"July is the month when circular flattened patches bein to appear in circles of standing corn," I read on the Internet, which must be true or they wouldn't be allowed to put it on the Internet. With that in mind, watch yourselves, reader dear. We've a few months yet before the folk horror surrounding harvest festivals starts up, but apparently now I need to be concerned about alien abduction when roaming the countryside. When IS it safe?
What are you playing this weekend? Here's what we're clicking on!
Alice Bee
This weekend I'm going to play The Things We Lost In The Flood, which Alice O. really liked and recommended to us all, and I trust her opinions. All the rain may at least offset all the relentless crispy sun we've had. If climate change is real, how come my local shop still sells strawberries? Eh? EH?
Alice L
Well, no surprises here, I'm playing more of The Sims 4 Island Living this weekend, living my evil mermaid dreams. We're living off the grid with no clean water or electricity, we're trying to seduce other sims to eventually kill them, and we're following the conservationist career. Less sims = less trash in the ocean, right? I might even try to create the newly cast Little Mermaid Halle Bailey in order to lighten the mood. We'll see.
Alice O
I'm taking next week off work, something I should've done a lot sooner after both covering E3 on Los Angeles time and moving home in the same week. Don't do that, gang. It's a terrible idea. I now need sleep, solitude, and the sea. Bed, beach, and Destiny 2 it is.
Brendan
Decades of guilt about leaving all the green workers of Abe's Oddysee behind to rot in their stinking factory jobs has somehow fizzled to the surface of my brain, like a bloated corpse from some long-ago murder rising to the surface due to a build-up of gas in the cadaver. So I'm playing through the 2014 remake, Oddworld: New 'n' Tasty, and trying to save all these poor farting idiots.
Dave
As you read this, I'll be on my holidays and while I won't be doing much gaming during the next week or so, I will be bringing my Switch for the long train journeys. As such, I will likely be playing Super Mario Maker 2's story mode.
Graham
I'll be trying to complete the 'Break In' mission in Ape Out, which unlocks with its four main LPs are complete. I got so close on my second go and haven't matched it since. After that, who knows. I've run out of the short games I had to hand, so it might be time to dig into something larger. Perhaps Star Traders: Frontiers, in honour of Sin's arrival.
Katharine
It's more benchmarking fun times for me this weekend, I'm afraid, so the only games I'll likely be playing are the same five minutes of Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, Monster Hunter: World, and all the other games I use for testing as I scramble to get everything done in time for AMD's Navi and Ryzen 3000 launch. Eventually I'll stop murdering thousands of Great Jagras beasties as I jot down max and min frame rates, but not today.
Matt
I'm still figuring out Dota Underlords, along with my thoughts about it. The first ten hours were overwhelming, but the bottom of the box might have appeared before I thought it would. It feels like I've seen nearly every viable unit combination, and the thought I'm putting in is giving me diminishing returns. It's entirely possible I'll have changed my mind again by the time I review the damn thing, though.
Matthew
I'm off to TennoCon this weekend, so not huge amounts of gaming time. Have downloaded Dandy Dungeon on my Switch (I loved the mobile version but was nobbled by micro-transactions) and hope to catch up on horror films on the flight - a five inch screen is the only way I can cope with them.
Nate
This weekend I'm going to be away at the seaside doing a family birthday thing, but you can bet you're bum I'll be up early on Saturday to ram in a few hours of Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 before I go. I can't let the Necrons down. I've also just realised that the old Stronghold games, which I thought for some reason I couldn't get on Steam, I... totally can get on Steam. So the Necrons might have to get in the queue while I build cool castles.
Ollie
I've recently discovered the delights of Baba Is You, so I think I'll be working to polish that off this weekend. Only the very best games can make you feel like such a fool and then such a genius, and this is definitely one of them.
Sin
Having spent the last week playing Moving House, New Job, and Secretly Plot Against Matt, I am looking forward to a weekend of figuring out how to buy furniture. I think I'm a proper person now? It is confusing. Also Graham has decided to test my claim that 'Chinese games are good actually': I will be playing Chinese Parents, which was recently translated to English and therefore now exists.
But you, dearest reader, what are you playing?
