“Not Human”
Here in Bramley End, we celebrate Halloween in the traditional Wiltshire way. We hood the local goats, do the Broom Dance on the village green, then retire to the pub to sup ale and recount spooky experiences. Over the years…
Tag friday feature
A2Z
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…
Flashpoint Campaigner: Robert Crandall interviewed
Very few people in the world of computer wargame design have been concocting conflicts sims commercially for as long as Robert Crandall of On Target Simulations. Although the father of the chaos-embracing Flashpoint Campaigns series is busy putting the finishing…
War Law (How well do you know the Geneva Conventions?)
Computer wargames and combat sims are dab hands at history dissemination and tactical instruction, but how well do they teach the rules of war? Let’s find out. Beyond the break are twenty questions designed to test your knowledge of International…
Dusty but Trusty: Steel Fury
It’s rare but not unknown for the work of one studio to appear on two Stone Tablets – the A4-sized sandstone slabs upon which my personal ‘Top Fives’ in various game genres are engraved. Graviteam, for example, feature on both…
Rat Run (Part 2)
When I put down my microphone last Friday we were just about to plunge into Shildon Tunnel. In Locomotion, the Dr Who script I’m almost ready to pitch to the BBC, navvies digging this hill hole in 1840 unwittingly rouse…
Words from a Wildebeest (Mark Judd interviewed)
When Mark Judd began self-publishing, indie game developers were as rare as hen dentists. After a lengthy hiatus, the chap behind pleasingly physical diversions such as Detonate*, X-Sail, and Vertigo has returned to the fray recently with a new instalment…
Rat Run (Part 1)
Few parts of the UK have had such a profound impact on the world as the mineral-rich corner of North-East England I’ve picked as the venue for this Tally-Ho Corner rail tour. A pioneering rail network conceived and constructed two…
Bounce the Bogen (THC’s latest play-by-comment Combat Mission game begins today)
It’s early April 1945 and, a week or so after ‘bouncing the Rhine’, the Western Allies reach another watery obstacle, the Bogen river. At Mannsfeld a few gung ho US AFVs manage to barrel across the bridge before it is…
Interview with an Icelander (Dig In designer Baldvin Albertsson fills in some holes)
Reykjavíkian dev Baldvin Albertsson doesn’t simply want to make an entertaining WWI game, he wants to make a thought-provoking and insightful one. In the following Q&A the ex-actor and theatre director describes some of the ways in which upcoming management game…
Maximum fog-of-war (A Q&A with a blind wargamer)
If you frequent certain forums at Matrix Games, Subsim, and Reddit you may have come across posts written by today’s interviewee, ‘BlindGuyNW’. As his online handle suggests, Zack wargames by ear and touch rather than eye. In many battle sims…
Sod Minecraft, Warcraft, and Roadcraft, we need Cushioncraft
Yesterday I ticked another vehicle off my transport bucket list: hovercraft. Inevitably, while being whisked across the Solent by a descendant of Christopher Cockerell’s SR.N1, my mind turned to the question of why these marvelous machines still lack a serious…