This week in PC games: Call of Duty, Where Winds Meet, alien fungus, chess-playing queens and pareidolia

What we're feeding the Maw

November goes on. The cavalcade of belles, brutes and barons that is Videogaming continues its propulsion done the midnight forest. Spiderwebs wrapper the axles of the gala coaches successful which the optimates of Ubisoft, Microsoft and EA portion from lavender flutes, turning their bloodshot eyes from the QA unit powering their barrows done the ruck. The faces of the communal developers are a moth-eaten ribbon of quiescent striving and unspeakable hope. The guards signifier a torchlit embroidery. Every truthful often, a torch goes out, and the wych elms make caller fruits. The stones successful the roadworthy cant against our strides. The skulls of unrecorded work games burst beneath our wheels, and the analysts successful the pageant wagons moan that the aboriginal lies down america now.

Then, the woods retreat and we look among flowering graves and fallen buttresses - the remnants of a church. The wagons ellipse and cooking fires outpouring up successful the transepts, arsenic our scouts contemplate the mode forward. Five onward roads instrumentality retired from a rotten signpost, each named for a time of the week. Some assuredly pb to disaster. The scouts converse successful hisses and, failing to agree, crook to you for instructions. Which time bash we choose? Which way is safe?

Monday 10th November

The skies supra this way look to drip ambrosia, the nutrient of the gods, and yet the splashed ungraded beneath revolts with fungus. The birds creasing the frail sunlight are drill-tipped and the clouds look precise changeable. Our wayfinders murmur of a distant closed metropolis and an imprisoned queen.

Tuesday 11th November

Even arsenic we survey this road, our oldest scout - a one-eyed pistillate successful furs with a unit doubly her tallness - is possessed by the spirits of prog rockers, roused from the neglected graveyard. She regresses to a authorities of infancy, susceptible lone of chanting "all successful all, you're conscionable different artifact successful the wall."

Wednesday 12th November

A hard, bare road, and yet the banks are riddled with burrows (pictured) that look amazingly welcoming, with postage stamp doormats and tinklesome chimneys. The ghosts of Pink Floyd wantonness your moon-touched scout. Regaining her senses, she talks cryptically of a cardinal layers beneath wherever swords alert and clip stands still.

Thursday 13th November

This roadworthy is heavy torn and depleted by funny wheelmarks that talk of immoderate large contest, beyond the ken of our wagoneers. Their chevronned textures overlap to signifier the content - oregon is it much than fancy? - of wide eyes and chattering mouths.

Friday 14th November

Goblin winds tussle for dominion of this road, but we should possibly beryllium much disquieted astir the muzzle glints and skullfaces that populate the bushes. Sensing your consternation, the scouts suggest that we interruption for tea.

Does this monstrous wood person an outside? There are rumours up and down the bid that this is the last November, that the woods are expanding faster than we tin question done them, that the Maw's latest eruption volition beryllium endless. Still, support going. Think nary further than the adjacent footfall and the comrades astatine your elbow. Also, pls stock immoderate images, videos oregon lit you whitethorn cognize of that interest spooky forests. I americium reaching the extremity of my proviso of synonyms for "root".