This week in PC games: Hobbits, gigahorses, internet fixers, ninjas, hellships, junkbots and window cleaners

This week’s big news is that Graham is leaving RPS. Graham, the rock upon which all of our bullshit is built. Graham, the last link to Treehouses gone by. We shall not see his like again. Expect supernatural calamities in keeping with such a terrible loss: rains of frogs, Atari reinventing Pong as a 100 hour gacha RPG, mass hysteria. Still, the wheel of releasing cranks on. Here’s what’s new in PC games this week.

Monday 28th July

• Fumes is that Mad Maximalist open world vehicular combat game that looks a bit like Micro Machines. Such adorably chubby doof wagons.
• Primal Planet casts you as a small family of primordial humans fighting dinosaurs, UFOs and rival tribes in side-scrolling metroidvania format.

Tuesday 29th July

• Grounded 2 is here with another helping of very small people building houses out of compost and having turf wars with ants.
• Tales of the Shire (pictured) is about slightly less small people building houses out of rustic wallpaper patterns and striving to wow their neighbours with soup.
• Day Of The Shell is a turn-based tactics-me-do set in a shattered, flooded world that reminds me of Bastion, somewhat.

Wednesday 30th July

• Sky The Scraper is a window-cleaning game with a nonsensical name. And a life sim element, because even window cleaners take days off now and then.
• Morgan: Metal Detective is a metal-detecting game, set on a Cornish island.
• Gold Gold Adventure Gold is a colony builder in which you help out dungeon-delving heroes or feed them to your pet godbeast. Dungeon Village X Black & White, perhaps.

Thursday 31st July

• Tower Networking Inc is a game about managing internet services for residences and businesses scattered across “an ever-expanding randomly generated tower”. Good lord, the sicko factor of this.
• Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is a flatpacked pixelart take on Team Ninja’s venerable shinobi-shanking series.
• Mashina is a curious junkyard mining fable from Judero developer Jack King-Spooner.
• Hell Galaxy is an open world space shooter with an enticing dollop of body horror. FAO Homeworld Cataclysm enjoyers, maybe.
• Heartworm is Silent Evil or Resident Hill, “a reverent evolution of 90’s survival horror” that splices fixed cameras with an over-the-shoulder perspective.
• Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Friday 1st August

• Ikarus Parkour is a 3D tower-climber with sheeny gameshow environments. Given the title reference, surely the appropriate way to complete this game is to fall and die? It’s not clear whether you can craft yourself some waxen wings.

What are RPS’s assorted scribes, scalliwags and scumbags doing this week? Well, Brendy is practising a mixture of ninjitsu and cleanliness. James aims to bring down a building or two. Mark has his eye on a Sicilian enterprise, assuming code comes in. I’ve got some interview pieces in the offing that are as interesting as they are tiring.

Finally, what are you doing this week? Aside from making lamentation over Graham’s departure.