Demo Disc

A minute’s silence in memory of the demo disc, if you please. Coup de grâced by broadband, the wafer of wonders* that once clung limpet-like to the front cover of almost every games mag is no more. Denied these monthly mix tapes, the gamer of today is, I reckon, less inclined to reconnoitre and genre-flit than their predecessor. Because in 2022 you rarely find yourself installing kite flying sims, apian Settlers clones, and puzzle games inspired by Underground Railroad quilts, out of boredom-tinged curiosity, there’s less chance of unlikely love affairs blossoming.

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Friday Foxer #56

Every Friday at 1300 hours, Tally-Ho Corner’s cleverest clogs come together to solve a ‘foxer’ handcrafted by my sadistic chum and colleague, Roman. A complete ‘defoxing’ sometimes takes several days and usually involves the little grey cells of many readers. Don’t be shy. All are welcome to participate.

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Solo Foxer #55

Unlike the formidable Friday foxers, the Monday kind are designed with lone truth sleuths in mind. While Roman, my Chief Foxer Setter, would be very interested to know how long it takes you to defox today’s brainteaser, he requests that the comments section isn’t used to share solutions or drop hints.

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Dublin Sinks and Rises

Fairly static, decidedly lopsided, and certain – in a purely military sense – to fail, the Easter Rising doesn’t, on the face of it, look like a promising subject for a traditional computer wargame. Mix in an AI famed for its flakiness, and the prospect of compelling combat choreography seems remote indeed. I approached the latest Wars Across The World adjunct the way a statistician approaches a scratchcard. Finding something so rewarding under the thin layer of foil was a very pleasant surprise.

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Friday Foxer #55

Every Friday at 1300 hours, Tally-Ho Corner’s cleverest clogs come together to solve a ‘foxer’ handcrafted by my sadistic chum and colleague, Roman. A complete ‘defoxing’ sometimes takes several days and usually involves the little grey cells of many readers. Don’t be shy. All are welcome to participate.

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Escape & Evasion Game Jam 2022

A premature launch, a tight deadline, and scant aftercare did last year’s game jam no favours, hence this re-run. Hoping to get a few more submissions this time, I once again invite readers of a creative bent to sharpen their HBs, blow the dust off their GameMaker installs, and don their brainstorming tam o’ shanters. Starting today, you have eighty days in which to design, craft, and submit an earthbound ‘flight sim’ – a singleplayer board or computer game with escape at its core.

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Solo Foxer #54

Unlike the formidable Friday foxers, the Monday kind are designed with lone truth sleuths in mind. While Roman, my Chief Foxer Setter, would be very interested to know how long it takes you to defox today’s brainteaser, he requests that the comments section isn’t used to share solutions or drop hints.

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Tim’s Tipped Ten

As the cost of living is currently rising like Sky Goldscope, the Eurasian skylark that smashed the 100, 200 and 400 metre vertical ascent records at the last Avian Olympics, I won’t start the year with an exhaustive list of every promising PC wargame and sim due in 2022 – it would be too dispiriting. I’ll limit today’s overview to the ten titles I predict will tug on purse strings most insistently during the coming twelve months.

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