Sillyventure Winter Edition 2025 Report.

Whimsical Mode on.

Wednesday 19th November 2025.

I’m in the evening calm before the sound and fury of the party. I’m in a pre-amble frame of mind. We’re gently packing and getting to some state of travel readiness.

Actually, we’re not touching down in parts Europe eastern until Friday morning. I’ve got a whole day in-between, where we’re heading to parts east, Cambridgeshire. Felice and Paula’s place to be precise. The ‘plan’ is that we travel out *very* early Friday morning, in a gruesome 04.00hrs reminiscence of parties past. A sensible overnight (but cut short!) stay at residence Felice makes for a shorter journey.

Also in a recollection of Sillyventures past, this one will be handled by the original terrible duo, Felice and I. Nicky and Paula are staying home to mercilessly batter the retail areas of Cambridge city.

So it is likely I’ll be picking up this report around Friday lunchtime at the party, having barely survived the red-eyed Wizzair early departure special.

In things I have otherwise been doing, I’ve been getting Vanilla Mint running nicely on both my CT2 and CT60 Falcon’s. I’ve also downloaded Doug Little’s recently released 3D wizardry to try out. here’s a screenshot of Doug Little’s famous Quake engine on the Falcon in action.

DSP excellence, even without Dune!

I’m running the accelerator friendly version, which offers quite a pleasant ride on my CT2 at 50 MHz (forget about 060 for now!) It’s just a walk around, but I’ve swum in lava pools, pushed and jumped as high as possible, watching the limitless sky (possibly for glittering C-Beams and attack ships on fire?) There are boundaries built in the level at the edges. I attempted to jump off into the endless cloudy void below in an emulated fit of shits and giggles, but an invisible hand held me back.

I’ve as yet to take a good look at his Minecraft-a-like engine. There’s a bit more bookwork and learning commands to do first. Such as moving around. 

Hope I don’t get a repeat of any summer traffic issues when I start my journey tomorrow. I’ll be keeping a careful eye on the state of the roads before I set off! At least for 04.00hrs on Friday morning, the only traffic hazards could be squishable hedgehogs. Felice is driving.

Back laters Atariscne people!

Some time later, Friday 21st November 2025 - 13.08hrs

We’re at the Arche Dwor party venue, the scene of the summer scene of crime. Well no actual crimes were committed, not even ones against good taste. Everyone concerned back then was running on a ‘Born to be Mild’ manifesto. (CiH, who has been doing this for a lifetime, limply applauds.)

We’re setting up in our usual upstairs spot, but battling against a severe lack of tables, There is a massive carpeted void in the middle of the room, where tables ought to be. Other interested parties have managed to hold on to the last free table for us, so thank you Samurai and Zerkman, good to see you both again. Grey is looking for some more tables to fill that space.

Look, no tables!

Next to me, Felice is slowly emerging from a tangled undergrowth of cables, he has brought his latest new toy, a MiSTery Nano FPGA ‘Atari STE in a very small box’ to the party. 

As I’m writing this, Felice has got this working mere moments ago, the reassuring presence of an Atari GEM desktop beckons. The even more reassuring Oxygene demo ‘We were @‘ is now running. 

It is paired with a mini Peecee style keyboard and a small 11-inch screen. HDMI input is acceptable. This is being road tested as a suitable budget airline luggage restriction friendly ‘Party ST’. So far, the omens are favourable.

"Ooh, it's a MySTery!"

We’re actually staying at the venue, but can’t claim our rooms until later on. At some point soon, a search for provisions should take us to the nearby Biedronka supermarket. The downstairs hall is very ‘cosy’, with several merchandisers such as Microzeit mixed in with the early visitors.

So what of the time between now and your last update?

There was a day quietly preparing for our latest EPIC (capital letters provided with NO extra charge!) journey over. The first part of this starts around 15.00 hours, transporting Nicky to the residence of Felice and Paula. 

The impending sunset is huge and bloodshot when we set off, We’re fortunately going in the opposite direction (easterly). It is definitely very twilight when we get there, going to darkness very shortly afterwards. For bonus points there are no traffic related issues that made the summer trip over so *memorable*. 

