154 posts tagged with game.
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Fifteen years ago I made a Flash game called Starcom...
Six years ago I released my first PC game called "Starcom: Nexus" (previously). For the past four years I've been working on a follow-up title called "Starcom: Unknown Space". Today it graduates from Early Access on Steam. [more inside]
catfishing - the Wikipedia category guessing game
Guess the Wikipedia article from the categories it’s in. Every day there are 10 articles to guess, from a pool of about 2,500 notable, diverse and interesting people, places and things. It's free and there are no ads. [more inside]
Snail Facts! -- 15 Minute Incremental
I was on my way to work a couple weeks ago and I got the weirdest idea for an incremental game. Here it is, Snail Facts! This is my first incremental, so I decided to make it pretty simple. Some details inside: [more inside]
Voyage of the Marigold
Every choice matters as you command the Federation Starship Marigold through unexplored sectors in a desperate race against time. [more inside]
Party Business Supreme
A game where you are a cake that collects presents for the big client and tries to not get eaten by forks. Now out on Steam, itch.io and Gamejolt.
Various new translations of yet more old games
In the past year or so, I've added several new translations and comments on games that have mostly been left out of the history of roleplaying, story games, fantasy games, etc. Highlights include seven classical mythology games from the late Renaissance (including the mildly LARP-like "Game of Ceremonies," in which players make sacrifices to Venus and Cupid), a translation of the novel Jeux d'esprit written in 1701 by Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de La Force (who gave a complete version of the collaborative storytelling game "Le Jeu du Roman," along with other games depicted in the novel), and trying out a new format, "Kriegsspiele, Parlament, and Prince Albert: light roleplaying in German, 1796-1893" (a blog post on parlor games and live action military-themed games with roleplaying elements).
Noir solo journaling game
Labyrinth of Night is a noir solo journaling game where you play as a private detective who's stuck in purgatory, wandering the city as you try to either wake up in your hospital bed or move on to your soul’s rest. It is played with a standard 52-card deck of playing cards. [more inside]
Kraken Whispers - an interactive text adventure
A climate-fiction text adventure with dystopian themes, set in 2051. Can you survive for one week as a regular person under the rule of the York Emergency Authority? (Maybe you can do more than survive, and blow oxygen on embers of resistance.) With beautiful art by Dibujos de Pam! Play for free in your browser, desktop or mobile. [more inside]
heroes wreck everything
"Monster in the Wilderness" is a solo journaling game about lying in wait for a hero who wants to come to your lair and steal your stuff. Play using random generators, or by building a house of cards.
Bonjour Hi - A game in the Montreal Metro
In the vein of Jet Lag the Game, Taskmaster, The Amazing Race, and more, I came up with a game for my friends and I to play in the Montreal metro (subway) system. We recorded the whole thing. The goal: "capture" the four main transfer hubs of the metro system and race back to where we began. The first team back wins. The fun bit is we need to do various tasks before we're allowed to advance in the game, which leads to much hilarity. [more inside]
Codections
Connections for coders. Inspired by the hot new word game from the New York Times. Test your dev knowledge!
Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser extended essay/review
I wrote 12,000 word piece on a recent trip to Disney's Galactic Starcruiser “Star Wars hotel”, looking at it from a game design/business/marketing perspective, with plenty of photos. My background is in designing ARGs and augmented reality games, so I was very curious to check it out before it closes next month. tl,dr: it’s extremely impressive and consciously uses a lot of ideas and mechanics from RPGs and MMOs! It's been very much misunderstood, and I'm convinced that soon as it closes, it'll be considered a lost classic.
Have You Played?
Learn about the videogames you should play and how to think about them! Have You Played is a free weekly newsletter for novices and experts alike, written by an award-winning game design and journalist. Every post starts with a simple description of exactly how the game works and what you do in it, then explores what makes it uniquely good or flawed. I've covered games including Pentiment, Season, Terra Nil, Cyberpunk 2077, Honkai: Star Rail, and many more!
