thank you so much!!!

I'm interested to know how you chose to interpret spells, class and race abilities, all that jazz! Did you introduce new rules? Incorporate a current rule? Not only will this help other players, but it'll help me develop the Infinite Hack going forward!

If you notice any errors or typos, let me know here!

this is an amazing realisation 🙌🙌🙌

OMG THESE ARE EXCELLENT IDEAS MAKE A SEQUEL PLEASE

The first excellent thing about this game is that you realise you are playing it, you do not decide.

There are many excellent things.

Astoundingly beautiful. Layout sublime. Poetic.

It might surprise you with what it means, but I’m not sure how loaded that is.

Check it out, but be careful

Wait actually no joke? Thank you!

Thank you :-)

This is a choose-your-own adventure lyric game about spending time with your grandmother. 

Grandmother loves you, grandmother supports you. It gives you a mama, to take the load off you. This is a very particular pleasant dream, about memory, or yearning, or imagined family.

Maria, I think your voice really and truly is here, and it's heartwarming, tear-jerking to hear you speak from a different space. I hope this is a huge success, and gives you confidence to speak from new spaces more often.

It is one of the most pleasant lyrics I've ever seen. Truly groundbreaking. One definition of lyrics was that they leverage the power of imagined play, and I think I AM YOUR MOMMA does this better than many lyric games do.

I think, support Maria, buy this game, if you want to feel the warmth of a grandmother, and the love one might bring.

May I submit a previously published game that otherwise fits your criteria, or new games only?

Cheers,

udernation

Pockets Full of Stars is by @SpeaktotheSky and is a submission to the #pleasantdreamjam.  You play a giant living on a star together with a friend, as well as individually playing two aspects of the world. 

You MAKE YOUR OWN DECK OF CARDS to guide your way!

(Sorry, that's genius, deserved its own line) as your giant leaps from planet to planet and visits people living in their stars and views exploding supernova and wierd worlds.

It. Is. Just. A. Glorious. Beautiful. Game. Go. Pay. For. It.

Also, it's the second #pleasantdreamjam game that has been, if not explicitly for kids, very very kid friendly. So parents: Check it out, it's probably better than My Pet Monster.

It's difficult to articulate exactly how this game made me feel, but freedom, creatively, childlike wonder, freshness, and the joy of shared creation are all in abundance here.

Oh my gosh I'm so happy you and he has been enjoying it! Fair warning, I didn't intend this for kids, so I think one of my monsters is inappropriate - but, I have updated the file here on itch.io to modify that monster, so that parents don't have to be worried. You can download the new version now!

It's your call as the players, but I think it's more interesting for them to be a secret until addressed in a message, so long as both player's safety is paramount :)

Oh thank you so much I'm glad you enjoyed it 🥰🥰🥰

Holy shit this is fucking amazing

Ok. Just the impact of the layout without any of the words just shocks your brain BOOM! feeling BOOM! response it's like you're rebounding from an internal sun to an an internal void like a fucking pong ball after 12 hours of ponging

Then there's the raw content this is like just I'M HERE IN THIS GAME LOOK THE FUCK AT ME AND FEEL ME OR JUST FUCK OFF

It feels like someone bottled your soul, strapped it into a loud speaker, blasted it out again, and then sucked it up somehow into a small box that I'm trapped in for me to linger in

Everyone, just experience this ritual that Maria has made

Dubious Pursuits from Nested Games is a really elegant 1-Move RPG about being a bounty hunter.

The reason it's elegant, is that the move receives a mechanical bonus to it's die roll as you learn more about your bounty, meaning that single move also has the mechanics for plot propulsion built into it.

It's a roll to answer a question move; your role gives you additional questions (again, elegantly) that you may ask.

There aren't many one-move games that I'd play - often they are more lyric than sit-around-the-table fare. This, however, is definitely one of them.

Dubious Pursuits, Five Stars!

The Letter Sketches is a lovely game by @Maharhar. Played by correspondence, you randomly generate a sketch associated with a theme ("imagination", "regret") and send it to the person you love that it reminds you of most.

They are asked to respond and consider why you felt that way. That's the game.

The thing I love both about this short lyric game is the introspection it encourages  in both participants. It is shared, communal, guided by love and by beauty.

I also love the twist: the second player does not know they are playing the game.

Is this twist dishonest? I'm not sure. There is some dishonesty here; not all lies are black though. I'm not sure how I feel about that but I still find it interesting.

This game: Worth buying; worth sending on; ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you! You can think about the rhyming game as a rap battle - both  players are flipping their card and responding to each other in real time, and rhyming back at each other. But you can do it also in other styles: Limerick, or even try Iambic Pentameter! It's quite hectic and smooth when you have two people who are good at rhyming :)

Not on my screen

I would rate this, but who knows how on itch mobile?

This is a transcript of a twitter thread I wrote in response to this game: 

Your Dead Friend is 110% my jam, but maybe not any of my meatspace friends' jams, so I just read it and meditated on it. It's a time loop game, of building friendships, exploring and reading poetry.

It's what I call a liturgical game, in the sense that it teaches you and provides you with the rules to participate in a ritual that places you in a certain spiritual space; in this case, one of love, melancholy and longing.

