We just watched a snippet from a Discovery series on the human body, about sight and the ways in which the mind filters out noise and extraneous detail to present you an extremely narrow packet of information about the world in front of your face. It included a scene in which the host demonstrates a [...]
Introduction: Grow and devour — this is your calling. In Penicillin, players take on the role of a bacteria culture, spreading with relentless, single-minded purpose to overrun their opponents and consume the board before those pesky antibodies can catch up to them.
Players: 2+
Materials:
Pens or markers of different colors, one per player.
One sheet of standard, letter-sized [...]
The other night I attended a birthday party involving the oh-so-American phenomenon midnight bowling. A number of my friends were in attendance, many of them as couples. Midnight bowling is really a drinking-game version of regular bowling, so by the time the second game began people were fairly wobbly, and their feelings and attitudes towards [...]
I recently acquired this game by pure luck from a local game store. I consider it lucky because, two years ago at GenCon ‘06, I had the opportunity to play the game in its first public appearance. The creators themselves were at GenCon to debut the game (as is the custom among American non-digital game [...]
Introduction: A fast-paced, quick-changing game of “divide and conquer” territory claiming, Hardscrabble is a simple little game with big plans — easy to learn and quick to play, but not as easy as it looks. Roll the dice and draw shapes to claim space, but be careful you don’t get too greedy or your opponent [...]
A point Tracy Fullerton made during the same panel discussion (see previous post): to be a media-maker is to participate in the making of culture.
An often-forgotten but penetrating insight, I believe. It needs no reiteration how much games have contributed to our culture and vice versa, and I’m not talking just about the subculture of [...]
During the first session at GDX - a panel discussion with Tracy Fullerton, Greg Costikyan, Frank Lantz, and Eric Zimmerman - the moderator, Ian Bogost, made an interesting point during the debate over the question of the emerging indie scene. He commented that indie game developers seem to play two roles: the opposition and the [...]
Introduction: In chemistry, intricate patterns of atoms are the foundation of all compounds. In this game, they are battle plans. By forming interwoven strings of linked icons, players strive to expand their influence across the board while choking off the expansion of their rivals. Careful planning and a keen eye for opportune moments will decide [...]
Hot on the heels of a most successful conference were the awards for Entelechy, SCAD’s annual interactive design and game development departmental showcase and competition. It is open to all students at SCAD to submit their best work in a variety of categories, including: digital game, character modeling, concept art, environment/level design, paper/board game, card [...]
Today I head out for Atlanta to visit the SCAD campus there and attend GDX - the Game Developer’s Exchange, SCAD’s own micro-game developer conference. I very much enjoyed the conference last year — meeting interesting and unique people like Don Daglow, Marc Mencher, and Davey Jackson. This year we have an equally impressive crowd [...]