Very sad news. British programmer and game designer Mike Singleton has died, aged 61. Singleton will perhaps be best remembered for a series of remarkably ambitious ZX Spectrum titles including The Lords of Midnight, Doomdark’s Revenge, and War In Middle-Earth. Personally I was enormously influenced by his Midwinter games for 16-bit home computers – pioneering works of procedural generation and designs of immense scope that have to this day defined for me what games could and should be. With those games alone Singleton made an extraordinary contribution to the depth and diversity of game development. Singleton worked in game development into the 21st century, contributing to games on the Playstation and Xbox 360.

Mr Singleton died in Switzerland on Wednesday 10th October. He had been suffering from cancer.