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| Sunday |
the Seventh of December, 2003 |
Liero
is exactly what Worms should have been - played entirely in real-time,
and with a huge array of Scorched Earth
pixel-style weapons instead of different sprites that make different silly
noises. No network play, but lots of add-ons and complete
makeovers - easily one of the best two-player same-keyboard games
I've seen. And a 350k download.
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| Wednesday |
the Third |
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| The
Ideogram Namer, a tiny project I did for the British Library last month,
is now live - it invites visitors to ascribe a meaning to some invented
Chinese characters, and charts the top ten results.
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| Tuesday |
the Second |
"Lens of Shuffling (2)
Artifact
Whenever an opponent shuffles his or her library, shuffle your library."
An epic "spoiler" of satirical Magic cards;
much of it above the head of the lapsed and the tournament-ignorant, but
worth a look purely for the the ridiculous and the ingeniously useless cards.
[via Bateleur]
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A compendium
of paper, scissor, stone variants from around the world.
Notable are full-body shouyaken, "legs janken", Chinese
hammer/scissors/bomb and tiger-ken, where hero defeats
tiger, tiger defeats mother and... mother defeats hero.
A 21st century variant: war/peace/terrorism.
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| Monday |
the First |
Following on from that, toy shop researchers have
used careful
game-aspect weightings to conclude that the product with the
highest "perfect family game" rating is - above gimmicky electronic
noise machines and Simpsons-themed board games - a £1.50 deck of
playing cards. [from Raven]
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"We know that Mancala is old because we have examples of
carven boards from long ago, but the copies of the games that were
played in the dust are long gone.
Of course, most people reading this article have readier access to
office supplies and pocket change than to dirt and rocks. That's why I
will focus on pens, paper, and coins - the contemporary urban equivalent
of sticks, dirt, and stones, respectively."
Good article on Low-Tech Game Systems; games that can be played
without any specialised components, and whose rules can - in most
cases - be easily memorised. Plenty of links.
Relatedly, and admirably, the author's Seattle gaming group
are organising Emergency
Game Kits for local hospitals - boxes of cheap, basic components,
bundled with a printed book of as many good game rules as they can
legally republish.
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