itch.io

You are very right! Missed that. I'll get it fixed someone this weekend, along with some other copy editing. Thanks!

https://transistence.itch.io/fair-winds-and-following-seas

Thank you! Writing it was very emotional, but sharing it with others has been really rewarding.

yay! Thank you so much for sharing it with me.

https://transistence.itch.io/fair-winds-and-following-seas

https://transistence.itch.io/they-stole-the-moon

You may have heard of certain games about certain birds that shall remain nameless - Bird Fight Simulator 2009 is a delightful and effortlessly humorous game that has earned it's spot among the bird-nuisance pantheon. With one player responsible for a magnificent flock of birds and the other playing a human beleaguered by many kinds of birds, there are sure to be many honks, quacks, and other assorted fowl imitations.

This is such a delightful game about robot girlfriends! It includes the amazing delights of note-passing, fort-building, and complimenting each other's destructive capabilities. The structure of the game encourages both silly, joyful play as well as intimate, personal moments.

I played affection game with the designer a few weeks ago and I still look at the game every day. It was an amazing way to get to know someone new and it has brought new depth to conversations between my partner and me, when we make time to show care for each other in this way. A beautiful game with the most expressive robot art.

This game contains many powerful secrets that will give you pause. It is absolutely playable, despite is potential first impressions, and it does wonderful things to create a powerful circle of trust, intimacy, and exploration.

The British Library put out over a million images from their collection, free to use, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/britishlibrary/. There's probably something in there is you're able to filter through it.

I generally think more people should charge for their work/labor on games, to improve the overall ability of the scene to support creators. I'm not going to say you can't participate if you don't charge for your game, I just believe strongly in it, hence the strong suggestion for charging for your game.

If you're concerned about accessibility, another option (which you may already be aware of) is to put a price on the game and then offer a way for people to reach out to you if they can't afford it.

Very cool! I'll gave to check it out. I love personal stakes setting like this

This sounds like such an evocative mechanic, is love to see how it plays out. Do you see it being a PvP kind of move, where each player has a success condition that's in convention with the other?

Yep! At one point I suggested on Twitter making five different one move games that optionally Voltron together, so of you have the time and ideas, go for it! Also, I'm happy to be open to late submissions if you run over time.

I love it when game design comes to you in dreams! I've got a game I'm designing right now (not got this jam) that started in a dream.

This looks so great! I love the questions that play seems like it will be asking.

My experience has led me to needing to chill lot more in public games and just focus on the other players because otherwise the pressure makes my mind start to drift.

I think I find more pressure to perform when I'm running a game? Probably due to still not internalizing that everyone at the table shares responsibility for making the game fun/engaging.

Gamer? I hardly know her!

I do think this brings up another interesting discussion of the differences between putting together a collection and running a jam. I feel like the former presents a more comprehensible product in some ways, but the latter means you'll get input from people you probably wouldn't reach out to normally.

hellllll yeah

The first game I designed was a larp for Golden Cobra 2015 (As We Know It). I did some parlor/one shot larps with a local group before it became unsafe. Since then I've hard a hard time reengaging with playing, though I haven't stopped thinking about design.

I think the ideal-world thing I'd like to see with larps (and gaming in general TBH) is people no longer having community/scene growth as a priority/measure of success. Not sure if there's a way to escape that drive within capitalism, but I'd love to see people thinking about how to share successful structures to be implemented by many communities rather than pushing one community to grow beyond the bounds of plausible safety and support.

Tough one... I'd start with what we know, which is games are art. Is art good?

I dabbled in a few forums in middle and high school, but the only place I really used was the Essential Anime Forums, where I, a fifteen year old, was made a forum admin in the peak ::glomp:: era.

Sure was a time.

Right now, a game I contributed to is on Kickstarter. It's called Cut to the Chase and there are a bunch of great designers involved that provide some really evocative settings for this two-player microgame.

Brandon O'Brien just posted another project in this style as well, Evokers' Pact, though it looks like it may not be a full release yet.