It speaks very deeply to enjoying the small touches in your life, and to appreciating the time you have, both with your loved ones, and in your own experience.

And in the most elegant twist, the end cannot ever be discussed, only ever the present. You can only speak in terms of what it is that you love and what you appreciate, never it terms of loss.

Anyway, this game: Buy it. Now. If you're interested in ritual play, emotional play, if you're interested in life or death or longing, if you're interested in poetry and exploring simplicity and presence in place, this is a game for you.

This is a transcript of a twitter thread I wrote about how much I enjoy this game.

Reverie Cycle is a PLAY BY POEM game where you EMBODY DREAMERS and that is designed specifically to be played on Discord or something similar. It's by @seaexcursion and @abemendes.

Your character is defined by their relationships with their dreams, and by the repeated images in them. This concept is divine, and gives you SO MUCH ethereal characterisation to work with, it should be part of all character creation, even when you're not writing poetry..

Players write together, and apart. The reverie is the collaborative dream-poem, and the routine is effectively a journal entry reflecting on the developing reverie. In this way, you write the dream, and then fill in their end of the day thoughts about the world.

This repeats over days or weeks or months, until you collaboratively end the poem, by mixing your journals and your reverie, breaking down the walls between reality and dream.

Safety! I have been writing a play by post game and it's really hard to get safety right, and Reverie Cycle innovates in two ways. 

1. It uses an entire channel in the chat to keep safety conversation present throughout the gameand using specific and 2. It uses safety emoji is a genius way of being safe in chatrooms. Safety emoji by themselves make this a worthwhile game to read.

I haven't the coterie of dreamers to play this game, but when I have four poets to play with, I will have a Reverie Cycle discord channel. If you enjoy poetry, dream-logic, and the concept of creating a world based as if your poetry were it's dreams, this game is for you. 

This is a transcript of a twitter thread I made, praising this game!

Reincarnation Redux  by  @temporalhiccup is a game of dying and rising anew from the ashes. 

It uses a tarot deck to guide the narrative. I've always been a little cautious of tarot games, because to those who use them, they are a font of meaning, but to those unfamiliar with them (like me) they are a little opaque. I know the creator is a Tarot reader and shaman, so going in I was concerned that their use might be a little opaque.

Initially, they are used in character creation, and the text defines the meanings of the cards for the purposes of the game. I love this: The suits are related to character traits like hard-working, steadfast. The Major Arcana (the scary bits for me) are not used.

Future card draws are used to produce future phases.This part does use the 'use the imagery for inspiration' bit for the Major Arcana that I'm a little anxious about, but it's a small part of the game; I feel less intimidated here by the Tarot than I have been previously.

These card draws purpose vary by phase, meaning the characters progress through a fairly linear story: They remember who they've been, they meet each other and their enemy, they transform, and they develop a power.

For each character trait, these draws have a different result, and each of these results will combine in a way that is really interesting and will make each character's progress unique, especially taking into account their own interpretations of the words and imagery.

Of course, the magic girls defeat the enemy, and a point system is used to look at the consequences of the battle that they have waged, and you choose their future.

Alright: So this is a pretty great game, and it makes curious to look at more Tarot games (although the aesthete in me wants a very specific set of monochrome goth tarot that probably doesn't exist).

What I really like is that it adheres very strictly to the narrative tropes of the genre, but has tons of potential for character exploration within those lines.

You can think of it as an experiment in giving very specific transformative internal agency to the players; the structure and the use of the Tarot reflects the themes of the game. This is what mechanics in games are for.

This game, then, is the perfect version of what it tries to be. Thanks  @temporalhiccup   for a lovely game, and for opening my eyes. Everyone, buy this game. Five stars :).

I have no words for how good Onomancy is. It will change your games. All of your games. Every game you play, if you welcome it into your heart.

Yeah this seems like my jam for another project I'm working on, based on the Michael Shea story Demiurge. If you're interested, DM me @udernation.

My name is udernation.

My fav animal is a particular hypothetical chocolate cavoodle named Mr Gregory Gruffleson.

And I need to consider what game I want to respond to, but

BUT what has been floating in my heart the last month or so is a game about dancing, fencing, or kung fu, or rather the intersection of all of these things, as a form of communication. This kind of aligns with WARRIOR POET, but I'm not sure if that communicates in the same way that I want it to.

THE OTHER floating in my head (I have some text and thought, but I've scrapped it already once), is a game about consumption and union, inspired by the short story Demiurge by Michael Shea. I don't know a game here, but in its current form it's a sonnet-exchange-play-by-post game that I was thinking of submitting to the Spirit's Eve or Gentle Ghost jam. But I don't mind, really., if it's interesting to you. I don't have a game that I am aware explores that particular space either.

If these concepts have meaning for you, I have not yet coalesced any, but I want this game, and I need help in letting it come to be.

Thank you so much! Please let me know how it goes, it's my first complete little game.

Thanks! I hadn't read or played In a Wicked Age until you mention it, but yeah, that's exactly the idea. I intentionally made them vague and with double-meanings, so I spent a lot of time on them. If I had enough of a personal art style to make cards myself, I would have made some custom to print off.