Gyaack! I recently became aware that Internet Explorer (both 6 and 7) doesn’t always display this page properly if you display it at certain widths. I’ll try and fix that at some stage - it’s probably just a hidden CSS quirk. In the meantime I can only re-emphasise my recommendation of using Firefox - it’s faster, better, and displays this page perfectly

Since it’s coming up to the festive season, I’d love to be able to give you some happy news about Mordor: Return to Dejenol, but instead I must gloomily admit that there’s almost no chance of seeing an “Alpha 1″ version this year. Real life is going to become increasingly busy for me toward Christmas and, though it’s a weak excuse, being stuck in a mire of drab editor coding doesn’t improve my enthusiasm for the project during the limited free time I’ll get

Still, chin up - for fans of Dejenol-style gameplay, there’s always the upcoming expansion to Demise. Known as Ascension, it will add a huge section of deeper dungeons for you to explore, as well as fixing a good number of bugs. A plain patch is also being worked on that contains a similar wagon of bugfixes plus some useful cosmetic changes. Mordor XP should have a new bi-monthly update available soon, too, so as usual keep your eyes peeled on Braindead’s Mordor Page for word on that.

Meanwhile, it’s an exciting weekend in Indieland with Bit Blot’s IGF 2007 darling Aquaria having been released yesterday and the first purchasable release of Cortex Command expected imminently hitting the internet today (visit the Data Realms dev log for full details). To top it off, at the end of last month, I was lucky enough to discover news that my favourite arcade arena shooter was back in development under the auspicious title of Chase Ace Deluxe! Wootage! See, it’s not all bad…