Reconnect Recap - w/e 26th April

Reviewing the week that's been over on Reconnect

Apr 27, 2026

G’day team!

After proclaiming that Red Dead Redemption 2 is the best game ever made, having played it four times, I finally got up the courage to play the original. Thankfully the PC version of Red Dead 1 isn’t too jarring to play and I’m quite enjoying it, though it is making me want to do another play through of the second game and is reminding me of how Rockstar games used to be made.

Other than that, I start a new job on Wednesday. After being in the country six weeks and having applied for forty-five roles, someone finally wanted to hire me so thats a big relief for me and my journey in my new home.

As always, this is the Reconnect Recap, the companion newsletter for Reconnect, the games writing discovery platform boasting nearly 300 active blogs and forty thousand articles.

This week, we’re all over the show! Game analytics, cozy games, the 80’s, questionable funding, AI, sequels and much much more!

Let’s dig in.

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Great Write Ups

Blood Money: With the return of the Neo Geo, TimeExtension explains the moral quandary of supporting the new console, given who is funding it.
Sausage Roll: Thinky Games celebrates the ten year anniversary of a game that changed puzzle games forever.
Post Merge Review: Fergus Halliday at Multiplier sits down with ex Kotaku editor Alex Walker to do a bit of a post-mortem on how the big Activision-Blizzard merger played out.
Rage against the machine: Retro-spect discusses the common feeling of getting angry at a video game and how we find self-regulation.
Shaken not stirred: Scanlines dives into the last Pierce Brosnan appearance as James Bond in the video game Everything or Nothing, and provides their verdict of how good the game is.
Child Labour: Crossplay sits down with game director, Chandana Ekanayake, of Dosa Divas and talks about how his relationship with his son changed as he came onboard the development process as a QA.
Pico-demake: José Pérez walks us through their experience using the Pico-8 to make their own Mario demake.
In the 80’s: JM Mendez takes us back to the 80’s to highlight the most impactful moments in video games from that decade.
Following up: Cat has some thoughts about which games truly deserve a sequel, and I agree with all of them, especially Sunset Overdrive.
Touching virtual grass: Ellie Macdonald explores how studies have shown that playing some games can give you the same stress release as being in nature.
Reading the signals: Game Dev Assembly Newsletter looks at the tea leaves and explains some hard truths of the industry.
A different pace of game: Prof. Rock explains why cozy gaming works for them.
April Numbers: GameDev Reports has the latest numbers, including, how many copies Hazelight has sold of their very popular co-op games.
Multilingual: degonyte has an interesting point of view, being a speaker of both Dutch and English, and what media, especially video games, has left their impact, linguistically.

Fun Tidbits

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