Welcome to The Playfield, a new weekly column about the games we’re currently playing here at The A.V. Club. Every Saturday our games writers Garrett Martin and Elijah Gonzalez will look at whatever they’ve been digging their thumbs into that week, from video games to pinball to the tabletop, with a weekly rotation of our regular freelancers joining them. And who knows, other A.V Club staffers and contributors might pop up from time to time, too. We’re not just interested in what we’re playing, though; we want to know what’s on your docket, as well, so consider this an open comments thread for games talk of any stripe.
This week’s guest: Games contributor Wallace Truesdale.
Super Battle Golf
Platform: PC (PlayStation 5, Switch 2, and Xbox Series X|S versions expected in Summer 2026)
How do you take golf, which is frequently seen as a pastime for retirees and unhinged presidents, and make it interesting for people who’ve never swung a nine-iron? It’s simple: Add a rocket launcher. Basically, Super Battle Golf takes an orderly, laid-back game and infuses it with chaotic Mario Kart energy. Instead of golfing in the usual turn-based way, here everyone plays the hole at the same time, jockeying for position in a race to get your ball in the cup first (strokes are also a factor, but more of a bonus than the main way to score points). While you can’t directly interact with your opponents’ golf balls, you can (and should) attack other players, either with your club or one of many power-ups. There are bouncy shoes, golf carts, and a literal gun, which, when combined with a rag doll-loving physics engine, sets up emergent gameplay fun. For instance, instead of using an item, you can drop it on the ground and charge up a swing that will turn it into a DIY heat-seeking missile. Betrayals, last-minute comebacks, and orbital laser strikes have rightly made this the latest “friendslop” hit—a Ninja Golf for the online multiplayer age. [Elijah Gonzalez]
Gridbeat
Platforms: PC, Switch
Maybe you’ve read that independent developers are taking rhythm games in interesting new directions; Gridbeat is one more example. The beat is everything in this cyberpunk puzzler, where you play as a hacker-for-hire navigating corporate mainframes with timing-based inputs defined by the rhythm of the game’s electronic soundtrack. Every button you press needs to be in sync with that music, so you don’t just have to figure out how to get past obstacles and enemies, but also have to keep the beat the whole time. There’s also a dungeon-crawling element to the game’s structure—each job has multiple levels you have to work through, sometimes moving back and forth between them, and the overhead, two-dimensional camera angle comes straight from how RPGs tended to look during the game’s ’80s/’90s setting. Rhythm games tend to be flattened in the public consciousness into either Dance Dance Revolution or Guitar Hero / Rock Band, but it’s a far richer and more diverse type of play than that. (Just this week Nintendo announced a July release date for the next Rhythm Heaven game, a series of surreal minigames built around the unique control schemes of Nintendo systems that’s been dormant for a decade.) There’s no dancing or guitar-playing anywhere in sight in Gridbeat, but it’s just as in thrall to the beat as any of those higher-profile party games, and a cool, stylish little reminder of the possibilities that remain in this space. (Weird footnote: Gridbeat is published by Acclaim, a new attempt at reviving a major publisher of the ’90s and ’00s that collapsed in spectacular fashion over 20 years ago; apparently the group bringing the name back includes pro wrestler Jeff Jarrett, which is too weird to not mention here.) [Garrett Martin]
Esoteric Ebb
Platform: PC
Christoffer Bodegård’s Esoteric Ebb is the kind of game you’ll talk about not through genre labels and Steam tags but by describing your in-game experiences like they’re personal anecdotes. A play session often leaves me with an itch to hop in a group chat and share the play-by-play of my most recent dice rolls—not just because the esoteric bullshit that unfolds can range from hilarious to insightful, but also because the number of ways to complete the game’s side quests and solve its central mystery leaves everyone with a unique story to tell. I’m more likely to start a conversation about my chat with a drunk androsphynx about riddles and a failed love affair before the acronym “RPG” exits my lips. I can gab endlessly about all the traps and magical apex predators awaiting in The City Below without mentioning the game’s most explicit influence Disco Elysium.
It’s not that Esoteric Ebb defies genre descriptors or is above comparison to its inspirations—it might be hard to not dwell on Elysium given how explicit the similarities are—but rather it has an incredibly confident and sincere take on them all while forging its own unique identity. It encourages players to take a cue from its protagonist Ragn and his chatty thoughts once he’s let loose on Tolstad post-lethal baptism: See what happens when following your curiosity and gut. After all, you’ve got five days to find out who bombed a tea shop. It’d be a shame to not indulge your inner adventurer and take a few magical detours. [Wallace Truesdale]
But enough about what we’re playing; what are you playing?
Keep scrolling for more great stories.