Categories
Game design

Of cultures, sensitivities & fire

This is a very old post from 2012. Reposted, since I still come back to these learnings.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been witnessing a heated debate about appropriation and racism in game design happening over at the Story Games forum, sparked by some of the entries in this year’s Game Chef competition. Sadly, my game, Lies of Passage, was one of the games that acted as the sparks here. This post is an attempt to present my views and way of thinking, as they relate to Lies of Passage and the development process.

Categories
Game design

Game Chef Therapy

I have this thing for starting projects & then abandoning them half-way through the design or writing process. In short, I have a problem with getting stuff done.

Categories
Reviews

Review: One Last Night

One Last Night by Abram Bussiere is not a game I expected to find in Game Chef. It’s a drinking game.

Unlike most drinking games, the object of One Last Night is not to make participants share and/or do embarrassing things. Instead it has players compile a pre-apocalyptic wish list – things to do before the world ends and we all die, and then play out the difficulties of choosing between them with limited time, as well as the joy of getting each done.

Categories
Reviews

Review: Coyote Won’t Talk

Coyote Won’t Talk, written by Morgan Stinson for Game Chef 2012, is a rather serious game, as far as what’s at stake – judging humanity’s faults and triumphs. Four great animal spirits reflect on humanity, as the world ends around them: the Fox, the Dog, the Wolf and the Coyote (who doesn’t talk… mostly).

Categories
Reviews

Review: The Game in Last Appearances #4

This game got to me. It’s the worst practical joke you can play on a geek. Reading through the introduction left me thinking “Wait, what?!” – you’ll know what I mean when you read it.

The Game in Last Appearances #4 by Paul Czege is set in the DC Universe. It has the players tell the story of 3 great DC superheroes fighting over a certain young lady by the name of Madkitten.

Categories
Reviews

Review: Tears in Rain

As part of my participation in Game Chef I am to review four games submitted by other contestants.

One of these is Tears in Rain by Alex Mayo, a game of past regrets and mistakes.

In this game you play a man slowly dying in his sleep, enveloped in the freezing cold of a damaged cryosleep pod, onboard a spaceship that can explode any minute now. Or maybe it will just drift in space for eternity, the steel coffin for your dead body. Before that happens, though, you dream your last dreams… What a powerful and intriguing idea!

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Meta

03:19 am

Thanks to the Earth’s continued rotation it is now 3:19 AM where I live.

I’ve just finished a game called Lies of Passage, my submission for this year’s Game Chef competition. I am tired, slightly agitated and extremely happy with myself. I expect all three states to vanish by morning.

In the process of submitting my entry I managed to create this blog, which I’ve been meaning to do for a while now.

Expect this blog to have posts on game design, haiku, heraldry, technology, art and history. In any order and proportions.

I’ll start with game design, though. Once I get some sleep.