Samorost2 is, as those of you who are sufficiently alert might be sorely tempted to conclude, the sequel to what has subsequently become known as "Samorost1." It is currently my preferred paradigm for a kinder, gentler, and far more whimsical synthesis of computers, games, and art.
It's a puzzle-game, similar in principal to Myst - a series of "point-and-click" adventure puzzles. Only, unlike Myst, you can't really die, or even make a mistake. You just go on and on, pointing, clicking, observing, and clicking some more, until you figure out that clicking on this makes that do something which makes the other thing go where you want it to, and you find yourself somewhere you haven't been before.
Graphically, the game is often surprisingly beautiful. The music and sound effects complement the art - rich and enriching. Technically, it is filled with achievements (note especially the use of light) that are bar-raising. But, for me, it's the whimsy, the pervasive humor that keeps you from taking the game or your achievements in it too seriously. Even when you can't figure out what to do next (yes, each level has a code you can use so you can get back to it in case you have to go away for awhile, far, far away), you are constantly reminded that there's nothing really important here - just the fun.
It's the most successful of games from Amanita Design, founded by Jakub Dvorsky of the Czech Republic. It crosses many borders to come to us. And brings us a newer, and far more promising world to play in.
You can play it online, until you've run out of levels. You can buy it, get many more levels, and give yourself yet one more license to play.
"The pure pleasure of play is a true antidote to all the mundane duties of adulthood, especially that most tedious of tasks, maintenance of Self. But we have a hard time allowing ourselves the purposelessness that is absolutely fundamental to the relief we crave...."
This is the opening paragraph from an article by Paul Roberts in Psychology Today. The name of the article: "Goofing Off."
Sounds like a must-read, no? It's a long one, and it goes to some fairly authorative lengths to make its point. So I, as is my blogly right, have copied my favorite parts below for your personal and conceptual delectation.
"Play isn't simply the antithesis of work: Its an antidote to all the mundane duties of adulthood, from partnering and provisioning right down to the tedious maintenance of Self. Little surprise that researchers link play and playfulness to such positive outcomes as healthy relationships, strong families, creativity, spiritual growth, and personal confidence..."
"True play requires that we forgo the Self, step outside our relentless self-awareness--a step our Self-obsessed culture hasn't prepared us for. As the University of Wisconsin's Duncan notes, "in a highly organized, individualistic society, where every minute of every day must be accounted for in some way that is directly related to building the consciousness, people can't simply 'lose' themselves." Adds Penn State's Godbey: "Instead of seeing ourselves as the buffoons we really are, we take ourselves far too seriously. Instead of losing ourselves in play, we're concerned about what we're wearing or whether we smell good."..."
"And remember to goof off. A century ago, baseball was played by men who would, on occasion, go on field wearing outlandish top hats. Play, says Godbey, "means giving yourself over to an activity and not having worry whether you're making a fool of yourself. Playing is fooling around, and fooling around requires fools."..."
"Yet perhaps the most important step we can take is simply to pay attention: be open to play. Perhaps play will never be as simple or pure as it was when we were young, or when our culture was less complex, or when we had fewer responsibilities, or more money. But play, like hope, springs eternal. It breaks out, like weeds between cracks in the cement. It pops up and out in the most unlikely situations.
"Our task is to recognize play and then be willing to just let it happen. "Walking along a sidewalk isn't playing," says Godbey. "But as soon as one observes the cracks in that sidewalk, and then begins to measure one's stride by those cracks, then tries to avoid stepping on those cracks--well, that's play."
Here's a fun find I found fun. It's called "Having Fun," and comes to us from the highly articulate musings of author Douglas Rushkoff. He writes:
"No, fun is not frivolity. Well, it can be, but it's not a diversion from reality. It's a way in. It doesn't ignore the starving people, don't worry about that. It just means that if you decide to go help the starving people, you're doing it because it brings you meaning. A certain kind of fun.
"Please, don't anyone else reject the notion of fun until you've at least tried it. Because once you do have fun, you'll want everyone else to have it, too."
Yes, and again yes. "A certain kind of fun." One that "brings you meaning." Precisely the kind of fun I've been pursuing for the past 35 years with something approximating reckless abandon.
Today's FunCast is called: "Intimate Fun and the Tickled We." It's about, well, if you don't want to listen to it first, you can read it online, here. It may be of some assistance should you find this holiday season leading you to entwinining with one or several of your various lovers and family members.
