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 Brill bus sim demo

Of all the Next Fest demos I tried last week none impressed me more than the one for ‘coming soon’ Bus Bound.

Emberville, the fictional US setting for this fetching, friendly offering, feels real in ways bus sim venues rarely do.

For me, the city’s varied architecture, plausible traffic, and plentiful pedestrians and parked cars make overlooking the trial’s relatively synthetic and sparse vehicular sound effects, easy. I particularly like touches such as the random lane blockages and umbrella-deploying passengers.

C is for Crikey!

The next (?) mobile wargame from Wirraway Software is a real head-turner. This unlisted YouTube video reveals Geoff ‘Sub Commander’ Ayres has ditched the code core common to Blitzkrieg Fire, Pacific Fire, and Red Fire in favour of a new Triassic/Eugen-style 3D engine.

D is for Digital Image Design not dead?

Fans of famously dynamic combat flight sims such as EF2000 and F-22 Total Air War should find the above video interesting. It appeared on a newish Digital Image Design YouTube channel last week, and suggests the folks behind this Twitter account weren’t talking out of their tailpipes when they teased “How about a flight sim like TFX, EF2000 or TAW – but better?” late last year.

E is for Early Accessible on November 13…

…Assetto Corsa Rally has to qualify as one of this year’s most exciting simulation announcements. Sedentary gravel sprayers have ten licensed cars to look forward to plus a feature new to rally simming – fully laser-scanned stages. Of course, tempting rides and unusually bumpy road surfaces will matter little if Italian outfit Supernova Game Studios fail to deliver in the physics department. However, with a respected engine at their disposal and Kunos Simulazioni as technical partners, there’s good reason for optimism.

F is for Foil Franco

If you like your hex wargames overwhelming and wearisome deliciously detailed, War in Spain 1936-39’s home page is worth a bookmark. The Joint Warfare Simulations project is to be published by Matrix Games and shares an engine with the notoriously dense War in the Pacific: Admiral’s Edition. Each hexagon in WITP spanned forty miles of battlefield. In WIS, the chicken wire will be five-mile gauge.

G is for Good news from Wargame Design Studio

In a bid to make its oeuvre more attractive and visually legible, WDS has purchased terrain graphics from the makers of Burden of Command, Greentree Games, and over a thousand vehicle models from a modelling concern called Wargame3D.

Squad Battles: Falklands has been used as a testbed for the new 3D sprites, and, to me, looks far prettier after its facelift.

H is for Halloween special

Have you ever experienced anything that could be described as paranormal, and, if you have, would you be willing to tell fellow Cornerites about it? If the answer is ‘yes’ then I’d really appreciate it if you’d send me, via an email (tim at tallyhocorner dot com), an account of your odd/unsettling/inexplicable experience by next Thursday. Assuming I get enough responses, THC will mark Halloween with a selection of thought-provoking non-fiction ‘ghost stories’.

I is for Iberia and Czechia

Exeter to Plymouth, Leipzig to Dresden, NYC to Dover, NJ… the standard edition of Train Sim World 6 shipped with a pretty unadventurous selection of routes. Happily, those with more exotic tastes do have third-party Czech and Portuguese add-ons to look forward to. Pictured above is Vector Simulations’ Liberec to Stará Paka project. Around 80km in length and predominantly rural in character, it will come with an appropriate DMU and diesel loco. One of the highlights of the 54km-long Lisbon to Setúbal from VirtuaVia360 should be traversing the Tagus River on the double-deck 25 de Abril Bridge.

J is for Josef K, train driver

The developer of one of my favourite first-person shooters is making a very strange train game. Judging by its unforgettable demo, Brno Transit will be weird, amusing and decidedly Kafkaesque. Brace yourself for claustrophobic working conditions, creepy colleagues and literal toilet humour.

K is for Keyboard-friendly flight sims

The latest Retro Dogfight podcast searchlights F-19 Stealth Fighter and F-117A Nighthawk, DOS siblings that, by the sound of it, are perfect for tablet-reliant and joystick-less simmers. As host Brian points out “If you’re dogfighting in these games, you’ve lost.”. Quality combat flight sims that don’t require a joystick? Sounds like a worthy subject for a future Friday feature.

L is for Lakeside ambush

In the six months since top-down Hannibal sim Carthage: Bellum Punicum was first mentioned on THC, developer Mindbyte has been busy. Recent vids show the game’s “living” supply system and organic borders in action, and provide tantalising glimpses of the historical battle selection.

M is for Moreish Morse tutor

A number of games have tried and failed to teach me Morse code over the years. Could Morse vs. Horse be the one that finally succeeds? The early signs are good. Behind this £4 title’s daft premise (“You have been sent into the past by the Morse Gods to show your ancestors the true path of enlightenment.”) and vintage visuals lurks a moreish blend of low-key Morse tuition and pressurised decision-making.

N is for Nazi nibbler

As I already own the marvelous Venturous, I’m not sure I need a second retro FPS teeming with Nazis. That said, surprisingly bulky* Darkenstein 3D is free, has garnered numerous glowing Steam reviews since releasing on Tuesday, and does come with a throwable rat.

* 18 GB!

