The pit full of emptiness and wrath

I do like a good roguelike game. Or more usually a roguelikelike, maybe a roguelikelikelike, or even a roguelikelikelikelike. Rogue was great but a bit dated now. Probably. I haven't played it since 1988 when I had it on a 5.25" floppy disc for the Amstrad PC1512.

OK, that was true, but even as I typed it I got curious and went off to archive.org for a quick dungeon bash (matron). It's strange what sticks with you, I instinctively mashed 'S' when I reached a dead end in a corridor, and sure enough there was a secret door there. Then I got killed by a rattlesnake. Did I want my possessions identified? 

Anyway, that confirmed the while Rogue was indeed most impressive in the 1980s and eminently playable now, there are better options out there now. Like Vienetta. By which I mean Vienetta was impressive in the 1980s, not that it's a better option than Rogue now. Though there are strong arguments for the latter as well. Anyone else have a craving for several rippled layers of ice cream?

So. As you've no doubt surmised from that fact that I'm talking about Vienetta, I bought Ball x Pit over the Christmas holidays. It's a lot of fun. There we go, I know everyone's been on tenterhooks for my enormously in-depth review.

What really kicked this all off was the fact that Ball x Pit is often tagged as a roguelike. As the opening linked article shows, the debate over the definition of roguelike was well-worn even ten years ago, but as per the How Roguelike is your game? tool, Ball x Pit would be, by my assessment, Roguelikelikelikelike at best. The current definition of roguelike generally seems to be along the lines of 'keep doing sort of the same thing but gradually unlocking more stuff as you go', which is one of my favoured genres recently with games like Vampire Survivors, Balatro, Megabonk, Death Must Die, Jotunnslayer and Ball x Pit in the last year, and it's far too late to try and coin a new name for that style of game. The roguelike horse has not merely bolted but come back, built an upgraded stables, and unlocked a new class of horse by the time the stable door is shut. I still like roguelikelike, though, shame that never really caught on.   

Get Dressed You Merry Gentlemen

 

 It's December, it's 25th, that can only mean one thing: time for the Christmas Spitfire to lead us all in a rousing GEEEEEEEEETTTTT dressed you merry gentlemen.

Merry Christmas, one and all.

Reading Roundup

The most recent instalment of Stuff I've Been Reading, largely as a reminder to myself so I can flick back through posts here and say "oh, yeah, I totally forgot about that" in 7 to 12 years times...

I worked through the entire Anthony Price bibliography I started in October 2024; reading them through in publication order definitely gives a better introduction to some of the surrounding characters, but they still work fine when read in whatever order you happened to find them in. If I go for another read through in ten-odd years I might try them in the chronological order of the events in the books for a bit of fun.

In the mood for further cold war espionage I had a look around and saw some glowing reviews of Joseph Hone's The Private Sector, the first of four Peter Marlow novels. It's good, but I found it a touch squalid so I haven't moved on to the others yet. Another suggestion was Michael Gilbert's work featuring Calder and Behrens; Game Without Rules, a short story collection, has been a most enjoyable introduction so I may well try a couple more of his books.

On the non-fiction front this year's Chalke History Festival added a number of books to the to-read pile, of which I've only finished Eleanor Barraclough's Embers of the Hands so far, a wonderful history of some of the lesser known aspects of the Viking age.

Back to the fiction, and I've mostly been keeping up with Ben Aaronovitch's superb Rivers of London series (despite only mentioning it once before on the blog, unless the search function is deceiving me); there's a new novel out this year, but while waiting for the e-book price to drop slightly to what-would-have-been-paperback levels I picked up the two most recent novellas: Winter's Gifts and The Masquerades of Spring, the latter a lovely little P G Wodehouse pastiche.

Finally, with an ongoing re-play of Cyberpunk 2077 in progress, I've gone back to William Gibson's Bridge trilogy, currently halfway through Idoru. The postmillennial future of the 1990s stands up incredibly well, obviously it's not a perfect prediction but the idea of a synthetic personality certainly strikes a chord in this agentic world.