Beer Pong, the online game, has an advantage and a disadvantage over the traditional game, and its variants, as described in this admirably exhaustive selection of Beer Pong rules - the advantage: you don't need any beer to play it - nor do you need paddles, glasses, ping pong balls or table; the disadvantage: you don't need any beer to play it.
Though I am not a drinker, and am actually less than comfortable with people who are under the influence (some of my worst experiences as a facilitator of play coincided with my attempts to bring more fun to a singles new year's eve party), I am nevertheless a great admirer of the, well, spirits, in which the game is generally played. That is, the spirits of informality, of playfulness and downright silliness, of invention and challenge and unabashed fun.
Further evidence of these spirits is well instantiated by this document making the distinction between a game called "Beruit" and that traditionally called "Beer Pong," and well-nigh unto conclusive spirits-related evidence with this official Beirut/Beer Pong House Rules Generator.
Beer Pong. A game in the tradition of Junkyard Pong, and similarly hazardous to sobriety. See "Eraser Bouncing" on the Junkyard Sports Hall of Fame.
Boundless Playgrounds "enable all children -- including those with physical, developmental, cognitive and sensory disabilities -- to experience independent, self-directed play, each at his or her own highest level of ability."
What a concept! What a gift! What a valuable, meaningful, personally and socially enriching thing to be doing. Playgrounds designed so that everyone can play, as much as they want. Every body and every mind. I know. I know. It's asking to much to think that adults could play too - that there'd be things for us to play with that would allow us to play with each other, with all our glorious differences.
But let's not get carried away. O, what the heck. Let's. Let's look at this wonderful virtual tour of what might go into a Boundaryless Playground. Let us seriously consider supporting their wonderful cause with, at least with the purchase of a small gift. And let us dream of how boundaryless we could make it.
Deflexion is a chess-like, two-player, arguably abstract strategy game - with lasers! Each player gets four different kinds of pieces, one of which is the "pharaoh." Two of the pieces have mirrors on them. The object: position the pieces so that when you fire your laser, it winds up hitting the non-mirrored side of one of your opponent's pieces. If you hit a Pharaoh piece, the game is over.
The pieces need to be set up in their specified starting positions. It took a while to do this, because the whole board (and not just the starting rows, as in chess or checkers) is used. And, as a taste of strategic implications yet to come, the rules describe two different set-ups, each chock-full of its own subtle significances. Meaning, as Shakespeare might have said if he had his own Deflexion game, that there are more things in lasers and mirrors than are dreampt of in our philosophies....
The moment we installed the (included) batteries and discovered that yes, there are actually lasers, and they are, yes, most definitely bright enough, and that, yes, they do bounce off the mirrors in a most classically laserlike manner - we were hooked. O, we were trepidatiously hooked, all right. What if the game doesn't really play as good as it looks? What if the laser light can't really be seen when it hits a piece? What if it's too complex? After all, there are some strange, chess-like rules about how certain pieces can move. And, o, we so much wanted the game to be as good as it looked! I mean, with lasers and mirrors and everything!
And, upon reflection, so to speak, we found it fun. We found it very fun. Major, as a matter of fact, FUN. And we were sorely happy.
Brook Lawder, in her essay "Playgrounds and Classrooms," (Haverford College 2002), writes: "Before elementary school, I reveled in playing outside. I rarely watched television. I loved to read. Most importantly, however, I loved to invent. Creativity enthralled me. Everyday I had a new game invented. These games were not like hide-and-go-seek or freeze tag. They were much less ephemeral. My games lasted days, weeks even. They contained elaborate plot twists and super powers. Everyone on the playground played my games..."
Which reminded me of a 4th grade girl I observed, in a classroom in Philadelphia, about 35 years ago. She was this kind of game-creating, game-leading genius that Ms. Lawder describes herself as being. She used just about every technique I currently teach to the future playleaders of the world. She seemed to know exactly when to change the game, exactly how to keep everyone involved, exactly where to lead people so they'd have the most fun.
Being old enough to know the misfortunes that can befall such young geniuses of play, I read on, self-fulfillingly:
"I can pinpoint the exact moment when I stopped playing, stopped creating and inventing on my own schedule. It all started with homework. Homework was the destroyer of my childhood imagination. Melodramatic, I know, but so are most childhood memories. After pre-kindergarten, I began attending school fulltime. School began at eight in the morning and ended at three o'clock in the afternoon. Upon arriving home, the homework began. Dinner promptly concluded or interrupted homework. After dinner, if the homework was not complete, I sat down to finish the work. Bedtime arrived shortly afterwards. Everyday was like this. Even if I finished my homework early, it was usually dark and I was unable to play..."
