The Queue: that time of year again

This Queue was going to be about something else, but this morning as I walked out my front door, I was quite forcibly reminded that there is, in fact, a season in between Humid Swamp and Spooky Pumpkins Season. It is, in fact, currently Joro Spider season — though I guess that could be filed under Spooky Season.. I’ve been knocking down the little webs all summer, but now the survivors are back with a vengeance. And I thought I hated the winter doldrums.

This is The Queue, our daily column where you ask us questions and we’ll give you some answers just as soon as we get off the phone with the UGA entomology department extension.

I’m not sure how many people use it for its actual intended purpose, of not making the game unplayable with all these teeny creepy skittery nerubians everywhere. Surely some people do.

However, I’ve heard a lot of people saying that they use it because crabs everywhere just makes everything a little bit funnier, and I can really respect that. And let’s be honest, it does.

It’s funny because I always thought that Brann was one of the more — how do I put this euphemistically — boring-er members of the Explorers League. He has a rep as being kind of bumbling in his methods, in the way early real-life explorers were. He just doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into, but then, how would he if he’s one of the first people to see what he’s seeing in several generations?

I think we’ve already palled around with Reno Jackson enough in WoW, but Travis Willingham gave him enough of a personality that I’d be willing to give this pop culture reference another go. But who I’d really like to see and hang out with is Elise Starseeker. In just the small glimpses we’ve seen of her, both in WoW and her roles in Hearthstone, she’s a remarkably well-rounded character. In what we already know, there are a ton of symbols and touchstones associated with her, but also I’d love to see her official lore expanded, too.

Not only is she so legendary a mapmaker that for a while she was just known as The Cartographer, but she also spent a lot of time leading the Junior Explorers (into Un’goro, but who’s counting). I would love to see more out of her. Would she include the player as one of her Junior Explorers — all of whom are more savvy and experienced than the player, under Elise’s tutelage — in a delve? Would her sister Aranna make an appearance? Would her rep for being a great cartographer lead enemies to her (by following her maps)? Would she give me a merit badge (and associated achievement) for completing a Delve with her? She would just be a really fun choice.

My all-time biggest minion in Hearthstone Battlegrounds was a 4193/4229 Geomagus Roogug last season. I miss him a lot, but with the current state of play with trinkets, I completely understand why he got yoinked. I also appreciate that Quilboar have a much broader playstyle than just “get this one guy or die midgame” now. Now, it’s “get one of these two specific Trinkets or die midgame” and I really appreciate that.

I think the obvious answer here is to scroll the Steam Transportation Sale and more or less throw a dart at it (just to be clear: not literally) and play what you land on.

For you, I want to say Star Trucker, but it feels a wee bit Early Access-y to fully recommend at this point. Some of the issues I’ve experienced during gameplay don’t really have a workaround — if you alt+tab for too long, the game can ‘lose’ your truck’s location by a couple hundred meters, and this frequently ends in catastrophic collisions, which then means your bank account is circling the drain in a really unfun way. Of course, any game that has a tycoon angle frequently winds up being an unintentional allegory on the dangers of capitalism, but that’s a subtext for a different thread. The gameplay loops are fun (to me, even the onerous truck maintenance loop is a fun new level of complexity over other trucking sims) and for the most part the physics and feel of driving is phenomenal, but the metagame is crushing. But I think you’ll end up liking it a lot in a couple months, after one, maybe two rounds of tuning and bug fixes.

And also, because I know you and Red are both fiends for “choices matter”-style games, I’ll take this opportunity to point out that the people behind the narratives for some of the fan favorite earlier games from Pixelberry finally coalesced into a new studio. They don’t have anything even wishlistable yet, but I’m keeping an eye emoji on Candlelight Games. Also, Space Colony Studios crossed my Bluesky feed this morning and same. I was gonna link it to you in our fabulous Discord, but why not wait.