Tag: game

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Dream Journal

Finch Finch? Nope, just Finch

I navigate up a river flowing over large rocks. People walking up it. Find refuge at a covered patio belonging to a women who set it up as a rescue facility. She’s a traveler like myself and I’m not currently in need of a rescue. I see myself as more of an ornamental garden hermit.

Playing a card game to pass the time on a bus — where the cards are made of cash money. Digging in the compost bin, I rediscovery modified dollar bills with cute names written on them: Ankylosaurus, Potato, Peanut

Doing a cleaning job. A martini glass holding, instead of ice cubes, a single huge ice cube is being sold.

A woman introduces herself as named Finch. “Finch Finch?” (first and last), I ask. “Nope, just Finch.”

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Dream Journal

Meeting the Rust People

I’m suddenly awoken by my wife barging into the bedroom, asking if I’m asleep. My fight-or-flight is triggered and as I lay in bed calming down again I can recall much, but I fall back asleep and what I recall is: wooden pegs partially painted blue clatter noisily from a row of horizonal posts where they were attached. (I fall asleep around 10pm and this happens around midnight.)

Serving a crowd of fancy folks out on a balcony overlooking Las Vegas, maybe in the Luxor pyramid. Speaking slowly up to it then ingratiating myself as a servant; meeting people like Trump and Boris Johnson.

After talking with Trump he leaves via my living room. I come out afterwards and see the shocked faces of my unexpected guests, my old roommate Emily W. and her friend I don’t recognize, waiting on my couch. I briefly confer with a series of representatives from tribes of widely different people, including the a male/female pair of Rust people who pursue a specific variety of magic. The discussion concluded, the slightly scaled-down duo flip sideways down into the couch and vanish through a portal.

I spot a dedication sign at the entrance to a random town in Florida simply saying “books & my wife”. I infer this as a clear if esoteric reference to supporting Trump, something fake-ish he said in response to being asked what he’d want on a desert island. A little ways on there’s a homey sign on a cabin with a charming curse of “by Meatloaf’s Mother and the Queen Of Sheba”.

Right before I wake up I’m playing a GTA-like game with simple accelerate/brake controls. Driving as a little old black lady, I just try to round corners as normally as possible.

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Dream Journal

Bubble Defense Exercise (some Starships too)

I’m Captain Pike sleeping on a bolster pillow all night. Very comfortable, more under blankets cool above, great sleep.

Perhaps I’m a mature responsible student, perhaps I’m sucking up to teacher. Cleaning up after a lecture class in a hall longer than it is wide, gathering all the spent materials together on a bed. The bed is the front rightmost in a row of semi-private anterooms that face the main science desk, a plain slab of rectangular black rock. Stephen Colbert could have been the instructor. On the far side, floor-to-ceiling windows reveal a gauzy view of lush sunlit valleys in the far distance.

We have a big training exercise in a mega-gymnasium using tennis rackets. The class is directed to hit back any bubbles that fly over from the other team. Fog misters are turned on (this gym is fancy) and the lights are dimmed so the far side is totally hidden. Quickly, it appears being fast enough to hit even a majority of bubbles is a near impossible task.

Then we form a line across one end of the large room to the other. This soon proves, as befits an actual school lesson, much easier. With only a certain small territory to defend, students can focus better on the projectiles they can hit. By chance I end up stationed almost behind a column. I speak with the short blonde girl who is posted directly behind it, joking about her readiness to perform her duty.

On the other side of her I observe a frisky lesbian girl working herself up to something. She briefly hits on the blonde then begins making out aggressively. There’s a moment of shock before anyone decides to do anything about it, separating the girls and holding back the unexpected aggressor.

After the exercise is concluded the expansive chamber is flooded. The water causes time to pass quickly. I zoom in on a view of an underwater spaceship, the Enterprise, left behind by a crew not unlike my class. The view pulls back and I notice an odd humorous little detail: a metal necktie carefully encircles the ships bridge, aging into deep time with the rest of it all.

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Dream Journal

Mysterious Chess-like Game

Discover a game (what turns out to be a very mysterious and difficult game) called “By Chance” or something similar. Played on a chessboard grid but slightly larger, with three rows of pieces, two teams of blue and red. The first row is short, like pawns. Other pieces have individual traits and names; one piece called Labrador (Akator?) is embedded with a sentient AI named Gaia, but at the wrong level of scope so the piece itself isn’t intelligent.

I’m in an underwater glass-domed space with someone, hyper-focused on the game and explaining some of the curiosities I’ve discovered so far. I ask the person I’m with if they’d like to play, then pick up the blue collection to move closer. I try to carry it all together by grabbing all the blue pieces. I lack the dexterity to pull this off — they tip over and, quite unexpectedly, are replaced with a single small chocolate chip. Another mystery, which to my instincts appears completely by design.

Going down a corridor I enter into a tight capsule-like space. It’s still underwater, but there are fewer windows, more little surface details. A lesbian couple is holed up together in one of the alcoves and greets me sleepily. There’s another presence which I’m unclear about: the god Zeus.

