenanigans they run into a music teacher named JJ, who finds out that Liam writes songs and suggests the three of them form a hip-hop group.

As the opening scenes of Gints Zilbalodis’ gorgeous, wordless Latvian animated movie Flow started unfolding on the screen, I had a moment of déjà vu. The image of a little black cat with huge wide eyes, frantically navigating a verdant green forest during a shocking disaster — I’d seen it before. The panicked animals, the sense of a nightmare closing in on them all, the contrast between the cat’s cartoony style and its believable feline reactions to danger — they all seemed so familiar. Eventually, I realized why: I was recalling the opening scenes of China’s absorbing 2019 animated fantasy The Legend of Hei.

The Legend of Hei starts in a simple place, with Hei the black cat peacefully (and adorably) at rest in his forest home, communing with the little nature spirits that live there. Once things start going wrong, though, events escalate quickly — so quickly that it’s easy to get left behind if you don’t already know about the world he lives in.

If you’re looking for restraint, you will not find it in Echo Point Nova. Within the first 30 minutes of the game, you’ll find yourself equipped with a hoverboard capable of climbing any vertical surface, a grappling hook that can latch onto clouds, and a triple jump. This game does not hold back the goods.

Echo Point Nova is an open-world FPS that offers nearly total freedom. Once you’ve got your basic loadout, you’re free to explore the enormous map of hundreds of floating islands and enemy bases. There is a story, delivered via in-world text popups, but you’ll likely miss much of it as you’re soaring over an ice mountain trying to dive-bomb a giant robot. It is an untethered power fantasy.

One of the most inspiring things about humanity is that no matter where we end up, we can find a way to thrive. Take, for instance, the setting of Threshold, an indie game by a developer who previously worked on Deathloop and Dishonored. Threshold takes place on the peak of a high mountain, where you play as someone embarking on one of the most stressful maintenance gigs available. I watch the trains go by, and make sure that they run on time. The air is so thin, I often struggle and choke my way through a shift. My predecessor is buried nearby, and my co-worker is just relieved that someone is there to share the burden.

There’s a country-based difficulty system, or at least the Steam page advertises one. I chose Canada, and the game begins with an ominous display of my home country and flag. I load into my little worker’s room and spot a shirt that says “I love Ottawa.” As a proud Torontonian, I frown. This game is already insulting me. This is true psychological horror.

What to watch with your family at Thanksgiving can turn into an endless debate, particularly with the seemingly infinite options that streaming services provide. So to save you time this holiday weekend, we’ve handpicked a thematically appropriate film that should bring the whole family together* no matter what: the Turkey Day-themed slasher Thanksgiving.

*“bringing the family together” can mean “getting nauseous via immaculately crafted gore”