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That's brilliant! Thank you for telling a story with the game. Happy Solstice.

I really like the drawing and filling of shapes!

Delightful! I like the tight focus here.

Love the core idea here!

I'm not crying you're crying

What a beautiful design, and very cool mechanics. Love the fortuneteller as randomizer.

This looks fun! I love the use of the cutouts (rabbit holes!)and the REASON table. 

Hey does this have to be a video game, or can it be a physical game?

I also made a jam just because

I saw some really awesome concepts and some gorgeous visuals. Great work! I will definitely use and share many of these bookmarks.

You're really on fire with these! I think this would be an ideal low-key background game for me in particular, because of the combination of "high" stakes and simple activity.

I really like this!

Ha, sweet! Thanks.

Fun and poetic, and I feel like it could in fact teach a player about editing. Very cool. I really like the different word-sets and how that creates variation / replayability.

Thank you so much!

Nice emulation of both close reading and paranoia :D -- feels like you could easily turn this into a bigger game.

Thanks! People are coming up with some really great book-driven mechanics.

This is a cool idea! Love enlivening peripheral perspectives. It reminds me of Robertson Davies' Fifth Business.

The name of this game seems to switch back and forth between Third Person Problems and Third World Problems. Is that intentional?

This is delightful! I could see playing many rounds while reading on the bus, etc.

Thank you!

Yes, I thought that was a nice succinct way to describe what to do.

Very handy!

I particularly like the axolotl!

I really like this! Great sense of how to interact with a text.

Very fun!

Appreciate that, thanks!  I made it in Canva, so it's probably something to do with that.

Very cool! Great to use distraction / daydreaming as a mechanic.

Great concept!

Living for the rock-paper-scissors / fates crossover. Why has no one had this brilliant idea before?

This looks really good!

Very fun! I like that you found a workaround for E.

Thanks for the jam! Is this for video games only, or are physical games allowed?

Absolutely. I thought the tortoise was a wonderful shorthand for a particular relationship to history, one that feels very familiar -- late, confused, missing the important moment, trying to catch up -- it's me. I'm the tortoise.

Playing the game was a great way to meditate on history; I couldn't help but try to build through-lines, theories about human behaviour, from my tortoise perspective. What events seemed to formed patterns? Which patterns made me despair and which  made me hope?

I found the lists of events well-crafted. I like that the game could easily be adapted by switching out the lists of historical events (okay, not easily -- making the lists must have been a lot of work!) -- but one could create modules for particular histories, for example -- I can see it being a really interesting teaching tool for thinking about perspectives on history.

That was also my one question -- thinking about the kind of default perspective of the tortoise. For example, the Panama Canal's construction was pretty contentious / calamitous for some people -- could there be ways to build evocations different / varying perspectives on history into the prompts? (Even something as simple as the waters being troubled rather than smooth)?

It's a lovely thoughtful game and a great thinking tool. Thank you for making it for the jam!

>would "purchasing" the game through name your price work?

Good idea! I'll do that. I'll pay in American to cover any site fees.

>I'd love your notes!

Awesome -- where's the best place to post / send them?

Thank you again for your beautiful games. I've left a few notes on everyone's entries about my favorite aspects.

I was particularly impressed and delighted by the inventiveness of the mechanics in the games you submitted. I'll definitely run another jam like this.

The final winners are based on mechanics (fun? thematically fitting?), playability (easy to pick up?), scenario/setting, use of theme (breakage and repair), playfulness/inventiveness, replayability, and je ne sais quoi.

Here are the four cup-of-coffee winners (couldn't stop at three in the end):

• Monster in the Wilderness - Yarntheory - a beautiful abstraction of the themes of Beowulf (or that's how I read it) - gorgeous
• A Moment too Late - ToriBee - You are a time-travelling tortoise who always arrives too late for the Major Historical Event and has to piece things together from the aftermath - moving
• A Game of Tower - Yoon Ha Lee - Fantasy, surrealism, and personal growth via confronting your lies about yourself - delicious
• Kintsugi - Elusis - A supple yet strong spine for stories of damage and repair - poignant

I think this makes such a great role-playing tool. It would add a wonderful contemplative layer to any ongoing campaign. It feels like a resonant coda to the cycle of combat and conflict or danger and risk in many adventures.

I really like that there's a getting-to-know-you phase!

Let me know if you'd like more notes!

A winner!

I liked the story I told through this game so much!

I really like that the series of tables provides a kind of spine for the story -- not quite a narrative, but prompting towards different readings or points of view of the damage and repair. Just the sequence of ideas makes a great guide for the player without needing any further layers of mechanics.

Let me know if you'd like more notes! And let me know how you'd like to receive your cup of coffee.

I had great fun with this. I love how different your two games are in feel. So inventive!

I like the docility tracker a lot, and the mechanic for dealing with duplicates was an excellent layer both of play and of story.

Let me know if you'd like more notes!

A winner.

I love this game. I love the stories it helped me tell. The mechanics are so satisfying.

The way you play in through the seven cards and then play out through the same cards is (chef's kiss). The symmetry! The lair as card house! Just inspired.

This game abstracts Beowulf so elegantly into something more expansive yet rooted in the core ideas of the monstrous, the heroic, the natural world, and the human will.

Let me know if you'd like more notes / play reports! And let me know the best way to get you your cup of coffee.