A pleasant evening, culminating in a mega belly-busting spaghetti bolognaise, created by Paula, is enjoyed. An early night is declared, as there is the looming awfulness of an early 04.00 hours start.

03.15 hours, earlier.

Yes I’m awake already. I did sleep for a while but these sort of occasions stimulate your brain to an earlier than intended wakefulness, so too bad for me. Felice rises promptly, I’m shoving an early coffee down me, consumed from a rare Jean Michel Jarre ‘Destination Docklands Concert’ (1988) souvenir mug (owned by Paula). This is a standard early morning party journey ritual when leaving Felice’s place. Nicky is disturbed slightly by our movements, but vows to get back to sleep once we’ve left.

We actually start on the Luton bound leg, shortly before 04.00 hours. De-icing of Felice’s car is included. No issues or incidents on the way over. It’s a very calm, clear and cold night. No hedgehogs were squished. They were sensibly still in bed at this unsensible hour.

Luton presents us with a flood of people milling around the departure terminal, waiting for early flights. We manage to avoid the worst of this with some luxury airport lounge styled action, including a ‘build your own’ breakfast buffet. So I do. The second cup of coffee of the day is not supposed to be as good as the first, but the coffee here happily disproves that rule. 

I go for a third cup, which is enjoyed as much as the other two.

The flight itself is absolutely no trouble at all. This Wizzair flight was not pressed into service as an ad-hoc prisoner transport, in a lukewarm recreation of the 1997 action movie ‘Con Air’, unlike the summer flight. So we’re happy with that state of affairs too.

A taxi ride to Arche Dwor later, and we’re very much at the party and running out of things to update with.

Apart from pre-compo rumours. That’s always a safe topic to keep the wheels of this report turning.

There were some over the past days and weeks coming from the lips (typing fingers) of the organiser, Mr Michal Michalowski himself. He’s asked me to keep these quiet, Well you’ve seen the party, so the plea for non-disclosure has lost its impact now.

Initially the talk was of exceptional Atari 2600, Atari 8-bit entries and possibly a Lynx demo. There was also a Falcon demo which promises to be out of this world. No names have been given, but I strongly suspect the Falcon demo is Dune’s latest masterpiece. This could well be the demo which was ready in time for the summer SV edition, but held back to allow a proper showing and release by the authors.

More recently, another Falcon demo has been entered and an ST demo, which was the one category light in entries until then. In a related note, up to ten YM Chip music entries have been received.

I think that is it for now. If any other information is dropped in my direction, I’ll add it here. Otherwise be prepared to be slack jawed in wonderment. I hope.

Day One continued,

17.36 Friday evening.

Not much to add apart from catching up on expected admin tasks, For example, we claimed our hotel rooms a little while after 15.00hrs. There was a queue moving about as quickly as the Polish Border Force entry point at the airport, Happily no queue present when I went to register for the party and collect my name badge, assorted goodies and t-shirt. 

There has been some proper food too, after some unsatisfying crispy snacks. The hotel restaurant version of a beef burger and chips, with home made lemonade to rinse it down. Lovely! Which I’ve tried before at the Summer SV Party.

I’ve seen some of the people expected at the party. Zerkman and his spouse/partner, the reassuringly cheery Wiztom was there too. I got a nice photograph of Miker and his spouse/partner Sywlia (not the same Sywlia as Mrs Grey!) David ‘Sives’ Rutherford, who has been at an SV Summer edition or two is here and has made himself known to us. We’ve already seen Samurai (Hagen). The person I’m expecting, indeed hoping to see, but have not found so far, is the maintainer of Atariscne.org himself, 505?

Miker and Sywlia, overjoyed to be here!

There is a Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge tournament running currently on the big screen. The STE enhanced version, of course.

It looks as if the table-less void is being filled. By scener knights of a round table persuasion? 

We’re waiting for the opening ceremony a bit later on. After that is the Sound chip concert by "Dual-Core YM2149 Energy" by no less than Jess/OVR & AD/HMD^MPS 

I think we’ll probably call it a day after that,

19.22.

Master of ceremonies, Grey, has officially opened the party. There was food, politely nibbled at. Yes we have eaten earlier, I have managed to catch up with Thadoss, who confirmed the almost open secret that there will be a new demo from Dune. Even better, I have managed to exchange greetings with 505. Not much more than that just yet.