Deco Deck: a new logic puzzle
My new game, Deco Deck, is now available for iOS, Android, Linux, Windows, and Mac.
In Deco Deck, there's a grid of cards. Each card has one of five suits, and a number from 1-9. The goal is to link up the cards in connected groups of five, such that each group forms a valid "hand". The hands are: straight, flush, full house, five-of-a-kind, and rainbow. A rainbow is one card of each suit.
Each puzzle has only one solution. There are new puzzles every day. [more inside]
Infinite Adversaries: a fighting game generated and narrated by ChatGPT
Inspired by the "Choose Your Own Adventure" book series, Infinite Adversaries asks ChatGPT to generate perpetual, randomized encounters, pitting you against a never-ending army of imaginary enemies. You're given an option of weapons, and from there ChatGPT imagines an adversary, location, and a set of possible actions (along with their outcomes). As you decide what to do, ChatGPT narrates the results. If you survive, your prize is another adversary. [more inside]
Lirdle - Like Wordle, but with one lie per answer
Yet another Wordle clone, but this one is designed to be maddening in the way a debugging session can be. For each answer you give, it picks one square at random and assigns it the wrong answer. [more inside]
Rock Scissor Paper Machine
This is a re-creation of the rock scissor paper gambling machines that used to be all around the streets of Seoul back in the 1990s. [more inside]
Isle of Beasts
A narrative strategy game inspired by King of Dragon Pass and A Dark Room. Your people are exiled to an island full of strange creatures, and you must figure out how to survive, building a new society in the process.
You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All
My book about gamification is out! You've Been Played (Bookshop.org, Goodreads) examines how points, badges, and leaderboards are creeping into every aspect of modern life as tools for profit and coercion. It’s a critique of gamification, sure – but by an actual game designer, games journalist, and former neuroscientist. And it goes far beyond the usual suspects like Fitbit and Duolingo to look at the historical roots of gamification. Foucault, Lewis Mumford, Skinner, medieval indulgences, Taylorism, ARGs – this book has it all! Reviews, talks, and excerpts inside... [more inside]
Surfwords
Surfwords is a very hard word building game. After I sold Semantle (previously), I decided to quit my job and make games. Surfwords is my first. I released it a few weeks ago, but I just decided to add a playable demo. You can try the demo on the web (works best with Chrome). The soundtrack is by Patrick Cornelius, and everything else is by me. [more inside]
Early Collaborative Games of Fantasy and Imagination
A few months ago, I posted a rough translation of the rules to a collaborative fairy tale storytelling game more than 200 years old. I've now put that onto a Neocities site with many additional translations: a total of 5 variants of the same game re-published many times between 1801 and 1867, several variants of a game the same age that involves role-playing, and several variants of even older poetry and nonsense games related to the Surrealist game "Exquisite Corpse." There are also pages and translations explaining the history of the games' penalty phase, offering advice on running demos of the storytelling game especially using motifs from the earliest "secondary world" fantasy novel, and possible round-robin storytelling from the 1600s-1700s, as well as links to many additional sources for parlor games from 1551 to 1899.
A narrative game system over 200 years old: "The Impromptu Tale"
I worked up a rough translation of one of the collaborative story-telling games linked in this post: Pre-Surrealist Games. It's called "The Impromptu Tale," and there's a lot to it that modern tabletop gamers may find familiar.
Anoited
This is my fan blog about the game Noita. I'm not great at the game; I just enjoy dying in novel ways, then sharing my photos of my trips, in the manner of an immortal tourist.
DNDle - Wordle, but you're picking stats to guess D&D monsters
It feels like there's a Wordle clone for everybody nowadays. But I decided to go in a slightly different direction when I made DNDle, a game in which you try to guess the Dungeons & Dragons "monster of the day" by assigning values to its attributes and being told where you've got them right. [more inside]
Mystic Paths - A new word board game!
