Been a digital wargamer since the days of Computer Bismarck and Stonkers? Able to spot a John Tiller game in a blizzard at a hundred paces, and distinguish Panzer Corps from Order of Battle by the slightly different tracks they leave on damp Normandy beach sand? You should do well in the inaugural Tally-Ho Corner Grog Test. The fifty-question quiz below is designed to test genre familiarity rather than tactical nous or knowledge of war and weaponry.
Inconspicuous unit sprites did the recent Steel Company demo no favours. Happily, Gyr Software have listened to the lamenters. In the latest preview build of their pantherine WW2 TBT, warriors and vehicles sport bold outlines and natty NATO symbol icons. Now that battlefields are easy to read, I’ve fought several scraps from start to finish, and realised SC has quality in spades.
Abandoning Sally, my ATS Mustang Fastback, even for a few hours this weekend, required considerable willpower, but somehow I managed it. Trading the Great Plains for New Jersey and sunny contemporary highways for snowy Eighteenth Century battlefields, I gave Early Access The Glorious Cause a swift whirl. What I discovered was an approachable hex wargame with scant scenarios and some rough edges, but no shortage of atmosphere and momentum.
A is for Airfield anarchy. Compared to hunting scurrying infantrymen in Ukrainian Fight Drone Simulator, Spiderweb-ing parked Tu-95s and Tu-22s is a piece of cake. The PC’s most realistic military drone sim gained a recreation of the SBU’s 2025 masterstroke last week. More “immersive epics” – playable reconstructions of notable drone ops – are in the works.
Most games that irk Seth, my inner rural realism pedant, do it with dodgy flora or agriculture. Slow Roads, a relaxing £6 driving diversion from Topograph Interactive, does it primarily with questionable fencing. Good luck finding a Street View-able spot in the English Peak District where post and rail fencing like this (↑) flanks the road.
Front-page handkerchief knot: Remember to use the delightful Glider Sim Deluxe for the next Tally-Ho Corner tour! Since I first encountered it, Joey Sipos’s fuselage-free flight sim has undergone five years of Early Access tweaking and gained a feature that makes it perfect for virtual peregrinations.
Roman and I enjoyed our Medway Meander so much we decided to linger in The Garden of England for a few more days. One of the byproducts of this extension is the following ‘missing vowels’ foxer.
Great news! In the brief window before AI steals all our jobs, overheats the planet, and 3D-prints the armada of virus-carrying drones that destroys mankind, it’s going to make some corking computer wargames. While Cyprus 1974 isn’t, strictly speaking, ‘corking’, it is an eye-opening example of the kind of conflict sims that machines are already capable of producing.