Hello, and welcome to quasi-autumn! Heretical adherents of meteorological autumn will tell you that we are now in leaftime. They are, as the name suggests, heretics. Astronomical autumn doesn't start until the 22nd, and are you honestly telling me you're done with summer? This summer? This short summer? I do like autumn with its crinkles and cocoa and cardigans, but don't you take time away from precious summer. I'll swap you December 1st-21st for these three weeks, you can extend autumn out the back if you must. Oh, but in the meantime, please do tell me what you're playing this weekend.

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Might And Delight of Shelter series fame were planning to launch their tiny MMORPG Book Of Travels in early access at the end of August. Unfortunately, they ran into some gnarly bugs during their beta and had to delay launch without picking a new date. They've still not firmly announced one, but M&D have explained just what's holding up Book Of Travels and reassured folks that the team is actually pretty close to squashing the worst issues. Launch is "not as far off as some of you have been speculating," they say.

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Hero shooter sequel Overwatch 2 doesn't have a release date yet. Some folks will be getting their hands on it next spring though, so perhaps it isn't all that far off. Blizzard plan to start the next season of competitive play for the Overwatch League in April of next year, they've confirmed. They've also mentioned that the season will be played using an "early build" of Overwatch 2.

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The Sims 4 has gotten a heck of a lot of DLC game packs and expansions over the years and now Maxis are going back to give some extra love to one of them. One of the earliest game packs, from back in 2015, was Spa Day which added things like yoga, meditation, and massages. Maxis have doubled down on the relaxation with new wellness aspirations, the ability to earn money in wellness gigs, and, for the first time, actual nail art. Here's everything that's being added to the pack, and some bits for the base game, next week.

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Empathy overdrive adventure Life Is Strange: True Colors is headed to launch next week and hey, Deck Nine have shared some more gameplay. If you don't know yet how you feel about this next narrative choice game, come and take a look. Supernaturally gifted 20-something Alex Chen knows a thing or two about hearing and influencing emotions. She may just convince you that you're psyched about her move out to small townsville. The first 15 minutes of the game show off introductions to several characters, the first six choices Alex has to make, and the ridiculously pretty Haven Springs.

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Today is another Bandcamp Friday, a monthly event where the DRM-free music store waives its cut of sales to put more cash in artists' pockets. It's a good day to buy music! But which music? Plenty of video game soundtracks are on Bandcamp, so you can go looking for your faves. Me, I can offer a few tips for music that's kinda video game music but not necessarily, music that's inspired by games or even recorded inside games. But please, do share your hot reccies (recommendations) with us all too.

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Earlier this week the internet's friends at IGN provided the first look at some of the cast of the upcoming Resident Evil: Welcome To Raccoon City film. These images have been much discussed in the intervening days based on how much the cast look like/have the correct haircuts of the original video game cast, but I'm here to give the definitive verdict: I think they look pretty good and their hair is lovely, actually.

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Despite it forming a sizeable portion of my favourite games ever, I don't play all that much interactive fiction. It's a strange realm of games. It asks very little, and yet is also sort of hard to get into.

Blackout: The Darkest Night is a "choose your own adventure" style piece with some light jigsaw puzzles. Where even some of my favourites took a bit of time and focus to draw me in, Blackout grabbed me before I was even sure what it was.

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Earlier this week, Brendan "Playerunknown" Greene of Plunkbat fame announced that he would be leaving PUBG Corp parents Krafton to found a new studio called Playerunknown Productions. Today, Greene has posted a video explaining a bit about the studio's first project called Prologue—first teased back in 2019. It will launch first as a tech demo about surviving in a procedurally generated wilderness, Greene says, and it'll also be "a chance to look at what we've accomplished by leveraging machine learning" for huge open worlds. Greene has explained more about Prologue today, with more information coming soon.

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Tickets please, folks. No ticket? That's okay, you can buy one for £3000. Yes, that is a single. A return is £12 million. Listen, that's just how much trains cost in England now. No? Suit yourself, if you really think you can enjoy all the gilded luxury of the London to Brighton service through the magic of video games, be my guest, but I don't believe you can. Games will never replicate the thrill of dipping into your pension to stand in a virulent, low-energy mosh pit for two hours. Not even these 10 best trains in PC games can simulate that. All aboard!

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