O is for Ogaden War DLC

Wars Across The World is heading to tabletops. Avalon Digital is planning to convert four base game scenarios – Hamilkar 264, Bull Run 1861, Normandy 1944, and Six Days 1967 – into board games. Interestingly, the project’s Kickstarter page implies that the next add-ons for digital WATW will centre the Ogaden War and the Norman invasion of Sicily.

P is for Pulled punches

Anyone expecting to encounter detached limbs, protruding bones, and grisly burns in the Medic: Pacific War demo will be disappointed. Set during the attack on Pearl Harbour, the trial level isn’t short of carnage, but none of it turns your stomach or stops you in your tracks. Hopefully, the battlefields in the full game will be less linear and the dialogue less clumsy and common. A taciturn protagonist who shares his thoughts via inter-mission diary entries or letters might be unoriginal, but would, I think, have been preferable to the chatty hero happy to discuss, mid-battle, the demonisation of Japanese soldiers, we’ve ended up with.

Q is for Quick trade card

For obvious reasons, trade cards have never been big in the world of tinned veg. Quite how Lincolnshire firm Beulah’s delivered collectables such as this 1953 card to their customers, I couldn’t say. Tucked behind the label, perhaps. Introduced by the RAF in 1950, the Merlin-engined Boulton Paul Balliol was, according my copy of this Ray Sturtivant tome, a solid if demanding side-by-side trainer. Unusually, “aileron, elevator and rudder had to be retrimmed for every speed and power change” and students needed to be wary of potentially calamitous torque stalls: “When full power was abruptly applied from low revs at low speeds near a stalling configuration, the aircraft tried to revolve around the prop!”

R is for Refined AI

The latest Flashpoint Campaigns: Cold War dev diary describes some of the ways in which silicon COs have wised up since Southern Storm. More plausible retreats, more sophisticated formation movement, better use of fire support and choppers… the AI in FCCW sounds remarkably capable.

S is for Stalk and shadow

My latest Steam acquisition adds moving, collision-detecting vehicles to arguably the best drone piloting sim money can buy. Amongst other things, £3 Liftoff – Slipstream lets you pursue race cars, molest model aeroplanes, harry quarry trucks, and shadow Icelandic 4WDs. The fact that these wheeled and winged playmates don’t appear on replays and can’t be damaged has slightly dented the addition’s Steam reception.

T is for TLDR

Is it just me or would the latest Strategos demo benefit from a ‘terse tooltips’ option? I know the mesmerising scraps it serves up are pauseable, but I still feel the vital info contained in lengthy number-heavy combat predictions like this one (^) could be presented more elegantly.

U is for Understaffed

Late War, The Troop’s second piece of DLC, has more than one AFV in common with Bounce the Bogen. I can’t say more without spoiling 2025’s play-by-comment Combat Mission game – a game that could end badly for the Allies if more volunteer Comment Commanders don’t lend a hand. Several orderable units twiddled their thumbs last turn due to a lack of willing chaperones!

V is for Viral hit for ViewApp?

As ViewApp are based in Vienna and may well have attended this event, the following idea has probably already occurred to them. Use TramSim’s/City Transport Simulator’s engine and assets to create a bijou singleplayer and multiplayer Tram World Championship sim. Assuming it was executed and marketed well, and priced right, I reckon Tram Champion (working title) would have ‘viral hit’ written all over it.

W is for Winston the woodlouse

It didn’t take long for Isopod, the new release from the Queenslanders behind the well received Webbed, to get its mandibles into me. Plated protagonist, Winston, charms from the outset and seems to have, in the nefarious Fire Ant Conglomerate (comedy capitalists out to despoil the outback and enslave its invertebrate inhabitants) a splendid nemesis.

X is for Xcruciating wordplay

As Pure Bad Minton, an upcoming game in which you play a blunt porcelain expert on a British TV show about antiques, doesn’t have a demo or trailer yet, I’ve assigned this slot to Pure Badminton, a trialable sports sim due in December.

Y is for You’re the boss

A recently added ‘RTS mode’ gives Gunner, HEAT, PC! players total control over BLUFOR battle plans. Only available in ten scenarios at present, the additional powers mean you no longer have to vehicle hop in order to ensure friendly forces complement your preferred play style and mission approach. Nuanced, go code-linked waypoints can be added to the map at any time

Z is for Zurich, Zagreb, and Zaragoza, here we come

The strangest and most endearing virtual vehicle I’ve driven this month? Undoubtedly the straddle carrier in the Docked demo. One of three types of useable port plant in Sabre’s short but promising trial (you can also have a go on a ship-to-shore crane and a reach stacker) it turns on a sixpence thanks to all-wheel steering, and comes with a prototypical glass-floored cab that can be rotated to face forwards or sideways.

The dashboard screen doesn’t seem to be functional in sim, but lining up on straddled TEUs and FEUs isn’t hard with the help of the game’s external cameras and colour-coded spreader guides. Me and my colleague Roman have grown so fond of Docked’s lanky port porter we’ve hatched a plan to buy a real one secondhand, convert it into a camper van, then tour Europe. Some of our more negative friends think this scheme has fatal flaws. We shall see!