For the past ten days or so I've been whinging my way through a chest infection. My partner's been sent out for lemsips, tissues, the blood of a vital youth filled with hopes of a bright future, and chicken soup. With the last dregs of the lurgy coming out of me in runs of coughs I'm starting to feel well again, meaning I've a weekend of ignored chores to catch up on. That and attending a one-year-old's birthday party.

Fingers crossed my immune system is now in fighting form because, with Gamescom next week, it would be right annoying to pick up something else.

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Before we talk about Sandustry, the excellent new spelunking factory builder from Lantto Games and Hooded Horse, we need to revisit that most quintessentially vidyagame of topics, the post-industrial countryside of Wales. Early on in my recent 105-mile "review" of the MSI Cyborg 14 laptop, I walked through the old slate quarries near the village of Aberllefenni – the longest continually operated slate mining setup in the world until its closure in 2003.

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It's quite the month for sand-related games! Sandcastle, a literal sandbox game, received a demo earlier this month, and now here we are today with the release of Sandustry, another, entirely different literal sandbox game. Where Sandcastle is about building, uh, castles out of sand, Sandustry is about building entire factories, and also, apparently, discovering an ancient civilization's secrets. Sure!

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