 

 

I'll harvest what the earth brings forth

I recently bought Megabonk on Steam, and I’ve been having a terrific time bonking everything in sight. And also playing Megabonk!!!1! 

Your appreciation of the staggering hilarity of that gag may well depend on whether you lived in a country where ‘bonk’ was a common euphemism for sex in the 1980s, which as far as I can gather was Britain and Australia (as opposed to the slightly later ‘boink’ variant). From my etymological investigations it seems ‘bonk’ in the ‘hit (especially on the head)’ sense is more recent than I imagined it might be, dating back to the 1930s rather than, say, being a Dickensian expression. 

Anyway! Megabonk is, essentially, a 3D version of Vampire Survivors - pick a character, collect random weapons and power-ups, face off against an ever-increasing horde of monsters. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Vampire Survivors, heading back in frequently with updates and DLC, and Megabonk captures that same essential simplicity of concept with depth of weapon and power variations, only now with jumping! The quest and unlock system is nicely designed to promote trying out different builds and weapons, the random elements can be frustrating but immensely satisfying when everything comes together. Well worth a look, if you like that sort of thing.

Also featuring a fair bit of bonking, or at least references thereto, is Earth Must Die, a new point and click adventure from Size Five games with a fantastic voice cast featuring Joel Fry, Don Warrington, Alex Horne, Martha Howe-Douglas, Mike Wozniak, Matthew Holness, Stevie Martin, Sophie Duker and Alasdair Beckett-King, amongst others. There's a demo available which is rather fun; I haven't played an adventure game for ages, Discworld Noir might have been the last, so there's a nice blast of nostalgia. I'm not sure I'll be plunging back into a complete adventure-fest, the pace is a bit slow and I need to be in the right frame of mind, but it's good to mix things up now and again.

Nothin’ but a Panama hat and a pair of old Greek shoes

With Cyberpunk 2077 getting a recent update I've headed back to Liberty City for a third run-through, and I'm finding the enforced story beats quite a drag this time around. The first time you experience them the slow reveals build tension but when you know what's coming they're just an obstacle to getting on with the fun stuff. There should be some sort of law that any mission involving walking very slowly while a bunch of exposition happens can be skipped if you've done it before.

Still, between the occasionally tedious bits of plot there's a whole city of nice little icons to be diverted by, and that's as splendid as ever. They've added a few vehicles over the updates, so my two main hobbies are currently "driving at absolute top speed and trying to turn corners without braking at all" and "clothes shopping".

These might not seem very related, but driving at absolute top speed and trying to turn corners without braking at all tends to have unfortunate consequences for pedestrians within, let's say, half a kilometre of major intersections (and indeed diners at any establishments with large glass windows within a similar distance). The local police seem to take a dim view of vehicular homicide, so my perfectly innocent hobby inevitably results in high speed chases, during which I never brake while trying to corner; an irony not lost on the pursuing officers I suspect.

This is where the second hobby comes in, as whenever I spy a clothes shop I fling myself immediately from my vehicle into a combat roll and dash in to the store. This is primarily to check if they have any fabulous hats for sale but has the happy bonus effect of clearing my wanted rating and getting the police off my back; entirely understandable in game terms, of course.

"Despatch, this is Officer Dibble, have eyes on male human, six one, black leather jacket, denim shorts, high combat boots, and fabulous hat."

"Negative, Dibble, suspect is male human, six one, black leather jacket, denim shorts, high combat boots, but not wearing a fabulous hat, repeat, no fabulous hat."

"Confirmed, Despatch, will continue search."

Sound of screeching tires in the distance and a lot of screaming 

A perfect image of a priest

Back when I got my current PC I posted a retrospective of systems wot I owned since 1988, and how the rate of change had slowed from every couple of years for the first 20-odd years. The previous PC had done eight years, with a few graphics cards updates in that time. This one is on track to match the lifespan, and I hadn't even had to open the case (except for dusting) until a couple of years back when I popped a new SSD drive in. On more recent games I've had to start turning down the graphics settings a notch or two, so I figured it was time for a new graphics card.