A deduction through word association party board game my friend and I co-designed has made it to stores! [more inside]
Hannah's Game
I made this game a couple years ago with my oldest daughter. Well, she drew the pictures and somehow she requested a Kaboom! clone, which, wow, brought me back to my own childhood and reminded me of the way I envied my friend's dad. [more inside]
Mixolumia
Mixolumia is an entrancing, musical block-clearing puzzler released on itch just the other day. I wound up documenting the 18-month development process in a big twitter thread (also in twitter moment format) that folks have found interesting. Besides bringing a fresh twist to the puzzler genre, Mixolumia also has a dynamic soundtrack (by Josie Brechner and myself) that responds and evolves as you play. The cool thing is that the music system is open to players to create and share their own songs/sound packs. There's documentation on how to do that if you're interested in reading how it works. The game comes with a wide range of color palettes and players can customize and create their own as well. [more inside]
What ARGs can teach us about QAnon
QAnon isn't an alternate reality game (ARG), but ARGs can teach us why QAnon is so popular – and how to restore the lack of trust that led to QAnon's rise. This 5700 word post draws on my 19 years of playing, documenting, designing, and running ARGs.
ReLarn: A classic Roguelike, updated
ReLarn is a fork ("variant") of the classic 80s Roguelike game Larn (by way of Ularn, another fork) that aims to preserve the spirit of the original game while being much better suited to modern computers. It also has a more maintainable code base. As such, most of the
noticeable changes are bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements, albeit with a few extra touches here and there.
This project has been out for a couple of years now but this is the first release that provides pre-built binaries, supports Microsoft Windows out of the box and will (optionally) run in its own window instead of a text console.
The project website has a selection of screenshots, a list of notable changes from the original game and a full list of changes from Ularn 1.5-ish.
Tennis for when there's no tennis.
I've spent 30+ years fiddling with sports simulation games and using them to learn how to code. I think the only thing that made me finally finish this app was the fact that professional tennis has not been played in four months, but maybe also because I wanted to hone my Flutter skills. So here's my lifetime side-project -- a tennis simulation app that's neither a pong derivative nor a sports management game. It's not even really a game at all. But you can add yourself to the player list, and tap away to see how you do. Available for testing on Android, coming later for iOS.
Break Into Us
I made a web-based puzzle game. Players must solve clues to reduce the possible permutations for a series of combination locks and get them open. There are a couple of deliberately-easy tutorial levels at the start, but once you've solved the first one you can jump to any lock you please. [more inside]
Motto
a playful ghost story brought to life by the one-of-a-kind way you see the world. Working with friends and Canada's National Film Board, we spent the past three years trying to develop a new vocabulary for a kind of interactive novella and portable treasure hunt. It's a curious adventure about a ghost named September and you can explore all six chapters free on your phone.
Boast & Drive: A Squash Card Game
If you're bouncing off the walls, we have your antidote. Boast & Drive is a strategic card game for 2 to 6 players bringing to your living room the suspense and excitement of a squash match. Designed in Cleveland; made in the USA! Be the first to own the world’s best (and only) squash card game. Every purchase includes a donation to a member program of Squash & Education Alliance.
Big Deal or No Big Deal
Guess which Wikipedia articles are most popular and win big! I made a game that mashes up Wikipedia data with Deal or No Deal's mystery briefcase gameplay. [more inside]
Turtle Town
Your people live in a city on the animal, a gigantic turtle. It is time for her to go to the ocean and lay her eggs. Can you survive the trip? A strategy game about ever-changing environments. [more inside]
??, an emoji adventure
🐉 is a tiny emoji-based adventure game I made for the latest Ludum Dare game jam, built out of Javascript, HTML, CSS, and the game's internal emoji-based scripting language. [more inside]
Cheating Hangman
I made a game of Hangman that "cheats" by changing the word it's thinking of in order to make it as hard as possible to guess. But while it cheats, it never lies: it remains consistent with what it's told you so far about the word length, matching letters, non-matching letters etc. [more inside]
I built a text-based trivia game.
