The inaugural Flare Path Game Jam

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The inaugural Flare Path Game JamCraft a Bismarck game out of code or cardboard

Craft a Bismarck game out of code or cardboard

Readers of a creative bent, sharpen your HBs, blow the dust/crumbs/dandruff off your GameMaker installs, and don your brainstorming berets – this column’s inaugural game design contest starts right here, right now.

In a38cmnutshell, interested parties have forty days in which to design and submit a Bismarck-themed single-player computer or board game. Submissions that attempt to tell the entire story ofOperation Rheinübung, Bismarck’s first and last sortie into the North Atlantic, are very welcome, but given the competition’s time and component/installer constraints (see on) it might be wiser to try something less ambitious.

Watch on YouTube

Cover image for YouTube video

Hopefully, the competition’s own rules won’t wrinkle too many brows and generate too many questions.

⚓ GAME JAM RULES ⚓

Best of luck everyone. To the drawing board!

Or, if you’re in the same boat as Reader #112, an expert in Napoleonic cavalry tactics and the history of the Ilmavoimat, but a neophyte when it comes to Operation Rheinübung, to the drawing boardaftera quick perusal of my condensed May 19-27, 1941 timeline (Obviously, far superior accounts of Bismarck’s final voyage are available).

May 19

May 20

May 21

Lütjens' force pauses in a fjord near Bergen, Norway, so that the Prinz Eugen can top up her fuel tanks. Meanwhile sources in the Swedish government inform the British naval attaché that trouble is on the way.

May 23In fast-fading daylight Suffolk spots the German vessels through breaks in patchy fog. With help from her radar and her partner, Norfolk, she does her best to track them while staying out of gun range.

May 24(night)The Bismarck’s turn to the east eventually brings her within range of the Home Fleet’s Swordfish. Nine Stringbags launched fromHMS Victoriouspress home an attack at 10 pm. One eel strikes the Bismarck amidships but does little damage. Amazingly all of the biplanes survive the flak and foul weather and find their way home despite the darkness and Victorious' faulty homing beacon.

May 25A day of frustration for the Senior Service. In the early hours the shadowers lose contact with the Bismarck. An intercepted radio transmission indicates that the German heavyweight is heading for France. The larger ships of the Home Fleet don’t have the speed or fuel to prevent such a move, the smaller ones the firepower. Unless ‘Force H’ (1 carrier, 1 battlecruiser, 1 light cruiser) en-route from Gibraltar manages to slow Hood’s vanquisher, it looks likely she’ll get clean away.