PAX X EGX kicks off today, nine days of demos and streamed sessions and things to replace big games events that, y'know, didn't happen. Should be lots going on, so see its website. Myself, my weekend is dominated by reckoning with the concept that we're less than two weeks from the start of autumn. It doesn't seem right - factually or morally.
What are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!
Alice Bee
Cloud Gardens came out into early access this week. It's a game about getting plants to grow over dioramas of abandoned junk. I'm not entirely surely how it works, because you have to place more junk to get your plants to grow, implying a symbiosis that I do not think exists between old tyres and flowers in real life. It's very relaxing, though.
Alice0
I've got a bit long bike ride ahead of me today (24 miles out to a favourite beach) and will doubtless be left aching tomorrow. That's the ideal condition to lounge around and check out A Monster's Expedition [disclosure: Philippa Warr, my pal and a former RPS writer, wrote it!].
Graham
Look, let's be real here. The truth is that every week I say I am going to play X or Y or Z, and then instead I play Picross on the Switch. I fill in squares, I make little pictures, then I do another one. The puzzles aren't hard and it's the same process every time, but it quietens the brain. That's all I want.
Imogen
I'm playing Dragon Age: Inquisition. Of course I am. I just saved the mages and picked up best character Dorian so I'm having a wonderful time. However, if I can manage to pull myself away from fighting demons and bullying Solas, I really wanna have a go at A Monster's Expedition because it looks well cute.
Katharine
A combination of more Death Stranding and Paradise Killer for me, I think. Then again, I also ordered a truck ton of new books last week, so I might just spend my entire weekend reading my new collection of translated Japanese fiction. What larks!
Matthew
I remembered I had an Apple Arcade subscription, so I'm playing also-on-PC games as part of that. A Monster's Expedition is very much my puzzle jam - I love it when you struggle to find a solution, only to realise that all those pieces can be applied to an even sneakier alternate puzzle altogether.
Nate
Nate has been fired.
Ollie
I'm on holiday all next week, and during my nine days of freedom I'll be bouncing between all sorts of different games. Crusader Kings 3 is the first Paradox grand strategy game I've played (unless you count Stellaris), and the trials and tribulations of High King Grumpus of Ireland have been taking up a lot of my free time. But I'm also still playing Grounded every day, and I hear Hades is leaving early access next week so I'm gonna have to start a new save slot on that for sure. I guess I should say goodbye to my plan to just sleep for nine days straight.
Sin
I still want to play Paradise Killer, one of the most interesting games of EGX, but knowing my brain, Crusader Kings 3 will likely have its hooks in me for another week. I failed to discourage my son from duelling random people, and months later he challenged his sister and accidentally killed her. Yorubaland is almost a world power but my heart, it is broken.
But you, dearest reader, what are you playing?
