Recent reviews by Michaela

I mean come on!!!! Fantastic game, really, but ... yes....

Note: There is no Mac or Linux client currently available. One can only imagine the scene unfolding in some small office somewhere, where the developers sit among stacks of teacups and half-eaten biscuits, staring at screens with the kind of solemn concentration usually reserved for chess grandmasters or people trying to decide which cake to have with their afternoon tea. Somewhere in the corner MacBooks and Linux machines sit quietly, like well-mannered guests who have arrived too early to a party and are politely pretending not to notice that the door is firmly closed in their faces. The developers glance at them, sip their tea, and shrug in a way that is both mysterious and slightly charming, as if to say, 'Perhaps another day, my dear friends, perhaps another day.'

Meanwhile the Windows users are clicking merrily away, probably humming a tune, completely unaware that elsewhere the air is heavy with wistfulness and quiet despair. One imagines the Mac and Linux folk staring out of rain-spattered windows, lost in thought, contemplating the cruel injustice of their situation while pigeons strut purposefully along the wet pavement, seemingly smug in their freedom to come and go as they please. A cat curls on a radiator, its tail twitching in rhythm with the melancholy, and a tea kettle whistles in the distance, perhaps in solidarity.

Perhaps they write letters to themselves, or to no one in particular, small haikus about incompatibility and longing, or sketch delicate penguins trudging nobly through endless fields of code, dressed for the cold yet never complaining. Perhaps they rehearse polite speeches for when they are finally acknowledged, making sure to bow slightly before every sentence and to apologise in advance for taking up too much bandwidth.

It is all very civilized, like a queue in a foggy English town that stretches on forever, where nobody complains even though they might be waiting hours, because manners are more important than comfort. Yet in this waiting, in the polite sighs and soft tea slurps, there is a strange sort of beauty. A quiet absurd beauty, like a cucumber sandwich left on the windowsill that is still edible but slightly sad, or a teacup perched precariously on the edge of a table daring gravity to intervene while no one quite watches. It is tragic and delightful at once, like a very polite comedy in which the plot may never resolve, but everyone continues to sip tea and smile faintly, knowing that life, software incompatibility, and pigeons will march on regardless.

And perhaps, just perhaps, one day a soft murmur will ripple through the office, biscuits will be nibbled in celebration, and Mac and Linux machines will be invited inside. Until then, we wait, we sigh, we sip, and we imagine penguins in bowler hats conducting very serious business meetings in tiny boardrooms full of glowing monitors, utterly dignified and entirely British.

Love it, so helpful, much fun, very good, or something like that.