LEGO GEV Revisted. Again.
More cool posts at boardgamegeek.com prompted me to design yet another set of miniatures for OGRE/GEV using LEGO. That’s a lot of capital letters…just check out the pictures.
The Future Has Arrived
…Obviously. In particular, it seems that Knowledge Navigator has finally arrived.
See, back in 1987, Apple made this weird little video, a sort of Concept Car for their vision of computing.
Knowledge Navigator wasn’t a product. It wasn’t an ad. Most people outside Apple probably never heard of it at the time.
(Personally, I heard about it through geek channels, and saw it in a science museum a few years later.)
But it’s obviously been lurking close behind Apple’s overall vision for decades. Look at this ad they just released, for Siri on iPhone.
Welcome to the future, Apple style. It’s right on schedule.
Diamond in the Rough
The toy store in my neighborhood, S.W. Randall Toys & Gifts, runs an annual LEGO contest. This year, my diorama, Diamond in the Rough, won third prize in the Adult category.
The first and second place winners were models of beloved local landmarks. I’ll keep that in mind for next year! 
(I’m not complaining: there’s nothing wrong with playing to your audience’s interests, and they were good models, too.)
My scene was inspired by these pictures of giant crystals. (Not diamond, alas.)
The Sand Boxes
I guess I haven’t posted yet about The Sand Boxes, my Flash puzzle/adventure game.
I had so much fun writing Ka for the JayIsGames Casual Gameplay Design Competition #7 that when the CGDC#8 was announced, I decided to enter something again.
This time I wanted to try writing a Flash “escape” style adventure game. I had really enjoyed Mateusz Skutnik’s Submachine Zero. I wanted to make something like that.
Once the competition opened for voting, I found that my homage to an old archaeology-themed Submachine game was competing against…a new archaeology-themed Submachine game!
Submachine: 32 Chambers is a lot of fun, and handily dominated the competition. That’s okay, I hadn’t really expected my first Flash adventure game – written in about three weeks – to win.
In fact, it was an unexpected pleasure to have the privilege of losing to Mateusz Skutnik’s latest offering.
For one thing, I’d written The Sand Boxes because I wanted more games “like that” to exist. This way I got to play one I hadn’t written, too! (Did I mention his is great?) And since the winner had taken the same basic approach to game genre and the competition’s theme that I had, I felt like I was on the right track.
And of course, reaction to my game was generally positive. People played it and had fun, which is the real point.
The Sand Boxes was fun to create. It has some unique puzzles, and I think the photo-collage scenery turned out great.
You can play it for free right now.
Please, sir…
Language is alive. As idioms find currency in expression, they sometimes mutate – for example, Shakespeare never said anything about “gilding the lily”. He wrote, “to gild refined gold, to paint the lily”, but the pithier version is what caught on.
Have you noticed this one?
- “please, sir, I want some more” About 67,700 results found by a Google search for the quoted phrase
- “thank you, sir, may I have another” About 90,400 results
- “please, sir, may I have another” About 160,000 results
Note that there are more hits for the third phrase than for the other two combined.
The first phrase is a quote from Oliver Twist. The second is a quote from Animal House.
The third phrase – the most popular – seems to be somewhere in between: a misquote of both?
Perhaps the mind recognizes the kinship between the two quotes and instinctively merges them. (I just did it myself, which is what prompted me to look up these (rudimentary) statistics.) Perhaps these two classic works about persevering underdogs now have equal weight in our literary heritage?
Ka reviewed on JayIsGames
After the dust settled from the JayIsGames CGDC7 competition, the JayIsGames crew started posting reviews of the top-scoring games. Gradually. (They mostly review graphical games, not Text Adventures, so they’ve been doling them out one at a time over a span of months.) This week they finally worked their way down the list to my game, Ka. Their review is both favorable and accurate, and now they also provide a nice spoiler-protected incremental walkthrough, so you can find just the hints you need for each part of the game. Check it out!
I am Number Six!
My latest game, Ka, placed sixth out of 30 entries in the Jay is Games Casual Game Design Competition #7.
Play my new game, Ka!
My new Interactive Fiction game (what some of us still call Text Adventures), entitled “Ka“, is an entry in the Jay is Games Casual Game Design Competition #7.
Please hop on over there and play it. Play the other entries too: I’m sure they’re just as cool as mine.
The Name of the Game of the Rose
(Dan Efran Reviews Cool Books: The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco)
[ SPOILER warning: I hate spoilers, but it's hard to review a book without describing the plot somewhat. I'll try to be subtle. ]
When an author spends seven pages describing one doorway, you know he’s not going to be cutting you any slack. You can only hope that the book will be as rewarding as it is challenging. That’s the game Umberto Eco plays, and he plays it well. He writes to exercise his considerable cleverness, then dares you to keep up.
Start with a Gothic mystery reminiscent of a Hammer Horror B-movie: an isolated abbey, a mysterious labyrinth, grotesque murders inspired by the visions of Revelation. Black cats. Dark and stormy nights. A miasma of drear and despair.
Add a witty and loving pastiche of Holmes and Watson, with William of Baskerville (get it?) endlessly criticizing Adso (get it?) for proposing improper syllogisms.
Add glimpses of the turbulent politics of a time (1327) when Popes and Emperors strove for authority over each other. Throw in a cameo from the Inquisition, predictably vicious, self-righteous, manipulative, inexorable.
Braid these threads into an exploration of paradoxes of faith: impure monks; unjust judges; innocent witches; heresy and doctrine conflated; ugly unicorns.
Then whip it all up in a cyclone of images, fever-dreams born of scripture and doubt. Chimeras leap from the margins of illuminated manuscripts. Mirrors reflect lies. The language of Babel makes sense. Things unseen are known; things seen escape knowledge. An open door stops you in your tracks for seven pages. Sense alternates with nonsense, the sublime alternates with the ridiculous, in lists of examples far longer than this one. Hope you like that kind of thing.
Meanwhile, the mystery keeps ticking away, a parade of corpses taunting the intrepid detectives, one after another, carrying away precious secrets.
This book is a labyrinth. You are expected to get lost in it, marvel at the clever twists and reversals, wander its chambers in increasing distress, then eventually escape, still wondering what path you really took, what you really discovered. There is a climax; there is a conclusion; but there is little of catharsis or release. The prize for completing this journey through doubt is not certitude, but more doubt.
I liked it.