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Dream Journal

Story in Both Forward and Reverse

Someone designed a movie or video game that plays a story in both forward and reverse. Inspired, likely, by the game The Stanley Parable which I just learned about. Even the dialogue is somehow transposed. It’s a series of vignettes, and fascinating in how the story lines up different in either direction.

One I remember was a person in a room full of tortilla chip bags. They’re very quiet and anxious until they establish they have enough money to pay a water bill. Probably worried about how thirsty they’d get eating that many tortilla chips!

Another is a hosted retrospective of a little handheld pixel art game from the mid-2000s, something like Habbo Hotel (which I never played), being a pregnant teenager is an option. One window shows the close-up view in an anime style. The clip I saw was a series of teens stealing vegetables off a grill cooked by the rapper Drake. That video was presented by two people I know, people I did a favor for at some point — a hairy, pregnant, bearded trans-man and his husband.

One is in a plain, hilly little area by the sea where you fly around in a body, but like a spaceship. It’s artful and immersive but quite boring, feels unfinished as there’s not much to do except grind on the few animal units there are. Sort of like the game Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, which I just watched a preview of.

My mom has been inconveniently revived after several years of death. But she is just as old as she would be, and has a different set of problems now. My dad has a different house and a different girlfriend. She’s also having health problems, and relates her visits to a female prostate doctor. She’s altogether sad and not particularly happy to be back.

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Dream Journal

Old Spy Store, Pop-up Spiderman, Gravity Gun

A run-down store from the 1980s specializing in spy gear, somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, in a nearly abandoned strip mall, just off a highway. Used to be so big it had registers all along the front, from one end of the store to the other. Now things have gotten so cheap that their music repeats on a loop 35 minutes long. Format of its name is “person-name-here’s”, if that’s understandable.

An older woman expresses interest in telling me her story (or my story?) by means of an inflatable outdoor big screen. The story randomly has Spider-Man pop in at different points, much like a pop-up ad.

A fancy gravity-altering gun (perhaps of my own design) shoots shiny super-stylish double-conical bombs. It remotely manipulates its aerial position, then detonates it on command. This seems impressive in the 3D jungle style game I’m inside. I gravimetrically pull in a cyborg that looks like Vendata/Venturian from Venture Bros and he sustains “severe anomaly damage” when I explode it on him.

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Dream Journal

A Game of Ghost Story

Store/cafe near Disneyland, heavily themed with natural wood for an ol-time-country feel. Space is sunk below street level a bit, bright windows in the back. The whole neighborhood is a shopping district, curved downward becoming more Disneyland the further you go. Near the cafe counter, I see a few people in costumes with masks that look like Will Smith crossed with the “I, Robot” robots, featuring a glowing 20% discount over the mouth area. It’s suggestive of some kind of Black Panther protest.

I’m a successful smuggler and I’m getting out of the business. I know my compatriots will be upset, even panicked at my departure, so I leave a letter hidden under sawdust at my regular drop. It’s a semi-abandonded lot protected from the street by overgrown trees, the same hillside view as the Disneyland cafe earlier.

I drive off in a convertible with Lynae. We’re briefly diverted onto the other side of a divided highway, the broad expanse of a mountainous pastel evening desert before us. I suggest we play a game called Ghost Story — Lynae side-eyes me, knowing I know the edge of night isn’t exactly when she wants to hear ghost stories. I clarify that the objective of the game is to start saying something that seems scary, but that has its scariness vanish (like a ghost) once the sentence is complete. I’ve just played the first round, now it’s her turn.

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Dream Journal

Logic of Video Game Apprenticing

I missed the tree outside therapy. I had a vivid sequence of logic working where I imagined I was trying to teach my apprentices something that I’d already learned. Something simple like how to work at McDonald’s (even though I’ve never done that). But I was trying to logic through it.

We were trying to figure out how a video game is designed and how it can be designed better. A lane-changing game where we were also trying to determine a real-time estimate for the car to arrive at the goal destination. There were several variables, including speed and even atmospheric clarity.

My brother Patrick may have been there. I’m not sure if it was a dream or just intense problem-solving.

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Glot

Some of My Favorite Apartment Games

I’d like to think a list like this needs no more introduction than a title, but I’ll go on introducing anyways. It’s a list of games: easy games, fun games, games which you can play in your own home (yes, do try these at home, folks!). In my home, these are the games I regularly play every week, but I’m sure there are many more. They can be also be played in houses, duplexes, public housing projects, or wherever you happen to dwell. Please share if you have any of your own! With no further ado…

Apartment Games:

