👷‍♂️ They Turned Rock, Paper, Scissors Into a Roguelike?!

RCE Merch | Feature Your Game! | Join My Discord

Hello Fellow Engineers!

Welcome to Real Civil Newsletter - the only newsletter where we tunnel through mountains for fun, lose dog toys with cinematic commitment, and judge bridges harder than architects judge colour palettes.

This week we’re giving away Bug Off (because apparently I trust you with pest control more than I trust you with scaffolding), diving into Japan’s 500 km/h maglev madness, checking out some absurdly cool engineering links, and watching Paddy finally complete his Mission ImPAWssible three months later.

Let’s dive in 👇

This week we’re giving away ONE copy of Bug Off, the only game where your job is to exterminate pests but somehow you end up causing most of the property damage.

And now… the moment you’ve been waiting for. Cue dramatic structural drumroll… 🥁

🏆 WINNER: liljamesm13 🏆

Check your inbox! Prepare to squash bugs, use questionable slippers, and discover whether your “precision engineering” translates to pest control (spoiler: probably not).

Missed out? Don’t worry - more giveaways are coming soon, and yes, you can absolutely bribe your way to victory by sending me pictures of good bridges.

If you’ve been eyeing the Civil Draft accessories and thinking, “I’ll grab them later,” later is now Sunday and after that, later is too late.

Whether you want the binder that protects 360 cards, the DeskMatt packed with easter eggs, the PlayMatt built for 2-player chaos, or the collector’s coin that makes you feel way cooler than you actually are - this is your moment.

Everything is officially licensed, packed with hidden references, and designed to keep your Civil Draft cards safer than an engineer in a meeting with architects.

If you want the goods:

👉 Preorders close Sunday - don’t miss out!

Peace, Love and Civil Draft 💙

👷‍♂️ Truss Me, I’m an Engineer…

🚄 Japan’s Maglev Mega-Tunnels

Japan looked at high-speed rail and said,
“Hmm… 320 km/h is nice, but what if we doubled it and also bored through half the country?”

Enter the Chūō Shinkansen, the world’s first ultra-long superconducting maglev line, a project so tunnel-obsessed that 86% of its 286-km route will be inside mountains.

Because when you want a train to hit 500 km/h, apparently the solution is:
remove every mountain in its way.

🧠 The Engineering:

• 246 km of tunnels, yes, tunnels longer than some entire national rail networks

• A single tunnel section (the Minami Alps Tunnel) stretches 25 km, bored beneath a mountain range famous for being inconveniently solid

• Uses superconducting magnets cooled to −269°C, because normal magnets weren’t dramatic enough

• Designed to withstand earthquakes, typhoons, landslides, and the disapproval of accountants

• The train floats and still somehow manages to produce the same aerodynamic chaos as a jet engine in a hallway

Final Verdict:

Mountain-eating TBMs.
Floating trains.
Superconductors colder than your supervisor’s performance review.

11/10, would ride it until the batteries in my GoPro die.

⚡ Cool Links

⚙️ Engineering & Infrastructure

💥 Century-old catalysis puzzle cracked by measuring a fraction of an electron - Engineers have unlocked how tiny electron fractions drive catalytic reactions, paving the way for next-generation energy and manufacturing technologies.

🏗️ Shanghai Super Tower: The 60,000 Ton Behemoth Made Out Of Steel - Completed in 2014, the Shanghai Tower is an impressive monument to China’s recent rise to power. This 632 metre behemoth is built to withstand powerful typhoons as well as terrorist attacks. The chief architect behind the building is also responsible for the design of the Twin Towers and this is the story of how he designed this huge structure with this tragedy in mind.

🎮 Gaming & Indie Update

😷 Fortnite players are accusing it of using AI-generated art - Just after CEO Tim Sweeney criticizes Steam for demanding games declare their use of AI.

🇳🇿 How New Zealand became a hothouse for indie games - Kiwi developers are punching well above their weight thanks to a unique government support program that offers more than just grants

🐕‍🦺 Paddy’s Corner

Mission ImPAWssible 2! (3 months later!)

Paddy’s back for a sequel!

We came back to the spot we lost Paddy’s blue ball 3 months later, and the rest was history…

See if you can hear the sound of my middle aged back going at the end!

👾 Indie Game of the Week:

This week I played Handmancers, the only roguelike where Rock-Paper-Scissors becomes a full career path and your biggest enemy is hand cramp.

I built a deck so unbalanced my character basically majored in Scissoring (don’t say it) and somehow beat a frog king who kept deleting my health faster than I could yell “PARRY!”.

There were dodges, bleeds, stuns, and a rock card with more biceps than most gym bros, truly peak engineering.

🎥 Watch me duel goblins, stun bosses, and suffer through the most stressful paper cuts of my life in the full video!

It’s time for a Bridge Review!

This week we’re looking at the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge, the world’s longest suspension bridge and the only structure on Earth that looked at a 2 km strait and said: “Yeah, I can jump that.”

Engineering Highlights:

• 1,991 m main span, longer than most countries’ patience for architects

• Designed to survive 200+ km/h typhoons, earthquakes, and the existential dread of being very, very long

• Expansion joints that can handle nearly 2 metres of thermal movement, which is more flexibility than any architect has ever shown on a drawings review

• The towers had to be adjusted mid-construction because an earthquake moved the foundations by 1 metre, and the engineers simply went,
  “Right then, new span length it is.”

• Zero unnecessary curves, swooshes, twists, or “organic shapes”, just pure, delicious structural correctness

Final Score: 9.7 / 10

Lost 0.3 points because someone suggested painting it a “friendlier colour palette.”
Get back to your mood boards, architects.