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About a week of intensive Ambient-ing has passed! I kept an internal document rather than posting all of my thoughts here. In short, I am enjoying the engine, I'm having the easiest time with entities and physics, would like to spend more time with UI. There are a bunch of small QoL snags that caught me along the way. Nothing insurmountable.

I made a very small cheap sort of 'racing' (well, just obstacle avoiding) system and I think I'd like to try making a more complicated system, something like boids with a life of its own. That should really be my next subproject.

Now it's important to start thinking about what a fun, unique standalone experience might look like. I've got the engine very partially internalized, in terms of its capabilities, and I need to start using that to begin imagining games to play. Forms of play.

Ah, fuck, how could I forget one of the most beautiful lists of all?

Quote                           [..] 1. LEVELS OF
SCALE,  2.  STRONG CENTERS,  3.  BOUNDARIES,
4.   ALTERNATING  REPETITION,   5.  POSITIVE
SPACE, 6.  GOOD SHAPE, 7. LOCAL  SYMMETRIES,
8.  DEEP INTERLOCK  AND  AMBIGUITY, 9.  CON-
TRAST,   10.   GRADIENTS,   11.   ROUGHNESS,
12. ECHOES, 13. THE VOID, 14. SIMPLICITY AND
INNER CALM, 15. NOT-SEPARATENESS.

~ the fifteen properties, from The Nature of Order // Book One // The Phenomenon Of Life

Nope, not enough. 50% was good though.

Trying 25% salt!

I saw OBSIDIAN with some Toronto Paradiseans and Brin and it occurred to me that like this artwork triggers multiple senses, a game triggers multiple senses.

If JÓNSI was going to make a digital OBSIDIAN-like, or rather if anyone was going to make a digital OBSIDIAN-like, they would have to make up for the loss of many physical feelings and sensations with other types of feelings and sensations.

I cannot say what these feelings and sensations are, but they are mostly mental, psychic, social, emotional in nature rather than physical, perhaps a simulated proprioceptiveness. There is a physical aspect to games too (keyboard, mouse, controller thumbs) but the level of control is extremely low and the level of individuality is not so high either.

THIS SUDDEN STRONG THOUGHT OCCURRED TO ME.

Unsent message to Paradise:

Quotei skimmed Game Poems in the way that i skim books and i didn't really get too much out of it, but that was fine. what really got me riled up was this one quote, this attempt by magnuson to sum up his self-described 'central thesis':

> that the core material of the videogame poet is the *language* of videogames: a vast tangled web of visual, auditory, and procedural signifiers, with all of their established ways of signifying (both denotatively and connotatively) in relation to one another and to the world at large.

the title of this thread is '**the art form of reacting to game culture**' bc i'm curious about other takes on it. i am... i feel that lately i have been moving further away from this, less and less interested in reacting to game culture. it's like... surely there is something interesting about game poems aside from the pieces of other games that compose them ugh

MAY 25 - Type Traveler (https://foolmoron.itch.io/type-traveler)

This is a pretty neat control scheme, I think other games try for a similar vibe of improvement of tapping just the right buttons - the game that comes to mind is Ore no Ryomi, the precursor to Cook! Serve! Delicious!

In the case of this game, I would say that it leans into increasing awkwardness rather than a feeling of really comfortable mastery, and I'm not sure I'm all about that, but it definitely does a good job along those lines! I got to five letters before dying a sad death in time.

The 'time travel with multiplier' concept is super interesting. I've never seen anything like it! I don't think it really 'fits' with the mechanic here, they seem like very separate ideas simply put together; they do serve each other of course, but I feel that the relationship between the two lacks some poetry.

p.s. forgive me for quoting you without your permission, but i thought it would be nice to place these games in the context of your own words about them! brief as they were.

Quotehttps://foolmoron.itch.io/the-cloister - geometric puzzler
https://foolmoron.itch.io/type-traveler - much better godot game, rhythm arcadey
https://foolmoron.itch.io/press-space-to-jump-the-gap - mystery
https://foolmoron.itch.io/the-tipping-point - gladwellcore
https://foolmoron.itch.io/the-consumer - abstract arcadey

Hello momin! At some point in the future I will probably send you this forum thread. At that point, I hope you will enjoy reading my thoughts which I have not yet written at the time I'm writing this text now
love, droqen