Well yes, it's been a long tme sinse we last reported news. There are two principle reasons for this. Firstly, I've been rather busy with academic and other things, and secondly, the wrate of games released has been so huuuuuuuge! that it's felt a litle like sticking my finger into a dyke to prevent a flood.

Nevertheless, if I don't sacrifice my precious, f key pressing finger, we will all drown in a concentrated tide of over produced games!

so here goes, and hopeully the lack in ingers won't make the news too diiicult to read.

First off, we have Airik the Clerric, the massive action rpg adventure with some platforming elements created by new company Paulosoft. When Sinister forces (dam! those left handed people), steal the sacred treasures of the kingdom of Vortgorn, with all of it's experienced clerrics out at the wars, matters are left to a young warrior naimed Airik.
Airik must recover the treasures, learn the uses of his sensor staff, fight enemies, explore the vast kingdoms of vortgorn and eventually confront the leaders of the concentrated evilness at work.

What is also interesting, is that vortgorn is not your standard swords and sorcery kingdom, science and technology exist along side the people's magical abilities both for good and ill. Airik's sarcastic, robotic friend scout is just such an example.

If anyone has ever longed to play a game like Legend of Zelda, here's your chance!

Some compatibility issues with windows xp have been noticed in the past, but with the recent (very recent), release of 1.5, these should hopefully be taken care of. And more areas to explore are on their way, both in the form of updates to Airik, and the two new games available for preorder that complete the series and your exploration of vortgorn, Airik 2 and 3.

To find out more, and to order the game scout across to  The Paulosoft site 

And to read about further updates, report bugs or make suggestions use This mighty thread on our forum

Then, as seems rather inevitable if we wait for a whle, there is yet another beta of Tombhunter mysteries of the ancients Those who were slightly narked at beta 19 for removing some of the fun features of the previous version in order to test new components will be pleased to know that beta 20 restores them very well! And with yet more bugs fixed and parts of the engine complete, the game is finally! stalking close to a ful release sometime in the autumn.

Then, there is a new game from Manu, the developer of Pontese backgammon This is a puzle game based on the ancient towers of Hanoy puzle, a mathematical and spacial puzle going back several hundred years. The game tracks the number of moves of the player and deducts points if the player uses more moves than the puzle requires. Though a small game, it might have your brain working, go and find out about it on The pontes games site and remember to add comments upon Our forum n this thread

Then! the online cardrooms have been seeing some interesting expantion and rumblings. Blind adrenaline cardroom has now expanded to cover a new game which isn't a card game at all. Multiplayer Yahtzee! roll the dice collect score and use your results strategically always while keeping careful note of your opponents' scores. As with their poker or trick based games, you can create a table with all your own rules, and of course there is no extra charge, your 3.95 dollars a month covers Yahtzee too!

then, the free Rs games client has also done soem expanding, this time into both the mirky world of naval warfare, and the fast high octain land of competitive cross continental racing thanks to their two new additions. 1000 miles, a card game in which you and your opponents are attempting a cross continent race and must hand eachother nasty desasters and challenges along the way, and battleships! the traditional game of spacial logic, missdirection and sinking lots of ships!

Finally, aprone, that mad man from America has created a hole bunch of games sinse we last reported, going from the strategic to the insane!

these include Temporal, a map based game in which you take on the godlike powers of someone who can time travel at awill, dogwhohatestoast, an insane word game in which you, working as a delivery girl/boy must help out a progressively insane resident who's vocabulary keeps changing into successively more and more random gibberish, and castaways, a fantastic stratogy game in which you manage a group fof ship wreck survivers.

You need to use your resource management skills to assign people to jobs such as taylor, doctor or peasant in order that they can produce both goods like bread, wne and cloth, and basic staples and building materials like lumber and bricks.

What makes this fascinating is that even an item of bread requires several steps to make, from growing the wheat, to grinding the flour, and finally baking a loaf, and even then it can't be used until it's been carried to the tavern where the cook will serve it to your hungry people.

All these games can be found out about on Aprones' audio games page where he also provides links to forum threads for discussing them (saving me a nice job, ha!).

so, with all of this, hopefully everyone should have a nice pleasant summer stuck inside glued to their computer, and equally hopeully, my f finger will one day grow back to it's ormer useulness!