It's time to start the party!

The downstairs is very crowded and busy, so small talk and strategic discussions are impossible unless you are really determined. I’m not feeling very determined and my small talk and anecdote reserves are currently depleted by tiredness,

Still there is the sound chip concert, to end all other sound chip concerts coming soon,

23.07.

The soundchip concert provided the loud poke in the ears to get me awake and interested again. Definitely one of the highlights of the party, apart from tomorrow’s compos.

Jess and AD really doing their stuff!

An awesome concert was laid on by our French friends. Pretty much the whole of Jess’s ouvre covered and quite a lot of other sound chip artistes besides. People were dancing in the main hall as if it were a Revision Party Deejay set. The upstairs hall was much busier than before, mainly with people drinking rather than coding, but hey!

Felice had managed to locate a box of white wine, which was enjoyed, I managed to get a free beer from the party without excessive froth in it. The lubelska  flavoured vodka is on standby for tomorrow evening.

I discovered that the David Braben game, ‘Virus’, had a hidden partial gameplay mode whilst playing around with Felice’s MySTery Nano. The game has an attract or demo mode, where it plays by itself. I found that you have access to firing the missiles, whilst in demo mode, (pressing the ‘M’ key.) Combined with it being a cracked version where you could specify infinite everything, it was easy to spam salvos of missiles, as long as the auto piloted craft bothered itself to gain enough altitude to enable a launch that doesn’t crash into the terrain below. I got to about level nine and around eighty thousand points, before abandoning the game and party as a whole.

Anyway, I’m going to call it a day soon. Back tomorrow party fans!

Day Two

Saturday 22nd November, 

It’s 12.26 hours.

Today is the day it all goes down, or on, or something. A group photo has been threatened to take place outside the building at 13.00 hours. The first compo block is at 14.00 hours. I’ve resumed the report from our party work station from yesterday. Which appears to be partially occupied by someone unknown who is not around to ask?

Sunrise from my hotel bedroom window. Soft focus filtering provided free of charge by the hotel net curtains!

They are currently plugged into power cable infrastructure owned and operated by Felice Energy Megacorp PLC. So interesting questions to be asked for when my colleague gets here.

Getting to where we are now, We had breakfast in the busy hotel restaurant, in the company of Samurai and Charon. The latter has not been to a Sillyventure for a while. A quick reconnaissance of the Old Town followed. The day is clear and sunny, The air is crisp and cold. The Christmas Market is still getting itself out of bed, so rather less to see there than we hoped. We’re going to have another look tomorrow, after the party has finished and before we get back to the airport. We were later informed its best to go there after midday when things are open.

Arriving back at the hotel, we found Adam Gilmore and 505 outside the hotel reception entrance, trying out cold weather gear and coffee respectively, so a quick chat followed. After a short time to gather my bits together, we’re back here, waiting for the party schedule to unfold.

At the moment I am drinking fresh orange juice, that has small icebergs formed within it. It’s been in my small hotel bedroom fridge overnight. Which seems to have been a bit too good at its job. But that makes it extra-delicious! 

The mystery guest has now revealed himself. He is ‘SLX’ from Austria, here for the Saturday only. He’s considerately moved to the other side of the table, so no longer taking up Felice’s space. So everything is amicably resolved without drama, as it should be!

13.02.

Group photo has been announced.

Felice has returned.

13.35.

The group photo was mercifully quickly over in the cold conditions.

Group photo, from the other side!

Thadoss!

My next port of call was the supermarket around the corner, mainly to top up on (non-alcoholic) liquids. This was quite a sociable occasion, as I encountered Miker and Sylwia (not Mrs Grey!) doing some suspiciously sensible non-party looking shopping. Also I got into a chat with Adam Gilmore who was in the store hunting more stereotypically party style refreshment of nicotine and non-nicotine varieties.

He revealed he got into the 8-bit scene musically. He took a look at the Amiga but never got on with the modfile music format predominant there. Had done some Peecee work but nothing for a long time, until he got back into 8-bit sounds recently. He has also extended into ST sound chip music, thanks to the masterful ‘Maximiser’ editor but isn’t overly fond of the Atari 2600 sound chip.

