The Queue: Spiders

While we deal with this blazing heat, one creature seems completely unphased. I’ve been knocking down joro spider webs on a near-daily basis for nearly a month. Right now they’re tiny little babies, about the size of a tic-tac. And yet each one of my tomato cages alone plays host to a half dozen or more, every time.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us the questions and we’re really, really grateful for the crab filter.

In a word, ugh.

I’m not sure that’s technically a word, but you get it.

While the teetering balance between the creative process versus commercialism and selling out has been a delicate one since creative process was invented, it seems like this has codified across all media at once. Though the summer blockbuster has been a thing for a while, it’s sharpened by the few outliers who took a risk. If that risk proves popular, they become a genre onto themselves as people swoop in to try to claim that success. We see it in modern novels with Sarah J. Maas and Romantasy, with the growth of the Vampire Survivor-like or Metroidvanias or Soulslikes, with Lin-Manuel Miranda suddenly writing music for Disney movie after Disney movie off the success of Hamilton.

And sure, there are fun, kooky, deliciously weird little indies out there if you look. That’s part of why I go so feral for titles like Pacific Drive. It’s ambitious, it’s offbeat, and it uses its quirkiness as an actual gameplay feature. While I doubt many of the indies I wishlist will be that same sort of lightning in a bottle, I gotta keep them on the radar just for trying it, you know?

No. But think about it a bit more.

There are nine core classes, plus two more added on later for ratings. There is a feeling of being in a particular place in time, a simpler place — you know, back in 2014 — but still with a bit of layered complexity. Most importantly, Hearthstone itself melds together several unique but similar game types under one umbrella, and frequently deals with the realities and growing pains of that unity.

Hearthstone is The Brady Bunch. And yes, the beach expansion is definitely an element.

Deathwing is pretty obviously the worst, since he like, murdered a lot of them, psychological torture the rest.

For best, I’m going with Edwin VanCleef. He raised his daughter as a single father, and rather than punting her toward foster figures and tutors, he clearly spent a ton of time with Vanessa. He imparted not only his knowledge of roguecraft and poisons, but a strong moral compass based in the struggles of the proletariat. Even though he was murdered by uh, someone, when she was relatively young, she kept all those lessons close to her heart, and they served her well enough to thrive as a young woman.

There’s a bit of a difference between where I would like to go, and where I’d probably actually go. I really want to say something like a new little beachfront villa in Tanaris, or a cozy little cabin in Grizzly Hills. However, given my usual travel companions, especially the littlest one who is obsessed with trains, probably the Deeprun Tram. Maybe split the difference with a day trip from Grizzly Hills to Ulduar.

All these festivals over the past couple weeks kinda smeared together for me, so I forgot (a bit) which game came from which event. As such, I was surprised that my overall sleeper favorite seems to be from Summer Game Fest, and doesn’t actually have a Steam page — Grave Seasons, from Blumhouse Games. It’s Stardew Valley, if Stardew had a murder mystery in the middle of its cozy little farm life. Or Graveyard Keeper without the weirdo isekai occult framing device.

Anyway, that’s probably a good note to end on. See you all next week!