Posts Tagged ‘Slitherine’
Simulation & wargame news
By Tim Stone on May 17th, 2013.
Every day is D-Day -1 for the busy Seabees at Slitherine Software. An Epsom-based outfit that started life constructing singular sword-and-sandal TBSs, is now, thanks to a slew of acquisitions and a dazzlingly dynamic approach to talent spotting/signing, the dominant force in PC wargame publishing. During the coming year, company chieftain Iain McNeil will be overseeing more than fifty releases. Realising I knew little about the firm’s founder, philosophy, or plans, I dragged Iain away from a red-hot field radio and a sand table crowded with 15mm Hoplites, Panzer Grenadiers, astronauts and Space Marines for a chat. Read the rest of this entry »
Iain McNeil, interview, Matrix Games, Slitherine, The Flare Path, wargames.
Simulation & wargame blather
By Tim Stone on May 3rd, 2013.
Wakey-wakey, rise and spend! Jackie is blowing her utility trumpet because she wants the world to know that three old wargames have just had their prices slashed. As conveying detailed sale information with valveless brass instruments is notoriously tricky, it will be left up to Jackie’s assistant Jean (Out of picture. Armed with a Glockenspiel 17.) to explain that the games in question are John Tiller’s Battleground Civil War, Forge of Freedom: The American Civil War and The Great Battles Collector’s Edition. Read the rest of this entry »
Forge of Freedom, Good old games, Matrix Games, Slitherine, The Flare Path, wargames.
Simulation & wargame blather
By Tim Stone on April 26th, 2013.
The Flare Path lights are dimmed today, the wind socks are at half mast. Jim Mackonochie, one of the most influential, approachable, and well-liked figures in flight simulation died on Tuesday. If you’ve flown a faithfully simulated military jet at any point during the last quarter century, there’s a good chance you’ve enjoyed a game that Jim signed or nurtured. Though most closely associated with Eagle Dynamics creations like Flanker and DCS World, his combination of unquenchable aero enthusiasm and incomparable industry experience also Pavewayed the way for the Falcon series and the early Rowan sims. Read the rest of this entry »
Conflict of Heroes: Ghost Division, Farming Simulator, Flashpoint Campaigns: Red Storm, giants software, Jim Mackonochie, Piercing Fortress Europa, Qvadriga, Slitherine, The Flare Path.
Simulation & wargame blather
By Tim Stone on April 19th, 2013.
In the summer of 2001 I bought a copy of This Blessed Plot at a village fête for 20p, never suspecting that the hefty tome was destined to sit unfinished on my bookshelf for the next twelve years. My failure to get any further than chapter 3 – ‘Russell Bretherton’ – I’ve always blamed on Hugo Young, Russell Bretherton, or Tim Stone (Perhaps I’m not as interested in Britain’s troubled relationship with Europe as I thought I was). A recent forum comment from the boss of the World’s busiest computer wargame publisher suggests another possible cause. Perhaps the book was simply too cheap.
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Matrix Games, Slitherine, The Flare Path, wargames.
Alpha Obtainium
By Adam Smith on March 26th, 2013.
The version of Pandora: First Contact that I’ve been playing since last week is far from complete – it’s stable and packed with potential but the tech tree and map generation are just two major features that are due to experience major overhauls. When the game in question is a strategic task of exploration and colonisation on an alien planet not a thousand light years from Alpha Centauri’s neck of the universe, those aspects are important, so I can’t provide an informed opinion as to what Pandora will achieve. But I can say that many of the pieces are in place and it is, at the very least, a pleasing echo of Firaxis’ finest.
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Alpha Centauri, pandora: first contact, Slitherine.
By Adam Smith on March 18th, 2013.
First there was SPACE HULK SPACE HULK SPACE HULK SPACE HULK SPACE HULK and now there’s, erm, a turn-based Warhammer 40K strategy game of indeterminate nature a turn-based Warhammer 40K strategy game of indeterminate nature a turn-based Warhammer 40K strategy game of indeterminate nature! A few days ago, Games Workshop announced that they had made a deal with the developer but I didn’t expect news of a game to arrive so quickly.