  • Will I Require Pants? – A simple yet enjoyable game, suitable for many occasions. Play it next time you will be using a handsaw, running for the doorbell, carrying bags of garbage, talking on the phone with relatives, walking around the house at night, eating finger-food, sewing or doing needlework, or any of the many other situations where having (or not having) pants is so often uncertain.
  • Does This Go Here? – This game is not as well-known as some, but I guarantee it’s worth trying. The object is to find something in the home that is out of place. But you probably won’t win with just any ol’ dirty sock wrapped ’round a ceiling fan—you should seek out the most wildly unlikely, head-scratchingly bizarre, pickle-jar-full-of-melted-cheese-inside-a-fishtank type combination. Great with kids.
  • What Am I Supposed to Do With This? – Much similar in idea to the classic game “Hot Potato,” but picks up where it leaves off. The giver hands the receiver a “potato,” which is, let’s say, a large freezer bag full of pipe cleaners. No matter how seemingly unimportant or stupid, whatever it is mustn’t be thrown away! Instead, the receiver must decide what next to do with it. You’ll discover this is easier said than done…
  • You Go Here Now – Like Tetris, spatial awareness and strategic thinking are necessary to win at this game. The challenge is to fit something into a space which really can’t possibly accomodate one more thing. How is that possible, you ask? When you finally find out, make sure to yell, “You Go Here Now!”
  • I Come In Here For Something – Fun for all ages, and can be played anytime, with equipment you probably already have. All that’s needed are two or more rooms, a collection of stuff which cannot be stored in only one of them, and another (hopefully larger!) collection of mental distractions. Simply mix and begin play. Plan a series of such games for hours of entertainment.
  • Find The Smell – One of my least favorites, unfortunately, since I’m generally quite good at it. This game is distinct in that winning isn’t always much fun (as “The Smell” is often something unpleasant/unwanted/disturbing), but still not as bad as losing. Rotten fruit, pet feces, standing water, household pests, building damage, questionable visitors, and all manner of dead things are usually good props utilized for play. Similar to hide-n-seek, but more viscerally revolting.
  • Secret Weakness – Hard to explain the rules for this one. Can be played alone or with any size group. A sort-of riddle game, the idea is to find something (not previously expected) that makes you feel suddenly, gut-puchingly powerless. For example, if one player has a job with a strict dress code, use the last of his/her leftover purple hair dye. An elegant game when played correctly.
  • I Need A Hug – Collect as many hugs as you require in the shortest amount of time, from as many people you find tolerable. Usually played after other games, like Secret Weakness or Find The Smell.

There you have it! Hope you enjoyed my list, and please, please, do send me more if you have them. I’m always up for more fun!

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Glot

Games Fun, Fun Good

I like mind games. I bet you didn’t know that mind games are good for you. Don’t believe me? Allow me to explain.

Many are the reasons that these things, these things of which I speak, make our lives better. Have you been bored lately? I haven’t… I can’t. I just will not allow myself. I must play. I play with those around me — confusing them, prodding them, keeping ’em guessing. I play with stuff I find. I play with myself. That’s right, I said it. How can one resist a flavored toothpick, a sublimely obscure joke, a button that goes ‘click’, or — dare I say — one’s own elbow skin? How?! This (as many of you will know) is called “fun”. Not only are they entertaining, but these little games keep me occupied when the otherwise tedious stimulus-response cycle threatens to de-vamp my vim. I gots to have me my vim, you know. Gotsta.

It’s from this perspective I volunteer a seemingly obvious adage: fun is good for you. Not taking things too seriously keeps you stable, it gives you a release when you need it and makes life interesting when you don’t. Drink up, ye seekers of sanity, the cup of vim.

Unfortunately it seems not too many people realize this. Or, worse yet are those who have no energy… at all. “Ebullient vitality and energy” can be difficult without that. I’ll be the first to confess I’m a) young b) healthy c) naturally, let’s say, a “curious” individual. So I’ve got an advantage. What’s to stop you, though, from pretending that instead of “working” at your “job” you’re just maintaining deep cover? And the twist is — you must discover who it is you’re supposed to spy on (!!!). Keep tabs on people’s calls. Make up secret codes between your co-workers. Nothing, nothing, could possibly make refilling the water cooler any more intense.

I know some of you will find this outlook childish, immature, perhaps even regressive. To them I say: uhhhh huuuuh… Do you even remember how awesome it was playing games in grade school? No. Of course not. Because you are an old fart that has grown stale instead of savory with age. Come on — grade school is the only time when Marbles vs. Dinosaurs is a perfectly sensible bout. Maybe I’m like this because back in the day I didn’t get enough quality playtime. I was that kid that was with a different group each day on the playground. Nobody could stand me for too long. I remember once, for about a week in fourth grade, I incessently chanted “craaack, CRACK, crack … crack-crack … creeeaaaaaak (et cetera)” just for the hell of it. Plea for attention? Nascent ennui? Yeah, I’m gonna go with nascent ennui just cause most people won’t understand that.

What was my point? Oh yes. There is only one thing in the entire world that we can have complete control of: our own minds. You’re assignment, if you choose to accept it, is to make your own life interesting. While you’re at it try making it livable too. Then call me. We need to work out the details and write a frickin’ book.