What happens when you combine sports and words? That’s right, the unholy portmanteau of this post’s title. Conceived as a last minute entry into the TIGSource Sports competition, Spwords is a player-versus-computer match that puts your (English) vocabulary, spelling, and typing speed to the test.

Play Spwords (web)

Maybe you didn’t understand the commentator’s quick explanation of the rules. That’s fine, that’s what this paragraph is for. You and computer take turns typing words during rounds, and each round has an assigned letter. Each word played must start with the round’s letter. Also, a word must contain the last played word’s last letter for it to count. In addition to all this, you have a time limit, and words may never be repeated. Win three rounds to win the match. Have a go!

This game was possible thanks to Keith Vertanen’s word lists.

Here’s an HTML5 drawing toy I’ve been working on for a few weeks. It’s been designed to work on touch devices in addition to the plebian mouse, although I only really have my iPad to try it on, so I’m not sure how it will work everywhere else. You can add it to the home screen on any iOS apparatus, and it’ll work more or less like a regular app, offline and all.

Play Flower pattern (web, touch devices)

For your phone or tablet, and for your convenience, I also set up a shorter URL: http://agj.cl/ip/fp . Caveat: based on one report, it doesn’t seem to work properly on older versions of iOS. […]

Prompted by mcc, I’ve compiled a list of whatever weak narrative impetus my games have. I used games as listed in my aggregate, and removed those that are comprised of only surface, i.e. toys, or that are non-interactive. […]

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That there is the little sign that was put next to a computer with two of my games, Intervalo lúcido del individuo inconsciente, and Heart, at an exhibition called Game On! in Buenos Aires. Also, here’s a picture of an anonymous person using a personal computer. Both photos thanks to my official Buenos Aires correspondent and fellow game maker, Tembac.

I’m pretty happy that this happened, since it’s the first time my games have been featured in a non-virtual space, although putting them next to other frankly much more exciting and spectacular games, like Tembac’s Consecuencias and Daniel Benmergui’s Storyteller, makes me a bit self-conscious of the fact. Especially since I’m no longer very fond of Heart. Also, I’m sad that the Twitter-sourced bio I submitted wasn’t included there, because it’s awesome: […]

Over at Glorious Trainwrecks, a spambot started an event, and thus we had to comply and make stuff. I didn’t really make a game; it’s a silly visualization of Noyb’s readings of (other) spambot postings.

Read Spoems (web)

The audio may or may not sync with the text for you, depending on your configuration. Try reloading if it doesn’t, and if it still won’t, then I think you’re out of luck.

A shoutout to Kirk Israel for his useful lowLag.js.

This was long overdue: a browser for all of my released games, including the terrible ones, and covering all the range up to the mediocre. I used a binary system for highlighting the ones I consider to be less unremarkable; they use up double the space of the others. There’s also a handy tag there called gamey that marks the games that are more traditional in scope, so you don’t have to bitch to me about how my games are not really games.

I have made this blog look different from how it looked yesterday. It is also used somewhat different. I pressed many keys during several days to make this happen.

The design is a relic from 2010 which I never finished implementing, because back then I didn’t know much PHP. Now I decided to finish it, for the large part eschewing WordPress’s redundant, confusing, ill-documented and inflexible functions, which made me give up that time, and rolling my own code. Also for the first time I’ve tasted what it’s like not pulling so many hairs in the process of getting letters and boxes where you want them to appear on the screen, thanks to Less, an alternative to plain CSS.

Below is a picture of how this blog no longer looks. And here is the whole, long first page.

A crass and uncouth thing I made for the KOTM. A procedural dating eroge, powered by the Internet.

Play han’you tokimeki (web)

This would not have been possible if not for the Gelbooru API. Blame them.

In the context of the final Super Friendship Club pageant, themed ‘ritual’, I made something which I won’t fool anybody by calling a game.

Weekly concern (web)

An auto-generated line of text for you to ponder every week. Inspired by koans of Buddhist tradition.

January, the month named after the Roman god Janus. A god of thresholds between past and future, here and there, he is depicted as having a head bearing two faces staring simultaneously forward and back.

Play January in your browser

In my first collaboration with GregWS, we made a small text game about parallels. We each independently created a literary space by way of the description of places and situations, and then combined the two into a criss-crossing meandering. Fun for the whole family.