Rewinder: What We're Playing This Week (August 9, 2025)

Another week, another edition of What We're Playing is here.

It's been a pleasantly active week over at Rewinder. We've covered all manner of short games, highlighted our favourite reveals from Nintendo's Indie World presentation, looked at the charged politics of sports games, and covered a few news stories too. Plenty to read through if you've not caught up yet, but we've all found time for games in between.

For now, here's what the team's been up to.

Henry

This week has almost exclusively been review games, though I finally completed Donkey Kong Bananza. The emotional triple gut punch of and Roger, Hidden Memories of The Gardens Between, and Dear Me, I Was… has been more than enough while I handle other things in my life.

Oh, and I started a new F1 Manager 24 run where I've challenged myself into making Kick Sauber, the worst team on the grid, champions in the next three years. That's been emotional for different reasons, and I made Red Bull look tame by sacking my second driver after one race. Sorry Zhou, but we need Hulkenberg.

Jason

I remain firmly in the loving embrace of the Final Fantasy Boy Band Experience. I've also been grappling with what it is to enjoy games and spend time with them. The wombo-combo of more limited time as both a parent and an adult, and the strange way that writing about games changes your interactions with them, has been doing a number on me recently.

Carving time out to enjoy a new game when so many of them are just X game + Z, is really hard to do. I think it's why I'm enjoying playing D&D so much, because it's all just so fluid. Anyway, the world of FFXV remains truly gorgeous to exist in, and the story does flow a bit better now as well. I feel like I'm teetering on the edge of it losing its grip on me though, which will mean I need to figure out what to play after. That's a me problem, to be fair.

Lex

It has kinda been one of those weeks where I feel like I have been working constantly, yet I look back at it and I'm like, "Damn girl, you've gotten nothing done."

I know this isn't true, but I am in the weird Pre-Gamescom Lull where about 90% of my time is getting things ready so that I can do a buttload of work in two weeks' time.

However, when I haven't been managing spreadsheets, I've continued to chip away at Tears of the Kingdom. Which, I am not sure if you have heard, is a pretty damn good video game. I'm kinda waiting for the next new Big Release to get its hooks into me, and that will probably be something released in the weeks after Gamescom at this point, but I did pick up UFO 50 on Switch 2 after the Indie World showcase this week, so that should tide me over.

Scott

I'm still playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, I've finished the first act now. But I also got the new CRKD guitar controller in so I'll be playing a ton of YARG and Clone Hero this weekend.

Are you playing anything this weekend? Let us know in the comments below.