A is for Alphabetised wargame, sim, and site news. Now and again, assuming I can persuade Austerity’s Blackburn Cirrus Bombardier engine to perform the miracle of internal combustion, I spend a few days scouring Simulatia and Grognardia for stories with the potential to fascinate, startle, cheer, dismay or amuse. Those stories are then dehydrated, alphabetised and delivered, via articles like this one, to people who’ve got better things to do than plough through puff and platitudes.

B is for Be Britain’s eyes and ears

Air Defender, a £20 British-made and Britain-focused contemporary wargame available since Nov 28 in EA form, doesn’t pussy-foot when it comes to foe casting. The hostile power that will test your skills as the UK’s bunker-bound, radar and radio reliant Air Defence Commander is explicitly identified as Russia.

C is for Captain the Scharnhorst

Battleship Command, a ‘coming soon’ WW2 warship sim THC first covered in the summer of 23, is now flying a MicroProse ensign from its taffrail. The publisher’s most conspicuous contribution to the project thus far is commissioning the above trailer. It’s the work of J.P. Ferré, the chap behind many of DCS’s hottest sizzle reels.

D is for Do bonsai

The extraordinary Reentry left Early Access last month. To mark the occasion its creator, Petri Wilhelmsen, shared a wealth of information about the sim’s modest beginnings and bright Space Shuttle-shaped future via a couple of Ask Me Anything sessions. There were personal revelations too. For instance, asked about the challenge of managing such a large and complicated a project on his own, Petri revealed: “It’s hard to handle, but I’m a programmer. I cut everything into small pieces and I try to solve things one by one… But sometimes the entirety just overwhelms me, and I have a meltdown or demotivation and have to go out and sit in the sun and do bonsai for a month.”

E is for Electrical educator

I was asked to fix a faulty microscope this week. My electronics skills proved unequal to the task. Perhaps if I’d spent time with Electrician Simulator – a well-received 2022 sim that’s a mere 70p on GOG at the moment – I’d have had a better chance of bringing the electric embiggener back to life.

F is for Free driving lesson

As Biltur Simulator was designed to help Norwegians prepare for their driving tests, don’t be surprised if you figuratively and literally run into jaywalking moose while navigating its road network. Keen/curious motorists can expect a fair bit of options fiddling too. The default graphics and controller settings seem geared to driving school screens and peripherals rather than desktop gaming.

G is for Grouse more

By this time next week, fans of theHunter: Call of the Wild with cash to spare will be trampling heather and regiciding monarchs of the glen. I’m slightly concerned by the lack of Pinus sylvestris and rain in the above trailer. A stylised depiction of the highlands without dreich weather and traces of the Caledonian Forest? Almost unforgivable in my book.

H is for Ham and jam baguette

Due in Q1 2026 and Cottonbaler free, Burden of Command’s first DLC will explore the battle for Normandy from four different perspectives. As wargame devs seldom show any interest in the Maquis, the French Resistance scenario should feel particularly fresh.

I is for Industrial archaeology from ismaelkontrol

I spent part of yesterday evening exploring Argentina’s equivalent of Swindon Works. Made for Diesel Railcar Simulator by a railfan from Santa Fe de la Vera Cruz, and featuring over 200 custom assets and 50 kilometres of track, free add-on Laguna Paiva comes with a beautifully documented miniature rail tour that can either be manually driven or enjoyed as a passenger. Fingers-crossed the dedicated ismaelkontrol goes on to craft other bits of Argentina’s rail network for DRS.

J is for Jobs aplenty

I wasn’t expecting sim-calibre flight modelling from Skysavior Helicopter Services, a SimCopter homage Early Accessible since Monday, but I was hoping changing altitude would be a tad more involved than ‘press up key to ascend’ and ‘press down key to descend’. If Brazilian dev Raphael do Amaral de Albuquerque does ever implement more interesting aerodynamics, I’ll definitely return. The lively maps and variety of money-earning opportunities…

– Passenger transportation
– Cargo transportation
– Military transportation
– Prisoner transportation
– Organ transportation
– Medical evacuation
– Medical assistance
– Traffic clearance
– Reporting with the TV crew
– Fertilizer spraying
– Forest fire control
– Building fire control
– Vehicle fire control
– Protest dispersal
– Robbery suspect capture
– Accident victim rescue
– Rescue of swimmers on the high seas
– Interception and shooting down of unidentified flying objects

…guarantee it.

K is for Korking Korea trailer

L is for Lift locos

Unlike most of its peers, Physical Train doesn’t fudge the relationship between wheels and track. In this demoable Japanese train sim, physics and collision detection determine whether flanges stay on the inside of rails, and treads grip or slip. Derail and you must use a disemboomed crane to carefully set things straight.

Having rerailed PT’s diesel loco a few times with the aid of the floating golden hoist, I’m now convinced all rail sims should come with a similar gizmo.

M is for MicroProse sign Battlefield Commander

In the year since I dissected its demo, in addition to entering Early Access and gaining a publisher, Battlefield Commander WWII has benefited from a UI and LoS rethink, and embraced tactical pauses and hexagons (the latter regulate movement on the campaign map). Recent Steam comments and reviews suggest it’s still no 3D Close Combat, but have convinced me to take another look. Expect some second impressions before the year is out.

N is for Napoleonics next

The promising images and video on Grand Tactician: Napoleonic Wars’ Steam page suggest Grand Engineer Corps’ next release will be more focused on battlefield action than its predecessor. If true, the shift suits me just fine. I found the managerial aspects of campaigning in the Grand Tactician: The Civil War a tad overwhelming.