One thing I've been thinking of for over a year now would be some kind of game "covers" jam. Like, take an existing game and redesign it in your style? Still haven't figured out the particulars of explaining exactly what that means, or how to avoid problematic stealing/appropriation of work.

I definitely appreciate that. How would the mechanics of it work? Is there a way to add a game to the jam page after it's ended, or would it be adopted into the group some other way? (I say because the stress of trying to get my wizard game done in time was, as you say, definitely not cozy.)

I see that there was a New Releases topic just started for games released on itch. Would that be the best place to promote games available or being funded elsewhere (for ex. a Kickstarter), should that go in it's own topic somewhere, or is it discouraged in general?

Alex/transistence/Aket depending on platform. Pronouns are e/em/ere. The sad mech jam here was the first time I'd published one of m own games for $, and I hope to coninute doing so and supporting others doing so. Previously, I've participated in a lot of anthologies and done some other freelancing. This will likely be one of my more active online presences, but you can find me on Discord at Aket#3324 or on Twitter @transistence.

Right now I'm working on a late entry for March of the Wizards about stacking dice to build a wizard tower, a Short Rest game about a pair of mittens, and two longer term projects that I hope to have on itch someday.

Came up in another topic - would there be a way to be able to categorize game jams so you could tell at a glance is it's for physical/analog games, video/digital games, or open to both? I think game jams are going to be a pretty active place for analog designers, considering how the past month and a half has gone, and being able to tell which jams are open to us will likely be super relevant, for everyone using the site.

I'm wondering if there would be a way to sort out physical vs. digital jams on that schedule? I heard about the ones I mentioned because of Twitter, and looking right now, there doesn't seem to be a way to tell until it's mentioned in the jam description, which sometimes doesn't happen util way later...

That's really great advice. I got really worked up trying to do both Short Rest and March of the Wizards after coming off sad mechs and I didn't realize that it was obviously too much until too late.

That sounds great! I've seen a lot of tarot-inspired work out there. I'd love to see how those develop along side each other.

I hear you on charging for games as well. I felt a bit weird charging for my mech game, but I definitely think it's important to show our work has value (a conversation I've had in many spaces with a lot of folks that actually started for me when I was trying to get my foot in the door as a semi-professional improviser.)

It seems like the success of the Emotional Mech Jam did a lot to get itch on the map of indie games and analog games on the map at itch. Seems like the ball is still rolling on those with March of the Wizards, Short Rest, Roll to Craft and Short and Easy. How was it participating in a jam, for those that did?

I posted my first game on itch for the #sadmechjam and It was a huge confidence boost to actually get direct sales for something I wrote. My wizard game idea went through about 20 iterations before finally resolving a day too late. I'm still working on it though, and I'm in love with the idea and grateful to the jam hosts for evocative prompts that were clearly inspiring for a lot of designers. I'm really curious about what kind of events we'll see in the future, since game contests/jams are a way a lot of designers get their start. Maybe existing design events could find a home here as well...

There's also a lot of design work going into designing safety tools  to use at and around the table and community initiatives. A subcategory to house discussions on these kinds of meta-design topics would also be great.

I know a lot of folks also use "analog games" as an umbrella term for board game, card games, tabletop RPGs, and larps. I think the thing that makes larps look like a smaller community is that there aren't huge companies that folks are creating supplemental materials for, or well known systems being hacked by various folks. I think the content that is being created by larp communities would fit in really well here, and it would be awkward/unintuitive to not include it in the category.

I was thinking more of campaign as indicating designed for long term play, rather than a specific adventure, but I can see it's not the best terminology for that.

I just posted the first game I've ever published independently here and am psyched to see this conversation. A lot of the most relevant stuff has already been said above, but categories for low prep, no prep, one-shot and campaign would be amazing for folks looking for games to fit specific life situations that come up fairly regularly.

Also, there's pretty big crossover between designers and players of tabletop RPGs and larps, so larp classification tags could also be very useful - things like, well, larp, as well as parlor, freeform, boffer, nordic. I'm not that deep in the classification system, but those are some broad categories that would be a not terrible place to start.