itch.io

Hi Karen! I am the CMU professor who pitched and advised the project, so I'm happy to answer your questions about it. The team members have all graduated from our Masters' program now, so I don't know if they are still following this page.

Unfortunately, only limited excerpts from the newly discovered Liubo bamboo texts have been released so far. Reportedly, the tomb of the Marquis of Haihun (Haihun Hou) -- who was the Han Emperor for a few dozen days, before being deposed -- contains extensive texts on Liubo, but they were misidentified at first (as being about something else) and have not yet been published. So the team did a bunch of research about the new texts, as well as other texts, but ultimately was not able to make as full use of them as we hoped.

If you're interested in their process of recreating the game, they discuss it in this presentation they gave for Generation Analog (an annual online conference run by the journal Analog Game Studies): 
https://youtu.be/tuTYT8r6KoA?feature=shared&t=1099

Great. Thanks for the clarification!

Hi Randy,

Is it cool to make a game focused on a specific future situation -- like my game Miles Below Midnight, about deep-sea mining -- rather than a more general game that explores future scenarios, like Shock: or something in that vein?

Jonathan

Woohoo, very exciting. 

That does help a bunch, thanks! So it's almost like the notes are mobile enemies that you try to kill with buttons before they land. That's a really smart way to adapt what GB Studio is designed to do. Seems like the hardest part, then, is writing the script to spawn the notes in line with the music?

This project is incredibly inspirational, as someone who was looking to see how other folks had implemented music games in GB Studio. The art is mind-blowingly good, with some great nods to classic games (Zelda, Warioland, etc.), and the story and gameplay are fun.

Can I ask a couple questions about how you implemented this, especially the music battles? Do the button symbols just drop in rhythm with the bg music (or spawn and then drop)? And then the button presses trigger the failure sound fx (which overrides the music) if you don't hit them correctly?

So exciting!

How did I not know about this game?!? Really excited to play Good Apollo, We're Escaping From Star IV, Volume III: Burning Through the Ashen Cages on the Way Home.

I know how that goes! Some folks still play the alpha drafts of some of my games too. I understand about making a separate thing too. That lets this stay simpler and cleaner.

Yeah, the way you've folded the conversation around positioning and risk into the core move is very clever while still feeling very much like Blades. If you ever want to do a 2-page version, that would be cool, but no pressure! I bet it would be easy to do a downtime thing where the city/NPCs/factions get to make a move for every downtime move the PCs make. And maybe different "playbooks" could get an extra die for specific types of actions or something. But again, that's something individual groups could add on themselves or not. Definitely inspiring.

I was looking for a super-streamlined version of Blades, and someone recommended this one. I really like what you're doing here! Thanks so much.

One more note on the guidelines: the deadline for submission on the official guidelines (midnight PT on Nov 21) doesn't match the deadline on this Itch jam (noon PT on Nov 21). Seems like you have AM and PM mixed up on the Itch page.

In addition, if folks are submitting tabletop games (as the guidelines suggest is possible), then it's unlikely they would include audio.

Hi GGJ. These guidelines seem like they would penalize games that make no or minimal use of art and audio (which is 10 points of the final score). I was planning on submitting a mostly text-based game designed in Twine, for example. Should I just give up or radically change my design?

Modern Wanderhome, got it.

I need an excuse to learn Affinity.

This game is really astonishingly good. I made a Hotel California-inspired game several years back for a local zine, and so was excited to check out this one. Honestly, I'm super impressed with how creatively and sensitively you hacked Firebrands to achieve this vibe. Now I just have to find a few people to play it with.

The week-long extension you just added seems great. Thanks!

Josh: Any chance of an extension or a late submission on this project. It's been on my To Do list, and I just haven't been able to get to it yet.

Cool. Yeah, definitely excited to see yours too.

Here's my initial pitch, Josh, in case you're worried: "I'm looking at the seeds for the Refraction Jam while listening to Gorillaz's Demon Days, like ya do, and I think I want to make a game about post-apocalyptic planeswalkers, where they're the "Last Living Souls" setting forth from the last bastion, the small empty castle at the end of everything, but "Every Planet We Reach Is Dead," having all suffered some trans-planar apocalypse. But the planeswalkers have some small tiny missions to fulfill before the heat death of the multiverse. Like carrying their teacher's body back to its home plane for burial. Or delivering a letter that will never be received. Or witnessing and writing a poem about the final quadruple sunrise over the now dried-up seas of Esvesier. Things like that. So it's super depressing, but also filled with these tiny moments of meaning and beauty and camaraderie."

I've got a project that's slowly coming together that's inspired by 3+ different seeds (Other Worlds, Southstone, Bury Me in Starlight, maybe a couple others). But I need to get through the end of the academic quarter before I'll have time to finish it up and post it.

I agree that it's a bit confusing to not be able to tell the Stage 1 games from the Stage 2 games.

Yes! But could even be more mundane than that, more like "task resolution" where you're trying to solve a really intractable problem where complications and difficulties arise ("excuses"). Like, imagine the recalcitrant player is the GM portraying some difficult task, like you have to repair a spaceship to escape this planet you've crashlanded on. And every time you think you've got it fixed, something else goes wrong.

Wow, that's great. I had no idea!

Yeah, I love that this is a certain subgenre of cyberpunk boiled down to its essence. Great work!

I think you're missing a file here? Is this just a placeholder? The premise sounds exciting.

Thanks so much! I'm hopefully that somebody will turn it into something cool. I've been thinking about the concept for a while, but haven't been sure what to do with it.

This is really great, and I bet you could hack it for a variety of different kinds of situations.

This is a really clever design! I really dig it.

Thanks, I appreciate it! Social scifi is definitely my jam.

Honestly, I find the ones with setting hooks a bit easier to be inspired by, rather than having to come up with a premise to match the mechanics. I ended up going the same direction myself, and you inspired me to start daydreaming about the last city at the end of the world, so it's been effective/affective for me.

This is really great, Paul. The premise is terrific, and I like how you clearly left some parts unfinished as an invitation to whoever picks it up.

This game is really fantastic. Terrific work! Would definitely play.

Hey, I really appreciated this setting blurb. Evocative and definitely interesting.

This is really great. Just looking at it gives me ideas. Nice work!

Hey Galen, this one is really cool and evocative. I appreciate what you did here.

Hey Nick, I really dig what you did here. Not sure whether I'll end up adapting it or not, but it's really fun and inspiring.

What about games with cards or some other non-dice randomizer?

This is such a gift. Wow. It's my new favorite thing and makes hacking together a GB game so much easier and more intuitive. I will definitely list it as a project option for students in my digital games studies classes.