O is for Overshadowed officer sim?

The more nuanced and colourful All Quiet In The Trenches becomes, the harder it may prove for rival Great War officer sim Acceptable Losses to generate sales. Trialable right now, JaugerPlays’ effort does at least have the nattier moniker.

P is for Panzers in Pooh country

I wonder if the latest SGS title, Sealion, sims the disruptive antics of British Auxiliary Units. Operating from concealed underground chambers in occupied England, these stay-behinds would have plagued the enemy’s rear echelons had German forces gained a foothold in Britain during WW2. Recruited from the ranks of the Home Guard and sworn to secrecy, they were closer in ability, motivation, and weaponry to the Commandos than the bumbling OAPs of Croft and Perry’s well-known sitcom.

Q is for Quick fag card

Number 28 in ‘International Air Liners’, a 50-card set issued by John Player & Sons in 1936, shows a CANT Z.506 Airone. The Heron has two WW2 claims to fame. It was the largest seaplane employed by any of the conflict’s participants and almost certainly the only aircraft type to be involved in an aerial hijack during the war. As this account of the incident explains, the hijackers were swashbuckling Australian aviators on their way to captivity on the Italian mainland.

R is for Reassurance

Anyone dismayed by General Staff: Black Powder’s painfully slow gestation shouldn’t give up hope just yet. A recent (Nov 30) Steam forum post from coder DisKoBAT suggests work on Ezra Sidran’s pièce de résistance continues:

“Hey everyone, we hear your frustration and we understand. When a project goes quiet, it’s easy to feel like it’s stalled out or drifting. I just want to reassure you that development is still moving forward. The silence hasn’t been from lack of work, it’s been because every bit of time we’ve had has gone straight into actually building the game.

The engine change mentioned above wasn’t us “chasing shiny things,” it was because Microsoft discontinued XNA long after the project had already begun. That forced a pretty major shift so we could keep the game future-proof and actually get it across the finish line. Not ideal, but necessary.

Schedules have been insane on our side too, life, work, and the project itself and we didn’t want to push out half-baked updates that say nothing. But I completely get how that looks from the outside. You deserve communication, and that’s on us to improve. The bottom line: the project isn’t abandoned, not even close. Progress is happening, and a proper update is coming. We appreciate everyone who’s hung in there with us, you haven’t been forgotten.”

S is for Sorry, Battleplan

A retro FPS/hunting sim bender sparked by Hunting Unlimited 3 and Killing Time: Resurrected and prolonged by the monstrously moreish Outlaws has meant I’ve barely touched the Battleplan preview code kindly supplied by Slitherine. Over the weekend I plan to swap six-shooters for map crayons (in Battleplan you draw movement orders and target areas directly onto maps) and find out if Foolish Mortals’ latest offering is as fresh, interesting, and playable as their last. I’ll share my conclusions next Friday.

T is for Tussle for trenches

YouTube historian and Ukraine War humanitarian volunteer Thomas Turek has produced his first wargame. You can learn how to play The Infanterist, a free browser-based diversion that boils WW1 trench warfare down to the bare essentials, by watching this vid. There appears to be a technical issue at present (order menus refuse to show up for me) but as dragging-and-dropping units works, victories are still possible.

U is for Unimproved?

Cleared Hot is another title sidelined by my recent shooter binge. When I do eventually get round to trying it, I hope I won’t find that No Knowing Corp’s paean to Desert Strike has inherited two of the demo’s more questionable characteristics, unintuitive strafing and disheartening difficulty spikes.

V is for Vie over Venice and Vukovar

The news that a Balkans map centred on the former Yugoslavia and the Adriatic, and incorporating significant chunks of Hungary, Italy, and Austria, is in the pipeline hasn’t excited the entire DCS community. Understandably, those disappointed by the quality of OnReTech’s last offering, Sinai, are wondering if the studio’s next – due in 2026 – will be finished to a similar standard.

W is for What might have been

This fascinating essay on alternate history in literature and gaming probably won’t introduce you to any video games you’ve not encountered before, but it could influence your reading choices over the festive period. Thanks to Wargame Design Studio, Kingsley Amis’s The Alteration and Jo Walton’s Farthing are now on my Christmas list.

X is for X factor

There’s the germ of something special in Lions in the Trenches, a new single-map, browser-based WW2 squad-level wargame. Utilizing hexagons but cold-shouldering turns, AdeptusCat aims to convey “the confusion of World War II infantry combat”. With game speed controls, overhauled graphics, offensive AI, and more battlefields, I reckon LIIT could go places.

Y is for You’d struggle to find…

…a wargame dev more passionate about their subject-matter than Jean Marciniak. The chap behind the Strategy Wargamer channel has decided to turn his life-long passion for the American War of Independence into something playable. Although The Glorious Cause, an ambitious two-layer project with diplomatic, political and economic elements, is still a long way off, an £8 tactical prototype inspired by Civil War Generals 2 and focused on the Battle of Trenton is available right now through Patreon.

Z is for Zeppelins

Since IL-2 Sturmovik: BoS’s 6.107 update dropped in mid November, Flying Circus owners have been able to torch titanic Teutonic airships. The patch also enriched the Western Front map with new cities (Mons, Namur, Aachen, Verviers, Maastricht, Brussels, Charleroi, and others) and railway stations, and sprinkled Paris with additional landmarks such as the Arc de Triomphe and the Trocadero Palace.