It turned out that Nicky, when she was at the 2024 Winter SV last year, enjoyed listening to his compo entry tune. That praise, coming from a non-scener, so Adam appreciated this a lot.

The voting system has now updated with all entries and all categories. Now we can put some flesh on the rumours at last.

It looks like any trace of a Lynx demo has gone. On the plus side, there are now eleven ST YM tunes, nine Pokey tunes. Followed by four Atari 2600 demo entries, four for the XL/XE demo compo. The ST and Falcon have two entries each,  which isn’t bad going. Plus a bunch of smaller intros for all platforms, graphic compo entries, games and wild compo entries. Quite a respectable selection. Enjoyment will be had!

At least some of the demos have been described as world beating or genre smashing. I’m prepared to be pleasantly surprised.

The next update will be after the first compo block. See you all then!

17.54.

Quite some considerable time later.

There wasn’t going to be too much room between the afternoon and evening compo blocks and a late lunch or early supper had to be fitted in-between. A classic fish and chips at the hotel restaurant, ‘The Old Kitchen’ hit the spot. We’re now on party drinks alert. Felice is enjoying the remaining liquid in the wine box. I’ve got neat Lubelska grapefruit vodka and the party punch to take me through the evening.

So many impressions from the first block. All of them jumbled up and made vague by food and time elapsing. At this confused stage, I’d have to say that Jess of the Overlanders poured everything into his YM chiptune ‘Buzzmosphere’, in spite of close challenges by Doclands and 505. Nils excelled in the Pokey chiptune compo with his tune, in stereo sound!

The ATascii compo entry ‘Pair’ gets a special mention, party from the excellent artistic composition, partly from getting ASCII to perform a decent upside-down face! This was by Adam, who also created the winner for the Sillyventure Summer edition earlier this year.

‘Ready for the Byte Fight’ by Vasyl should win the ST graphics category, or be very highly placed. This was a masterwork of composition in only eight colours, or shades.

The best is supposed to be coming shortly, when the evening compo block, with all the demos in it gets shown. Which now starts from 18.30 hours. Which gives me a bit more useful time to finesse parts of this report.

18.27.

Dying minutes before the compos start.

Extra food and drink introduced at the last minute. Some legendary punch is made to go with the rest.  It’s a fine balance between consumption and compo watching now.

Back laters.

20.24.

Well that’s us all done for another year.

So what impressions are we taking away from this year’s compos? Good ones, it seems.

The Dune Falcon demo, ‘Taedium Vitae’ was around eleven minutes of everything I’d hoped for. It’s properly stretching the Falcon 030, both effects and artistic direction wise. It’s going to get even harder for me to define my top ten, or top five demos, or whatever. I don’t mind. This requires a 14 MB Falcon, no acceleration required. There’s lots of DSP work going on, so may or may not be ‘060 friendly. I’ve got two Falcons that can run it at base configuration. That’s lucky!

Apart from that, there were more highlights. As expected, the Atari XL/XE competition did not disappoint. It’s a toss-up between the ultra-slick ‘U-uuu’ demo from the Oof Heads (who they?) and the crazed vector line overload ‘Zener Drive’ from Altair as to which comes to first place. (Which turned out to be a conversion or demake of an Amiga demo he did in 2017.) He’s also known of course for the 2022 release of the damn near Doom-a-like preview ‘Dread’.

Atari 8-Bit compo entry. Sorry, my brain has lost the name of the production.

It was good to see Paradox back with a nice quality entry, proudly proclaiming ‘We’re not’ (doing this on an STE. Stock STFM for the win here.)

There was a newbie Falcon release ‘Let your Falcon fly’ from a previously unknown Mik Javalonde. The good intentions and presentation are shining through. It just needs more speed and evolution on the coding side of things. 

Mr Dalliard (Vlad) has provided a worthy 96k’s worth of STOS related enjoyment. Keep going mate, see how far you can push this STOS thing!

We’ll put some details on the places tomorrow, when the prize-giving takes place. Then there is a journey home, hopefully covered with little drama. Followed by some summing up thoughts to complete this report.

For now, there is a background soundscape of nearby Finnish demosceners chatting and chip music playing in an exhilarated fashion. 

And at this stage, thoughts turn to retiring to my room for another nights rest. 

See you all tomorrow morning!