My question is: who would actually want kids to stop playing? who would even think it possible? who could possibly think that it's better for kids to do homework than it is for them to be outside playing? The neighbors, maybe?
I quote on: "...One shining light continued to shine: recess. As long as I had recess I could continue my play and exercise my imagination. The older I grew, however, the more the time allotted for recess diminished. Recess became physical education. Such a scientific name for something that should be fun. The teachers were once again able to convert play into a set of rules associated with education. "
No, I think it's something else. Not education. (not even spelled the same way: "Capital-A-small-n-small-t-small-i-capital-F-small-un" vs. "Education"). A force. A perverse, childhood-denying, fuddy-duddy of a force. Not homework. Not educators, even. Something different. Something which I here-with and -by name "The AntiFun - the irrational repression of happiness."
Yes. Yes. A great wrong has been wrung. Less and less time for play. Less and less time for recess. And then recess became PE. And all play vanished. But no, no, Ms. Lawder, it isn't the teacher's doing. Or the parents or neighbors. It's a world held in sway by the AntiFun. And that's what it is.
Here, courtesy of artist Steven Goodman, who created a game of Giant Pick-Up Sticks at this year's Burning Man is an action photo of an extraordinarily brave, and perhaps profoundly misinformed attempt to play a solitaire version of Giant Pick-Up Sticks - more commonly known as "The Game of Duck and Run."
The following brilliant collection of games for giant cards comes to us through the courtesy of the similarly brilliant USC student, Doo-Yul Park - yet another fine example of the kind of people I had to play with at USC.
[WHAT I DID]
I was a member of design team and had a couple times of meeting with team members after having thought about ideas individually, had another playtest meeting with other team members with pre-existing card games and other original game ideas, helped making stencils for cards and actually played every game we had at the Game Day(like everybody did). Also finally the Powerpoint Template design with Yuechuan and the diagram for SORTING game.
[DESIGN TEAM]
Design Team had a couple times of meetings. We had our own time to think about ideas individually and then the meeting was about how to make them into feasible games with solid rules by self-critiquing each game ideas. The main theme we came up with at the first brain-storming meeting was "Physicality", "Personifying Each Card", "Magic Trix", "Go Fish(Trading Game)", "The House of Cards", "Hide & Seek" and so on.
Physicality is definitely the most important theme to think about because of the idea itself of making Big Cards.
Personifying each card is interesting because the card is so big that each person would be able to carry just one card at a time. It is natural to think that each person would have specific attachment to the specific card he/she picked.
Magic Trix idea is actually driven from the theme of "Personifying Each Card." to feel special about one card they picked.
Go Fish was also fit to the theme of "Personifying Each Card" because when it comes to a Big Card Game, it's actually trading not just cards but the person who's holding the card.
The House of Cards is more about exploring player's creativity in terms of letting them build something with their own ideas and eventually making one big house out of collective efforts. It is important that every body have equal chance to devote themselves in making an output.
Hide & Seek is the first idea that I came up with thinking about an original Big Card game. I pictured a two team game that each team has to protect Queen or King by hiding them with numbers and face cards. Josh suggested that making one seeker for each teams and just like "Catching Dragon's Tail" Game (the game that IT should catch the tail person of a line of people.) the seeker should run around the cards of the opponent team and the opponent team should rotate their body & card to hide their numbers but more importantly hide their King or Queen. Lots of phsycality is expected by that.
Before the first class to present original game idea for the Big Card(the class we argued about making a whole deck of card or not.), I showed my SORTING Game idea to producers(Mihai & Jess) and they liked it. The SORTING game is a 2 team game. It was really successful in bringing people into playing with us at the actual Game Day.
[HOW TO PLAY SORTING GAME] (Doox's game, Paradoox, ISOCard? Let's just call this SORTING game :)) is like this.
Samorost2 is, as those of you who are sufficiently alert might be sorely tempted to conclude, the sequel to what has subsequently become known as "Samorost1." It is currently my preferred paradigm for a kinder, gentler, and far more whimsical synthesis of computers, games, and art. 
Beer Pong
Boundless Playgrounds
Deflexion
Here
The following brilliant collection of games for giant cards comes to us through the courtesy of the similarly brilliant USC student,