The H Line

Passage: a Gamma256 video game by Jason Rohrer

“Passage represents life’s challenges with a maze. The screen geometry only allows you to view a narrow slice of this maze at any given moment. You can see quite a distance out in front of you (and, later in life, behind you), but you can’t see anything to the north or south. … You can spend your time in pursuit of these hard-to-reach rewards, or you can explore and enjoy the scenery that unfolds before you to the east. As you grow older, your view of the territory in front of you shrinks, and navigating new areas in life’s maze becomes more difficult.”

Read full creator’s statement.

(via Ryan North)

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Portal is the Most Subversive Game Ever

on Games Radar

“[Protagonoist Chell] acquires a Portal Gun for use in these tests; interestingly, the gun’s masculine symbolism is subverted by the fact that it shoots portals rather than bullets. Portals are oval-shaped openings that are visually and spatially connected; go in one and you’ll come out the other. The Portal Gun creates connections rather than destroying life.”

(via ITP students list e-mail from Corey Menscher)

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Death of Checkers, The

on The NYT Magazine
“This July, Jonathan Schaeffer, a computer scientist at the University of Alberta in Canada, announced that after running a computer program almost nonstop for 18 years, he had calculated the result of every possible endgame that could be played, all 39 trillion of them. He also revealed a sober fact about the game: checkers is a draw. As with tic-tac-toe, if both players never make a mistake, every match will end in a deadlock.”

by Clive Thompson (via Flavorpill)

 I went to Blipfest on Saturday night. It was out. of. con. trol!

 Bitshifter absolutely owned the night — and solidified that I belong in this community, in this city. Only at an event like this will you see fully grown men crowdsurfing to sounds produced by a GAMEBOY. Absolutely amazing.

I actually went for Tree Wave, but, as I discovered from another attendee from their hometown, there was a falling out between the members, so he didn’t play my favorite song, “Sleep,” because it would have required the girl’s vocals.

Unfortunately, the adorable boys of The Depreciation Guild had terrible technical difficulties during their opening song, “By Sundown.”

A low hum grew more pronounced as the song progressed, practically swallowing it by the end. Most people were standing there looking confused by what they presumed was intentional dissonance gone wrong. The band recognized and fixed it after, but it killed the mood for the rest of their set.

It was a real shame, since it’s basically their best song. Or at least the most 8-bitty. So to redeem them in the ears of those who hadn’t heard them before that night, here you are…

“By Sundown” - The Depreciation Guild