Fancy A Game Of Bridge? Artemis Updated

You may remember that Alec was very taken with the Artemis Spaceship Bridge Simulator. Designed to recreate the experience of being in charge of a Star Trek-like ship, it's installed on a group of networked PCs, and you nerd out flying through space as a team. Today they've revealed a big update for the project, which includes overhauling all the art, lowering the price, and most importantly, no long requires LAN.

Now up to six crews can cooperate or conflict via the magical internet pipes, without anyone needing to be in the same room. Obviously this hugely changes the game's potential reach.

The $40 price tag may still look high, but that's good for six PCs. Clearly the game is still intended to be played by groups in the same room - while internet play may be more practical for many, it also somewhat defeats the core point of the game: to work on one "bridge" as a crew. However, being able to then take on another crew of three to six people online seems like a crucial step forward for the project.

There's also new modding capabilities, letting people create their own enemy spacecrafts for the game. According to the team, the update also includes, "All new artwork; new spaceships and a new user interface."

You can find more details about Artemis here. And you can read Alec chatting with the game's creator, Thomas Robertson, here.