I recently had the rare opportunity to interview Tarn Adams, the designer and programmer of Dwarf Fortress. For those who aren’t familiar, Dwarf Fortress is an incredibly complex simulation, and in a wide-ranging interview Adams talked about his quest to eventually simulate much of existence in Dwarf Fortress, right down to the density of cactus....
Is Dwarf Fortress what you want to, or plan to, be working on the rest of your life? The older I get, the more it seems like I can talk about that without seeming flippant and stupid or whatever word you’d use for someone who’s, like, 18 years old talking about their 50s, right? Because...
“Not fully tested” isn’t something I like to hear in association with roller coasters, but here RollerCoaster Tycoon World is having a crack at Early Access. Your £30/$50 (wince) buys “the core features and content of the game”, including the campaign, sandbox and scenario modes, 10 coasters, 30 flat rides, 4 themes, “a full (albeit not fully balanced)...
Superb Star Wars dog-fighting sim Rogue Squadron 3D has made it to Steam at last (£7/$10). Released in 1998 for Windows and the N64, Rogue Squadron proclaimed “astonishing 3D details including real time lighting and special effects (explosions, smoke, engine glow, tracer fire and more)”. It’s showing a few wrinkles now, but there’s still nothing quite like it for...
Prison Architect’s hidden 3D mode was discovered the other week, and with the cat firmly out of the bag, developer Introversion said there may be updates on the way to the experimental mode. Said updates are now here as part of the grandly titled Update 5, which also adds hot water boilers, hot water pipes and, yes, hot...
If you’ve ever thought to yourself that the one thing a deep-space exploration game like Elite: Dangerous needs is a ship’s computer that sounds like William Shatner, then today is your lucky day. The upcoming Orion voice pack for the VoiceAttack voice recognition system provides more than 1300 phrases from the ship’s onboard AI, all...
need to know What is it? The best baseball management game ever made, with real teams dating back from the present day to 1871.Developer: OOTP Developments Publisher: OOTP Developments Release: Out nowExpect to pay: $40/£28 Reviewed on: Windows 8, Core i7-4770K, 16GB RAM Multiplayer: Up to 30Link: Official site For developers, creating an annual update to an already-revered sports management sim...
City development happens organically and changes to reflect your composition of housing, commercial, and industrial buildings. I’ve never been a fan of the way many city builders ignore the exhaustive political process governing the construction of real cities. It’s easy to feel like a skyscraper-erecting god, and that can be fun, but I’d also like to see...
This War of Mine is a game about surviving the horrors of war, not as a thick-necked soldier with an array of guns and a can-do attitude, but rather as a civilian: hungry, sick, injured, alone, and above all else, desperate. It’s obviously not the happiest simulation ever, but as we noted in our review,...
Frontier’s lavish modernisation of the theme park sim, Planet Coaster, is now available to play if you want to shell out on the early bird alpha. In keeping with Frontier’s history of charging high prices for early entry (and thus, the logic goes, getting serious testers in first) Planet Coaster will cost you £50/$75 from the Frontier store....
