radiant fracture

Hey my game jam is over! I'm announcing the results a little early.

Folks, that was brilliant. 32 people signed up, and there were 10 entries in the end! (Plus one after the deadline.) I ended up giving awards to four games instead of three because I liked so many.

It is damn difficult to be in charge of judging things, but I do feel like the small prize encouraged people to enter. It's so nice to win a thing.

Here are the four cup-of-coffee winners (couldn't stop at three in the end). I had lots of criteria, but it came down to -- how easy was it to tell a story that I loved through the game? All of these games helped me build a story that I wouldn't have come up with on my own and that surprised, delighted, and moved me.

• Monster in the Wilderness - ursula - a beautiful abstraction of the themes of Beowulf (or that's how I read it) - gorgeous
  
• A Moment too Late - ToriBee - You are a time-travelling tortoise who always arrives too late for the Major Historical Event and has to piece things together from the aftermath - Crept up on me!
  
• A Game of Tower - yhlee - Fantasy, surrealism, and personal growth via confronting your lies about yourself - delicious
  
• Kintsugi - elusis - A supple yet strong spine for stories of damage and repair - poignant
  

There was lots of fun and story to be had in all the games, though, and I recommend reading / playing the others.

{rf}


PS what is a good name for the cup-of-coffee prize and/or winner?

Okay, I'm going to do it!

Fractured Birthday TTRPG Game Jam
Runs Nov 1 - Dec 22
Results released Dec 31

It's my birthday. I would like there to be more small weird TTRPGs (Table-Top Role-Playing Games) in the world. Make my birthday wish come true. Create a TTRPG on the theme of fracture, breakage, and/or repair. Win a cup of coffee!

This jam comes with a tiny prize! Up to 3 (three) of my fave games will receive $10 (Canadian) so that the designer can buy themselves a congratulatory coffee.

More details and the jam submission page here: itch.io/jam/fractured-birthday-game-jam

Some Examples of Games I Like

I like spooky games, horror games, and games about feelings.

Ten Candles (beautiful doom ritual)
1000-Year-Old Vampire (roll & write delight)
This Vineyard Will Be Our Salvation (quirky, smart, critical)
Quietus
Pull Me From the Earth (Q&A excellence)
Star Crossed / Dread
Brindlewood Bay (love the crime-solving mechanic)
The Quiet Year
Debrief

Other Things I Like in Games

Collaborative storytelling
Queer & trans content / vibe
Solo journalling games, other writing games, other solo games
Unusual and / or witty mechanics (esp. physical objects)
Low-prep, improvisational games with a few rules to anchor play
Games about feeeeelings but also about story
Gamification of hard real-life activities or experiences
Games with aspects of ceremony or ritual

My Games

I think my most successful games are these, if you want to see the kinds of things I make:

You Are a Beacon (solo journalling game)
Getting There (2-player Q&A storytelling mini-game)
The Fledgling and the Vale (2-player Q&A story game)

If you'd like a small colourful PDF of my little road trip conversation game / story prompt Getting There, you can download it free here on Itch.io. I've already posted the full text in this journal here, and a delirious run-through with sabotabby here, so the PDF is just for those who might want something more visually appealing to use on class slides or something like that.

I dunno. It's yellow. Might be cheerful. Just trying to get everything in one place.

Game Jam

I joined a game jam for the first time, but then I got buzzy and made a whole game before the jam even started, so now I need a new idea starting at 10 pm tonight.

The jam is to create a solo journalling game -- a game whose form is a series of journal entries you make in the voice of the character.

This format wasn't something I'd particularly thought about creating, but this jam was one of the few jams I identified that was a) for TTRPGs, not video games; b) starting soon; and c) asking for something I thought I could produce.

Now I can't stop making them.

My current idea (the one that's nearly finished, knock wood) is a journal that gets written out of order and then filled in via memory threads that link different entries, or "how I draft everything anyway." I like the way this brings about connections and narrative arcs that the player/writer might not otherwise have come up with. Since it's moving back and forth that is the core mechanic, the effect is going to be kind of ephemeral -- the finished result will be a linked piece of writing, but the most pleasurable part of the experience, I think, will be making the links.

I'm pleased because I had drafted a very complicated mechanic for moving from entry to entry, and then as I was walking to work today I saw how I could vastly simplify it. Now I think I can get the game onto four pages. I can see that economy is a value in game design, especially in these little TTRPGs.

I didn't actually need to go in to work, but I did need the walk, and it was good to be in the office and grab a few things and print a few things and feel At Work, even if what I actually mostly did was revise the new game. No one else was around until the cleaning staff came by -- I got there pretty late in the day, and folks are still minimizing their time in shared interior spaces.

{rf}