WROX is an off-frequency studio. We transmit games the way pirates transmit music — in scheduled blocks, between weather readings and dead air, from a rusted transmitter shack on a disused coastal watchtower. Tune in. Miss the slot and wait for the repeat.
A game that degrades in real time with the FM band. As atmospheric conditions shift along the Cornish coast, signal drops, audio warps, and visuals tear. Players race to finish objectives before the broadcast fades to hiss. Best played during a storm front.
A slow narrative drift set in the watchtower WROX broadcasts from. You monitor empty horizons, log phantom vessels, and trade reports with other listeners over the closed-loop radio. Nothing happens for 40 minutes. Then something does. Then it doesn't again.
An action title synced to the transmitter's actual power draw. When the shack's generator surges, the game speeds up. When voltage dips, everything slows to molasses. We've blown two rectifiers testing it. The third one is holding. So far.
Our longest-running block. A roguelike built entirely from recycled broadcast material — weather tapes, confiscated radio dramas, test cards, jingle rejects. Every Sunday it rebroadcasts itself with 3% mutation. Listeners swear it remembers them.
WROX broadcasts from Tower C-12, a decommissioned RAF coastal watchtower near Tintagel, Cornwall. The lower three floors are studio. The top floor holds a 400W FM transmitter we inherited from a defunct local station and rewired by hand. The antenna is guy-wire and spite.
We are not licensed. We broadcast in the gaps — between registered stations, below official tolerances, during weather events when the regulator isn't listening. Our range is nine miles on a good night, two on a bad one. We've never wanted more.
Games ship as programming. Each title gets a block, a repeat window, and a runtime tied to the tide tables. Miss the slot and it's gone until next week. This annoys publishers. It delights us. The sea decides our deadlines.
Keeps the transmitter alive with salvage parts and stubbornness. Can tune a carrier by ear. Has climbed the tower in 60mph winds to re-seat a coax connector. Sleeps next to the power amp. Dreams in sidebands.
Decides what airs and when. Treats game launches like record drops. Keeps a paper ledger of every block since 2009. Refuses digital scheduling tools. If the tide table says repeat at 18:00, it repeats at 18:00.
Writes the interstitial broadcasts — weather fragments, fake shipping reports, dead-air monologues that bleed into the games. Half the audience thinks she's a ghost. She encourages this. Records everything to quarter-inch tape.