The Mancunion

What ‘pop’ is to music, ‘casual’ is to video games. Broad, accessible, familiar, and widely appealing. There’s no one set formula to make a casual game, unlike an RPG or a 2D platformer. Casual games are not defined by one visual style, platform, or level of difficulty, but by how easily they invite people in, and how they can broaden the perception of what games are for people not familiar with the form.

“…and that’s always the thing, it’s deeper than aesthetic, I mean, partly that’s why I wanted to do it, it’s quite provocative, because, like, why would you be defending this –” – yeah – “ – and we were trying to explain it, because we didn’t expect to be on the side of this random vape shop, but it’s funny how these things turn out – ” – strange bedfellows, yaknow – “…yeah, so true –” – but you don’t get that kind of resistance to the vape shops down in Withington, for example – “ – no,...

2023 saw the pivotal landmark in indie horror The Exit 8 release on Steam: a Japanese ‘walking simulator’ horror developed by one man known as KOTAKE CREATE, in which the player must journey through the superliminal halls of a metro station and notice anomalies in the labyrinthine design to escape to the surface.

Game-to-film adaptations have, particularly in 2026, found themselves in the limelight. The first half of the year alone has seen Super Mario Galaxy, Mortal Kombat, Silent Hill, The Exit 8 and The Mortuary Assistant all finding second homes on the silver screen, with the latter three noticeably being horror titles.

On a sunny day in May I attended a day of events that piqued my curiosity and introduced me to a niche, eccentric world. It was organised to celebrate 35 years of Headpress Books, a Manchester-founded independent publisher with a presence in the counterculture-pop culture and horror scene since 1991. The first panel of the day was all about the work of Nigel Kneale.

On a sunny day in May I attended a few events that piqued my curiosity and introduced me to a niche, eccentric world. It was organised to celebrate 35 years of Headpress Books, a Manchester-founded independent publisher with a presence in the counterculture, pop culture, and horror scenes since 1991. Read about the first two events here. The third panel of the day featured Mark Goodall and Andy Cowan, who spoke with Jen Wallis, press officer at Headpress, about their books on music.

This June saw the return of the Summer Games Fest, an annual event held since 2020 to showcase a large slate of upcoming gaming releases. And this year’s event was the best one so far, packed with plenty of exciting announcements, but also many to tilt your head. The one that stuck out to me the most is Stranger than Heaven, RGG Studios’ next project.

A review copy of Coffee Talk Tokyo was provided by the publisher. In Wim Wenders’ seminal 2023 film Perfect Days, protagonist Hirayama navigates a sun-soaked Tokyo as a structure-preserving toilet cleaner by day, and an observationalist nomad by night. He frequents the book stores, the restaurants and the bathhouses to soak himself in the conversation, to gossip and to find respite from the meanders of his day job.

Last academic year, 215 students applied to the University’s Work Experience Bursary, up from 165 the year previous. While the acceptance rate was technically 100%, as each academic year there are 110 bursaries available, the number of students who missed out increased twofold. Both years saw around £55,000 being awarded to students, with £20 in 2023-24 and £30 in 2024-25 being the lowest amounts awarded.

FromSoftware are known for creating some of the most well-regarded games in recent memory with 2011’s Dark Souls, succeeding 2009’s Demon’s Souls, proving to be a legendary, massive success. They have sustained this level of acclaim with the subsequent entries in the Dark Souls franchise, alongside 2015’s Bloodborne, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice in 2019 and Elden Ring in 2022, now being adapted into a feature film.