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Games Workshop, Slitherine, warhammer 40k.
By Alec Meer on March 15th, 2013.
Huh, I didn’t expect this. The disintegration of THQ seems to have resulted in Games Workshop renting its Warhammer 40,000 license to all and sundry rather than keeping them locked up in one place. So we’ve got Space Hulk coming from Full Control, potentially, maybe, who knows Relic keeping hold of something Dawn of War-related when Sega snapped them up, and now strategy publisher/developer Slitherine announcing they’ve been granted a 40K license too.
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Games Workshop, Slitherine, warhammer, Warhammer 40000.
By Adam Smith on February 25th, 2013.
Legends of War has a peculiar trailer. At just over thirty seconds long, I hoped it would be a video of a computer-generated General Patton flexing and chewing bullets. ‘LEGEND OF WAR’, the title would be written in explosions, and then Old Blood and Guts would drive a tank out of the screen and start doing wheelies all around my flat. Instead, the video denigrates the machines of war, as shell casings tumble from the sky, flaccid and spent. Then, after showing two tanks having a fight, the trailer celebrates the men of war as rigid bullets spurt from side to side. Patton is the player character in Legends of War (you can level him up!), which combines “high-level strategic management (with RPG elements) and a tactical turn-based mode”. From what I can gather it’s a port of a PSP game.
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enigma productions, legends of war, Slitherine.
By Jim Rossignol on February 8th, 2013.
Creepily-named publisher Slitherine send word that they’re going to be launching a space-project management game with Buzz Aldrin’s name on it later this year (and his advice was sought in researching the development, apparently). In Buzz Aldrin’s Space Program Manager you will be tasked with a sandbox management scenario in which you must train astronauts and their support staff, while at the same time doing R&D and dealing with politicians. It’s going to be heavy on the realism, of course, but there’s scope for fantasy too: “Develop the X-15 Space plane, the Sputnik satellite, the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo manned spacecrafts and in later episodes on to Mars! You are not limited to the missions that did launch – you can also try out many that were planned but that never left the drawing board. For example, instead of sending men to the Moon using the Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR) approach used by Project Apollo in the late 1960s and early 1970s, you will be able to rewrite history and use either the alternative Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR) or Direct Ascent schemes.”
So basically giving us the space history we should have had. Sigh.
Buzz Aldrin's Space Program Manager, Slitherine.
By Adam Smith on November 8th, 2012.
Close Combat: Panthers in the Fog, AKA Close Combat: Normandy VIII, featured in last week’s Flare Path, announcing itself with what is surely one of the most underwhelming trailers in the history of moving images. It’s not even an honest trailer, the sort that shows the reality of the game in ‘action’ – that would be fine because at least it would be informative. The original Panthers in the Fog trailer is a dull orange background with some words on it. It’s fifty seconds long but it might as well be three seconds long because you could just read the words on a website instead. Thankfully, there’s a new trailer now, which does show the game. And, by gum, it looks like a Close Combat game.
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Close Combat: Panthers in the Fog, Matrix Games, Slitherine.
By Adam Smith on July 20th, 2012.
Corps, corps, korps. Panzer Corps, a Panzer General for the new generation, looks a lot like it could have been from the previous generation, or even the one before. It’s the kind of game I imagine my grandpa would have played on his rickety Victrola while riding a Penny Farthing. It apparently maintains the high quality of its spiritual forefather, which means I really should play it at some point, and perhaps that time is close. Afrika Korps is an upcoming expandalone for the game, covering WWII’s North African campaign from the Axis perspective. So, roll into the Arabian Peninsula and “maybe even invade the underbelly of the British Empire and threaten its crown jewel: India”. That sounds very untoward. Surprisingly elegant trailer below.
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afrika korps, Matrix Games, Panzer Corps, Slitherine, The Lordz Games Studio.