Having taken an 18-month diploma in web programming and not wanting to lose the skills I learned, I decided to create a text-based trivia game on the web. It also somewhat harkens back to the text-based BBS games of yore, which I grew up on. This week, I launched River of Kurn in an alpha state. It's totally playable, though winning conditions haven't yet been implemented. I'd love it if you'd take a look. (Note: not particularly mobile friendly at the moment, but that's coming soon(tm).) [more inside]
Numble Jumber - Simple Browser Puzzle Game
The title basically says it all. I made a simple browser puzzle game. You try to move the five blocks from one side of the screen to the other and place them in order. DIFFICULTY: You can't move the blocks individually. It works best on a computer using the arrow keys, but can also use swipe on mobile. If you are looking to kill a few minutes at work, give it a try.
The Long Talk (Round 3)
Here's how it works: each day you get an email, and you write one back. Everyone who writes back gets to keep playing, and the game gets more and more interesting as people drop off. We play until there's one person remaining and they're crowned the winner. Now gathering folks for round 3.
Starcom: Nexus
Ten years ago I made a Flash game called Starcom (previously). For the past few years I've been working on an ambitious follow-up. Today I launched it into Early Access. [more inside]
A game that teaches kids 20 years of investing in 20 minutes
High school kids are still learning investing the way I did in the '90s: get a large sum of imaginary money and buy individual stocks for 8-10 weeks. Basically the exact wrong way to learn a lifelong investment strategy. (Not to mention these programs are often sponsored by groups representing the interests of investment brokerages.) We created Stax to take down "the stock market game." [more inside]
The Long Talk, round 2
A few years ago I did an email game with these rules: everyone gets an email once a day. If you respond to it within 24 hours, you get to play the next day. We keep going until there's just one person remaining. It was a lot of fun.
Now I'm kicking it off again and I'm looking for people who want to play. I set up a little google form here for anyone who wants to play.
Roguelike Celebration, October 6-7 2018 in San Francisco (third annual!)
A bunch of my friends and I like roguelike computer games, and we keep organizing an annual community conference for players and developers of games in this beloved genre (such as Nethack) and games they've influenced (such as Dwarf Fortress). If you're into this kind of thing (or curious about it) and nearby, please join us for some neat and thoughtful talks about roguelikes, retrocomputing, procedural generation, and game design!
Airships: Conquer the Skies
Over the last five years, I've been working on a steampunk strategy game about building airships and fighting with them. Two days ago, I released it!
Mission Me is a smartphone game that promotes creativity in your real life
Inspired by a popular art installation I made for Burning Man, I've now crafted the app version! Mission Me encourages you towards creative experiments and real-life adventures for self-growth and hilarity!
We Sacrificed Imaginary Kitties to Help People Avoid Real-Life Financial Disaster
Cat Insanity is a responsive browser game that slowly, inevitably forces you into the brutal massacre of imaginary cats*, all to capture the emotional experience of drowning in high-interest debt. [more inside]
Android Game - Clear Synthesis: Bumbaroo and the Yellow Ghost
I made a phone game for Android! It is a casual/puzzle type game where the objective is to match blocks and empty the board. [more inside]
Shift Change
A few weeks ago I made a text based game with Twine with one of my brothers that puts you in the shoes of a missile alert system tester in Hawaii on a recent January morning. [more inside]
Pocket Conspiracies, a group role-playing app
I wrote and programmed a group role-playing app! The gist is everyone playing needs to be in the same room and have the app on their smartphone, and then they perform together a series of challenges. It's for 3-10 players, takes 20-45 min, ages 10+. The app is free, doesn't have ads, and doesn't track your info beyond what is strictly needed to run the game. [more inside]