Monday 24th November.

Some time later.

As I thought, nothing much would have been added to the Sunday part of the report. It was really all over, apart from the prize-giving and the journey back.

A calm considered final part for this report doesn’t go well with travelling, noisy crowds, limited space, bumpy motion and airport security checks. So it’s being done now.

Sunday.

So we enjoy our regretfully savoured final breakfast at the Arche Dwor restaurant. It may well be a place to return to in the summer, if there is a Sillyventure Summer Edition for 2026. There might well be, Grey hasn’t confirmed dates as yet.

There isn’t too much to add. The prize giving proceeds around 12.00 hours. A bit late, but not severely so. We’re sitting there in warm clothing, for the cold journey home, trying to think cooling thoughts.

"You've all done very well!"

A lot of the entries I predicted for first places did happily come to pass. The ST graphics entry, ‘Ready for the Byte Fight’ is victorious. As is the tune ‘Buzzmosphere’ from Jess of the Overlanders. The Atari XL/XE ascii entry ‘Pair’ by Adam gets a deserved top spot. Paranoid win an ST demo compo at Sillyventure, AT LAST! With their entry ‘We’re Not’.

The only place where my predictive skills wobbled a little bit was with the Atari XL/XE demos, as ‘U-uu’ and ‘Zener Drive’ claimed second and third places respectively and not first and second as I thought might happen. There was a great strong field for Atari XL/XE and Atari 2600 as well.

None of this detracts from the Falcon demo compo, with ‘Taedium Vitae’ owning the whole party, with the stock Falcon release to end all Falcon demo productions, (for now at least?) The extra applause when that entry to the prize giving goes from polite to practically standing ovation level.

From there, there is nothing much left apart from farewells. Until the next time.

We end up in the old town, along with David ’Sives’ Rutherford, in a crisp, clear, cold but fruitless search for some very specific trinkets on the Christmas Market, as requested by the ladies back home (found from the last visit during the summer party). A long and pleasant lunch follows where no-one is in any hurry for things to end, before David goes off in his own direction into the old town. He still has some time left, Gdansk-side. We’ve got travelling home thoughts to placate.

A swift taxi ride to the airport follows, with much lane swapping by our driver. No fenders were bent fortunately.

The rest of the journey home is safe and predictably managed, especially the flying part. We’re back at our starting point some time around 22.30 hours from there.

Some Final Thoughts.

The summer party was enjoyable, the winter edition, even more intensively so,

The location at the Arche Dwor seems to be a rapidly establishing Sillyventure regular venue. The party itself is on a two floor venue, both levels being well used, so busy, but not squashed to death, or too cozy. The option for taking up accommodation on site was used this time, so staggering back to the room if we got that way, would be short and easy. The rooms are high quality, the catering was every bit as good as at the Marina Club hotel used previously, taking in breakfast for the first time at Arche Dwor. 

With reference to the topic of compo entries. After the lightness of the summer party these were as good as expected. There were maybe some missing entries, not quite ready yet, which we’ll see for a later party. A little rumour dropped in my direction told me to expect a revival of big ST demos for 2026.

The organisation seemed to run smoothly. There was scarcely a single glitch in running the compos. Maybe a slight delay for starting the second block, but that came in useful for us to get something to eat and drink, I didn’t notice any issues with playback of the entries on the big screen, but I guess I’m not clued up on some of the more technical nuances of audio visual reproduction. Also my brain was in party mode and happy to grab onto any spectacle coming its way.

The company we were keeping was as good as always. I managed to get to speak to some people. Maybe not as much as I liked, but there was a lot of party and people in the space, so maybe not the scope to chat quietly as such. However, I took great pleasure in catching up on the current movements of the likes of Thadoss, Miker, and Zerkman. I did spot and greet Wiztom. I managed a freezing cold outdoor catch up with 505. The nearby supermarket proved a good venue for a sociable chat with Adam Gilmore. I waved and smiled at a lot of other people. Grey and Sylvie were in the eye of the storm of party organisation, so we couldn’t spend too much time with them.

I don’t think it was all about Taedium Vitae, it may have seemed that way for a time at the end, but yes, I hugely enjoyed the party and would definitely attend the next one.

CiH - November 2025 for Atariscne.org