A is for American Revolutionary War released. The bibliography for the game I’m working on, currently consists of four tomes. I’ll need to pull my socks up if I wish to out-swank ARW’s ‘recommended reading’ list. Mike Cox, the lead designer of Wargame Design Studio’s latest offering, name-checks over 150 books in his extensive design notes!
WDS believe ARW to be “the defining work on this topic” – a claim unlikely to cheer Jean Marciniak, the developer of work-in-progress The Glorious Cause.
I imagine there’s a fair bit of nervous excitement in the WDS camp right now. In a few hours’ time, the studio wades across a retail Rubicon it has avoided for years. Wisely, the inheritors and enhancers of John Tiller’s oeuvre have chosen one of their most colourful recent hex-em-ups, Sword and Siege Crusades: Book I, as their initial Steam release.
B is for Bugged boots
The arrival of capable Type IX subs should have been a cause for celebration in the UBOAT community. Instead, messageboards have been dominated by dismay and dissatisfaction since the DLC dropped on Friday. Although incompatible mods seem to be the cause of many apparent bugs, perusing the febrile Steam forum over breakfast, it seems a vanilla install is no guarantee of problem-free patrols.
C is for Cederic creates
I’m not the only Cornerite who’s been having a bash at game design of late. THC reader and self-confessed ‘vibe coder’ Cederic has, with prodigious help from AI, produced a startlingly diverse range of game prototypes over the last few months.
His playable experiments include Last Light Deluxe, an eight-turn end-of-the-world TBS, Street Guns, a “grimy turn-based artillery duel on a live street map”, and Bobsleigh Blitz, a faux-3D bobsleigh sim (“We were well overdue a bobsleigh game so I asked the AI to write one, expecting a quick arcade blast. It started researching the International Bobsleigh & Skeleton Federation rules and building a gravity and friction engine, factoring in centrifugal momentum. The result is an actual sim which my sim-racing friend beats me on.”).
Soon purchasable on Steam, PhotoBricks, the project Cederic is most proud of and has put the most work into, is a moreish Pong-like that can turn pictures on your PC into bricked-up arcade challenges.