Prices have gone a bit silly thanks to one or more of covid, crypto mining and AI, but I managed to snag a 5060 Ti with 16GB of RAM without needing to take out a second mortgage, which should be enough to handle anything the CPU can cope with. 

I should probably now find a game released within the last five years to actually give it a bit of a test, as my gaming is still ticking along without much change from the start of the year... 

Chalke History Festival 2025

A scorching couple of Wiltshire days for Chalke History Festival 2025, another superb year. We got down on Friday morning and managed to catch most of Michael Lewis and Ian Richardson talking about their book Beneath Our Feet: Everyday Discoveries Reshaping History about finds registered with the Portable Antiquities Scheme. Something of a real life version of the magnificent Detectorists (Mackenzie Crook provides a forward) it's incredible what's found in fields and gardens spanning thousands of years from Roman times to a much more personal story of 'Blitz gold'.

The headlines of the festival tend to be the big name speakers in large tents but the real joy is the sheer variety of talks, demonstrations and living history happening across the site, any of which are quite likely to be fascinating.  Spotting Christian Wolmar's The Liberation Line: The Last Untold Story of the Normandy Landings in the programme we wandered along; a lot of 'untold' history tends to be more marketing than groundbreaking research, but this really was new to me. I'm familiar with the destruction wrought upon rail networks across Europe as part of the Transportation Plan to prevent German resupply and reinforcement, and the supply bottlenecks that Allied forces experienced as they broke out from Normandy. In hindsight, connecting the two, it seems obvious that there must have been enormous efforts to repair the railways (the subject of Wolmar's book and excellent talk), but I'd never considered it.

Wandering around the site Historic Equitation were demonstrating medieval mounted combat with a beautiful pair of warhorses and armoured knight; we'd visited a Festival of Metals (the material rather than the music) at Butser Ancient Farm earlier in the year and also saw a couple of familiar faces making medieval cutlery using iron they'd smelted earlier in the week.

Our next event was the venerable Max Hastings on Sword: D-Day Baptism of Fire. It perhaps missed a little of the back-and-forth of other talks without a second presenter, but the first question was a corker. Lord Lovat, a Commando Brigadier on Sword beach who came ashore with his piper Bill Millin, is a famous figure and Hastings isn't entirely complimentary in his book.  Chalke audiences can be terrible name-droppers, and everyone is surely familiar with audience members embarking on some tangential anecdote rather than asking a pertinent question, but to have Lord Lovat's daughter-in-law tearing a strip off the speaker and asserting that his editor should be ashamed to have allowed a particular sentence to reach print was pretty unique! In fairness Hastings was very gracious, responding that if someone wrote about him in similar terms in the future, he hoped a family member would stand up for him so firmly.

Continuing the Second World War theme James Holland and Al Murray romped through their new work, Victory '45: The End of the War in 8 Surrenders, in a highly engaging fashion familiar to listeners of their podcast, and we wrapped up the day with the Garrison Artillery Volunteers firing a selection of artillery. The previous year they brought a battery of 25-pounders, this year they deployed a 2-pounder, 25-pounder, 6-pounder, and a Sexton self-propelled gun. Most impressive!

Saturday started with Charlie Higson, Helen Carr, Al Murray and Alice Loxton discussing important dates in British history, an enjoyably free-form chat, then Tom Parker Bowles in conversation with Annie Gray on his book Cooking and the Crown covering the changes in approach and appetites of monarchs. Another wander around the site took us to the Hearth of Science team smelting copper using bronze age techniques - warm work using the hand bellows! 

Next up, Vikings; we had our interest piqued on a visit to Iceland last year so headed in to Eleanor Barraclough talking about her book Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age with Rebecca Wragg Sykes. A wonderful conversation, another must-buy book, it's an expensive excursion is the Chalke History Festival! 

We rounded off our trip with Anthony Beevor discussing Berlin '45 with James Holland, not the cheeriest way to wrap things up, the appalling destruction and bizarre unreality in Hitler's bunker, but a compelling finish.