What...in the Blue Hell...

I have never been more than tangentially involved in game development -- BETA testing, scenario designing, and the like -- so I try to be circumspect, but there are times that I see something that really winds me up.  I'm quite fond of GW's Battlefleet: Gothic.  It's another in their longish line of side-games that I wound up preferring to their mainstays, fantasy and 40k.  End of the day, lacking as it does a Z-axis, it was an Age of Sail game in space.  What, then, wasn't to love?

When they announced the PC version some months ago, I was fairly pleased.  The game looked lovely with glow-y Imperial ships, Ork ships that look like they've been cobbled together from scrap, and all the rest rendered in a reasonably high-end fashion.  I was saddened, though, that the developers made a choice to make the game "real" time.  The table top game is obviously turn based and so many of its best mechanisms are based on that IGOUGO system.  Still, it was a system I liked and I've more or less enjoyed it since BETA.  Then and now, though, I was left wondering what might have been had they taken a crack at making the game turn based.

This, then, stunned me:

http://grandcauldron.com/en/games-indie/battlefleet-gothic-game

Turn-based, still more or less lovely, full campaign, asynchronous multi-player, and a fairly faithful adaption of the tabletop rules.

For the iPad.

Say it again.  For the iPad.

I've fired off a message to the developer to see if there's any chance it will make its way over to Steam -- the developer has put together other products there -- but I'm not optimistic.

I do not understand.

Not Writing HERE Because I'm Writing THERE...

In fairness to me, I've not been neglectful in recounting my gaming adventures, I've just been sharing them with the fine folks at grogheads.com.

Here, for example, is the interview I did with VentoNuovo games for its Bloody Monday KickStarter.

http://grogheads.com/?p=14188

People did not understand the difficulty I was going to have when I gave up purchasing or ordering new games for Lent.  Now perhaps they understand.  On the other hand, let it be noted that the KS doesn't end until the day after Easter.

And here's my latest interview with the fellow who invented by favorite game by a living author -- Dr. Didier Rouy, author of The Flight of the Eagle.

 http://grogheads.com/?p=14345

Both have interesting things to say, but I particularly enjoyed Dr. Rouy's for his introspection on a career not only in gaming but in medicine.  He said so much, in fact, that the article wound up being broken in two.