Yesterday I thought up a new phrase to describe the kinds of puzzle games I’m referring to when I say “action puzzle games”: recursive puzzle games. Read on for a lengthy discussion about puzzle games, naming conventions, and board game inspirations.
Chess & Hip-Hop
After discovering WuChess earlier today, (and their video contest), I uploaded to youtube perhaps the most amateurish rap video ever put on the internet. Full video, lyrics and bonus lyrics/poem after the link: Continue reading “Chess & Hip-Hop”
Con-damnation!
I was just reminded about Con of the North, which is a local gaming convention. I’ve been meaning to go for years, but I never really know when it is. Well, guess what, it’s this weekend.
But I’m already signed up for Frozen Perl on Saturday, so I’ll probably just pay the one-day fee, and go on Sunday or something. (I have plans Friday night to see Jumper with Florence.)
In con-pletely unrelated news, I am someone’s version of nice stuff.
Go Tetris! presentation
I gave a presentation tonight for the local twin cities chapter of the International Game Developers Association. I think it went well. There were somewhere between ten and twenty people in the audience, and they seemed genuinely engaged and interested.
The presentation can be found here:
http://docs.google.com/Presentation?id=dg2n4s6k_19dcdkm5gp
After me, another guy, Darrell Hardy presented about board games and the industry in general. I guess he worked at fantasy flight for years… he seemed like a really nice guy, and had several interesting things to say.
Florence tagged along, and she even said afterward that she’d had a good time. She’s been showing more and more interest in games lately. I’ve even got her playing an x-box game (Samurai Warriors 2) with me semi-regularly (the latest in the Dynasty Warriors… er, dynasty, it’s a great one for co-op). My crowning achievement: She admitted to me tonight that she closed her eyes and saw guys running around with little red bars above their heads.
mirthless (worthless) gaming
I got together with friends and played board games a record-breaking three times this weekend. All three with a slightly different group of friends, although there were a few overlapping people at each event, I don’t think anyone else (aside from me) was at all three. All three events were fun, and I got a much needed injection of board gaming into my otherwise game-less life as of late. But I hadn’t planned on spending that much of my three-day weekend on board games.
My good friend Beth was in town, and she prompted yesterday’s game event, or I probably would have stopped after game night number two. Mostly because of the event I’m about to relate in this post. I basically want to talk about an incident that happened at that second game night. Read on for the details.
travel and blog catchup
The trip to japan was awesome. Photos here. Florence and I are still doing great. I’m sure Nate thinks I’ve abandoned him. I can’t even remember the last time I slept at the house. Last night Florence and I saw KR’s show in the fringe, and ran into Nate outside afterwards. It felt like the first time I’d seen him in weeks.
Last weekend Florence and I went down to visit her sister in Chicago. We went to Wizard’s World on Saturday, this giant comic convention, and it was pretty great. I’ve really been reading a lot of comics lately, Runaways and Young Avengers, and Futurama, and Girls… with some x-men thrown in there for good measure. It started with some graphic novels, V for Vendetta and The Watchmen. Florence’s sister Susie has tons of comics, and it was fun looking through her collection. (Mike also has a nice collection, and I haven’t taken nearly enough advantage of it — although I did borrow The Watchmen from him, and some of those x-men.)
On Sunday night, as we were driving back, we got off the freeway at the Wisconsin dells, and decided spontaneously to stay at Kalahari, this water park that I’d heard about because my brother John went there recently. Now I feel bad I didn’t go with him, because it was AWESOME. Florence and I had a really wonderful time going on all the rides together, and it really made the trip something memorable.
I’m reading The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. It’s super good, chalk full of literary goodness. Also reading Game Plan, The Game Inventor’s Handbook, which is about what it sounds like, although it’s more about publishing games and getting them published than the actual act of inventing them. I’ve been playing a lot of games again, and have come up with this abstract strategy game that uses a bunch of dice in a non-random way. We’ve played it a few times, and it’s gotten some decent comments from everybody. I’ve decided I’m going to get a set of large (1″) dice to play with just for parties and stuff. Email me if you’re interested in the rules. As soon as I think of a decent name for it, I’ll probably post them to board game geek or something. I had this idea that I’d be coming up with new games to use the same dice, and selling a handbook full of them, and I still might do that, but I want to at least give one set of rules away. Plus, none of the other games are as far along in terms of rules and thinking them out as this one. There is one other one that I’d like to try out in the near future… I’ve just got to find time to do it.