We're returning to Monkey Island in Return to Monkey Island.

True autumn lovers know you need to pace yourself. We have three months to fill with activities.You can't go all in on the pumpkin carving and apple cider guzzling as soon as the calendar says it's technically fall. It's a marathon, not a sprint.

So, this weekend, I'll be eating big warm bowls of pumpkin chili and playing games under three or four layers of blankets. But, I'm keeping Gilmore Girls under glass in case there's a emergency later in the season. That also means that I haven't gotten started on my seasonal fall games. The rest of TheGamer staff hasn't either by the looks of it. This week, we're returning to Monkey Island, checking out the NieR: Automata port on Switch, and trying some old 3D platformers. Most surprisingly, for maybe the first time ever, there isn't a single Yakuza game on this list.

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We’re in that small portion of the year when it’s so cold that you need to be covered in blankets all the time, but it hasn’t been cold for long enough that the heat is on in your building. That means this weekend I’ll be burying myself underneath quilts and comforters and making some serious progress in Triangle Strategy. But, I’ve also been on a 3D platformer trip at the moment — which coincides with me reading through Jumping for Joy: The History of Platform Games by Chris Scullion — so I’ll also be playing some classics in one of the genre that I missed the first time around: Spyro: Ripto’s Rage and Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus.

I’ve been playing through a little game called ADACA for an Indie Spotlight piece, and it’s a treat. The visuals have that cartoonish simplicity to them, with flat colours and smoothed details, while the gameplay is floaty and physics-based with intricate set pieces like a train you can jump on to skip a whole area. It’s all very reminiscent of Half-Life 2 - you even have a permanently-equipped gravity gun gadget for your left hand, letting you hurl cabinets at zombified androids while gunning down cops in a dystopian police state. I’ve found myself partial to its SPAS-12 equivalent, sending baddies flying down corridors in one pump while guarding myself with a well-positioned box, suspended in the air as I run about.

We’re about to hit monsoon season for games, when triple-A titles fall from the sky and splat down hard on the meagre leaves we use for shelter. Ahead of that, I want to get some 2022 games scratched off my list, so I’m diving into Return to Monkey Island. I don’t like the art style and the humour is as grating as it is amusing, but hopefully it picks up a little the more it goes on.

Covid decided to come back to me for round two, so I've had plenty of time to play this week. Unfortunately, my hands cramped up after five minutes with Cyberpunk 2077, so I'm fairly limited on what I can do. Thankfully, I've found that Outer Wilds is perfect for quarantining. It's slow paced enough not to give me muscle pain over my entire body, and chill enough to play while drowning in brain fog. And better yet, if I do muck up and die, it's no big deal. I think there's a reason timeloop games took over the industry while we were ill - we don't want to be facing any in-game consequences while we have coughing fits to contend with.

I’m hosting my daughter’s first birthday party this weekend, so games aren’t exactly top of my agenda. That said, I’ll likely spend my evenings playing narrative RPG Roadwarden, which is really hitting that fantasy spot for me at the moment. It’s like sitting down with a good book, except the book has no hero and you feel guilty about every conversation you have. Still, it’s beautifully written and tempting me into starting another playthrough of Disco Elysium.

It’s Valkyrie Elysium for me. I’m already a fair few hours in, and the weather is going to be terrible, so it’s a good opportunity to hide under a duvet and crack on with getting as far as I can. I’ve been waiting for the return of the Valkyrie series for quite some time now, as for me the combination of Square RPG and Norse mythology is just right up my street. I’m somewhat sad that Lenneth was delayed, as I’d probably have played that first, but I’m looking forward to seeing how it makes the transition to a more action-oriented game in a fully 3D world.

I grew up with point-and-click adventure games, The Secret of Monkey Island in particular. I mean, there were tons of others like Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, but The Secret of Monkey Island was kind of the king among them. The upshot is that for most of this weekend, I’m planning on playing a ton of Return to Monkey Island. The game has been raking in good reviews and I’ve heard all sorts of great things, making Return to Monkey Island a no-brainer for me. The time has finally come to click on everything in sight just to see if something happens.

Gonna be a lot going on this weekend. I’m still into New World, but I also want to play FIFA Ultimate Team to smash my mate Ross (we played 300 games against each other during the fabled Lockdown), as well as continue my journey into the perfect gameplay loop that is Dome Keeper. Thankfully, it’s looking like a rainy weekend, so I’m not sure what else I’m meant to do.

Lord help me, this weekend, October 1st, in this, the year of our Lord 2022, I’ll be playing Watch Dogs. Not the newest one, Legion, not 2 which a lot of people say is actually really good, but the original that disappointed everyone. It’s actually alright if you ignore most of it and just play the campaign missions. Look, why am I trying to justify myself to you? I don’t know you and you don’t know me. I’m having fun, I think.

I’m juggling a few Switch games at the moment. I have Return to Monkey Island to finish, I’ve just started photographing weird monsters in Penko Park, and I really must make more progress in Triangle Strategy. But I’ll probably just play another 20 hours of Nier: Automata, which has been given the quality Switch port it deserves.

Somehow despite only just getting back from EGX, I’m already back on the road. Thankfully this time only for a day and there will be no airports for me to get trapped in for 12 hours. I have been giving my Steam Deck a lot of love the last few weeks and I think my Switch is getting jealous, so this week I am finally going to dive into Kirby and The Forgotten Land and I’m also taking a look at the physical version of Dicey Dungeons on Switch, which I haven’t played since it first released in 2019 and apparently has a lot more content in it now.

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Andrew King is a Features Editor at TheGamer. He has been working as a journalist since 2016 and is a museum caretaker in his spare time. He loves immersive sims, RPGS, and David Lynch movies.