a 1-screen puzzle game by Sylvie; I shan't say anything more about it, just try it. if you're not familiar with Sylvie's work, this is now a recommendation for checking her stuff out more broadly. there's a strong irreverence towards traditional modern indie game design tenets (coyote time, the importance of a good the tutorial, the like), but it's all done very intentionally. these games aren't just idiosyncratic for the sake of it, everything is in service of some particular goal. I think Slyvie's blurb on love ♥ game puts it well:
Sylvie is a normal girl who makes surprising and cute games. They have colourful graphics and sweet characters, but there are often sharp edges hiding beneath the surface. You might be shocked by the high difficulty or the unusual design. If you try your best to understand them, maybe you can have a good time and experience something new.
okay I'm not reallly recommending corn thins specifically because 1 there exist off-brand versions of this product that are also good7 and 2 the specific food does not really matter that much. however corn thins are interesting in that they are a good snack food but also extremely bland.8 the intention is clearly that you put some kind of topping on them, but i am not doing that, i am bringing a thing of corn thins to a social gathering that people didn't bring snacks to, opening it around 11pm when everyone is hungry, and sharing it around. sharing food is the important thing, that's what i'm really recommending, but corn thins are special in that the blandness makes them feel healthy, and kind of cheap, so there's no external factors that might prevent someone from just taking one. it's just, would you like to eat a corn thin? it is a little unpleasant to eat one dry, but there is a certain level of hunger beyond which that doesn't seem to matter, and it seems that is about 11pm when everyone had dinner at 6. sometimes i think you need to have, and really appreciate, an experience that is just okay. all the better to have it alongside others. also this is really kind of just the a4 paper thing again; another way in which you can be surprisingly valuable to your friends by bringing a thing to a place and giving it away.
one of a series of articles by Holly Gramazio about games - slightly unusual, real-life, social, physical, or just weird games. i got here from Holly's website; i find there's something in particular about this kind of artist portfolio website that makes them fun rabbit holes. but always with a side of yearning: so often the fun stuff they talk about is physical installation work that i'll never be able to experience firsthand thanks to some massive distance in time, space, or (usually) both. it always seems like the cool stuff is never anywhere near me... but i guess the world is a big place and the internet shows you a lot of it. probably there are cool art things happening around me all the time and i'm just not noticing! but how do i start to notice...
one side rabbit hole here is that one of these articles links out to the Ludocity wiki, a big collection of unusual physical games with instructions for running and playing them. this is distant too: most of these games seem to have been designed around 2007-2010. but they do come with full instructions, so with a bit of effort, one could drag these things back into the present. there's nothing stopping you from playing that imaginary golf game in the current year. and now i want to try it.
i wrote this whole post and then procrastinated on putting it up cause i wanted to add proper comments and then didn't do that. but here it is now. also the experimental comment box is below! and then there's the normal one after that. yeah it's a mess i can fix it later
also just realised that cusdis doesn't inherit the website styling. i'll fix that later too.