Dinosaur Comics creative...ness

Today's comic with a twist : http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1632

Reading across the top tells a story, but then the bottom half flips it around and totally recontexualises (+1 big word!) the first half. I love it when games do this.

Oddly enough reminds me of Braid :O

Also: How often is too often to make a blog post?

Cribbage and card games

While trying out a handful of card games over the summer holidays, I learnt about the common traits of card games I never knew of. Lots of games have a series of tricks that are played out, each player playing a hand as it goes round. Some have a limited amount of tricks, some play until all cards are out. Then there is Trumps, a suit that is higher than all the others, sometimes there is a hierarchy in which all suits have a value.

So I wanted to find out the differences of card games and the ones that stood out were 500, hearts, and Cribbage. Hearts was the easiest, Hearts is the trump suit - but the catch is that 'winning' cards of a hearts suit gives you minus points. So as you play the goal is to avoid 'winning' any hearts and make the other players get them. The saving grace for Hearts is the shoot-for-the-moon in which a player aims to obtain all the hearts and the queen of clubs (a special card that acts like a heart but gives -13 points, equal to all the hearts cards combined). If a player wins this, he is up a hundred points (or so).

Cribbage was my favorite, although I would have made a few changes to it. It has a nice tactile way of scoring by means of moving pins around a board, but I argue that it isn't necessary as pen & paper would work just as well (but not be as nice..) and the way in which you score was really awesome. You have a hand and try to make as many sets of runs, pairs, groups of whatever you can make to score, and every set you can make is worth points. It's a great puzzle that's really rewarding in making you feel like a genius.
It's the type of thing I can see making a good video game. Perhaps I should draw something up...

Terry Cavanagh's Pathways

After his interview at Gamasutra I checked out some of his games, and they are really quite neat. They seem to take a simple concept on a simple game type, and just give it a little twist - sending the game spinning out into that weird zone around edge of the box.

Pathways' core mechanic is that, quite simply, you can't move backwards. After his other game "Don't look back"
 I assume it's a thing he's toying with. This makes for some interesting story to the game, as you are unable to stop and return to characters as you pass them, and the characters comment on this. Your wife worries about you leaving, the girl outside the door gets more distraught as you never stop for her.
It reminds me of one section in Braid in the world with time going forwards only when you move forwards, and backwards when you move backwards. After you have completed a world and met the dinosaur guy at the end you have to move away from him in order for him to progress his dialogue, but then he yells at you for running away.
So where was I. Oh yes. Pathways.
You basically have to just travel all the different pathways, each one with its own story line: you kill a monster; join a group and slay a dragon; have an affair etc. Each ends the game at the end of its story, but then on restart it continues as though a day has passed. Each pathway becomes blocked off so there's no lost wander in this game. After all the pathways have been searched, there is an ending scene but I won't give that away. Because it's so short, just go and play it. It's 1.7mb that you won't regret.

Get it here: Pathways