Reconnect Recap - w/e 31st August

A weekly recap of some of the best video game articles to feature on Reconnect.

Sep 01, 2025

Kia Ora folks

The question that has rattled my head this week was, do I side with Songbird or Reed? Honestly, that decision kinda fucked me up a bit, Witcher 3 was filled with great no-win situations that impacted the story, but Cyberpunk played those things quite safe, until now. Part of me is glad to see some of that magic show up in Cyberpunk but a part of me is mad that I had to choose.

Songbird was flawed, but so was Reed. Not to mention Idris Elba is D R E A M Y, but Songbird didn’t deserve any more people manipulating her life. As you can tell I’m still reeling.

But that’s not going to impact my ability to bring you this week’s edition of the Reconnect Recap, or will it?

As always this is the Recap, the companion newsletter that summarises the week that has been on Reconnect, the games writing discovery platform. A website overflowing with 27,851 articles from over 300 games blogs. I think if you start at the bottom you can finish reading them all by the time Beyond Good and Evil 2 comes out.

This weeks edition is packed with game jams, interviews, cozy games, scary games, mind games, and Gamescom.

Lets dig in.

Great Write Ups

Our annual review is in: GameDev Reports has the YoY numbers, and the industry is up by 5%, but the board expected 30% so we’re all fired.
Where the pedophiles and children hang out: Remap dives into why the kids love Roblox (god I sound old) and the multitudes of dangerous pitfalls they are exposed to.
Sharing isn’t caring: Aftermath speaks to Demonschool’s creative director about their decision to move the release date of their game, because of Silksong.
The fourth return of the wub wubs: Player2 sits down wth Grant Kao, the Associate Creative Director on Borderlands 4, as they discuss how the game has evolved the games familiar systems.
Gotta go fast: My introduction to Sonic was at an after school facility where me and about 15 other kids cycled around the games consoles in a big loop, I played lots of Sonic whilst I was there, even got super saiyan Sonic once. This retrospective by Peter Monks took me back to nostalgia-ville.
Disk Master Jam: Fergus Halliday interviews Jarrod Farquhar-Nicol of Anecdote Games and talks about the DiskMaster Game Jam that took place in April.
Closest Relative: Player2 has a hand on write up about the upcoming Outer Worlds 2, as someone who loved the first one and its humour, this preview got me 10x more hyped.
Fail Fast Sony: TWIV covers a financial report from Sony around their efforts to change the culture towards a fail fast approach.
Learning from the Wilds: Pause Menu looks into the deeper lesson Outer Wilds was teaching us.
Who did Gamescom benefit?: Normally a lot of our analytic-backed reporting comes from Gamedev Reports, but a new fighter has entered the ring, The Alinea Insight newsletter , their latest piece about what five games benefitted the most from Gamescom.
Lets get physical: The Game Business had a panel at Gamescom where they spoke to CDPR staff on the benefits of having more physical events for fans to interact with the devs.
On the silver screen: Remember how shitty video game movies used to be? Post Games remembers, and also dives into what turned that equation around.
Growing Giants: José Pérez tells us how Hades game developers started small and got big.
Getting Inspired: ROP brings us an interview with Poiana George Remus about their game Gray Dawn and how they got the game launched and what inspired the game.

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