Path of the Monk is a three-player game of deception made in 48 hours for the Global Game Jam 2010. The Monk relies on chatting with two guiding spirits to make it through the maze, but one spirit is secretly hoping to get the monk killed.

Play the game at http://monk5.shrdwhtbrd.com.

Read a review at http://incrediblystrangegames.com/post/366416893/path-of-the-monk-global-game-jam-2010

Pretweeting

There’s a whole ecosystem of different words. The English top 100 words (“the”, “and”, “or”, etc.) are the blue chip stocks of the twittersphere. Some words, like “dinner”, “#followfriday”, and “sleep”, have very predictable cycles. But you’ll need to follow current events to really know when the best picks, topical words like “ipod” or “lakers”, will hit it big.

This game hit it big on twitter and had several international articles written about it.

@louroboros: i love this so much. #pretweeting
@bdougher I want to buy shares of ‘pretweeting’, it’s gonna be huge! #pretweeting

IndieGamesBlog Browser Game Pick: Pretweeting

Mashable: Pretweeting gets a prediction market

Technology Reviews: Pretweeting- Virtual Twitter Stock Market

OnlyGizmos: Pretweeting is the new trend

WATBlog: Enough of tweeting and retweeting: it’s time for pretweeting!

TechCrunch: Can You Predict Twitter Trends? Use Your Skills For Virtual Cash With Pretweeting

Whytech.fr: Spéculez sur la fréquence des mots avec Pretweeting pour Twitter

MyFox Tech Tips: Predicting Twitter

Turf is a fun, easy-to-play strategy game set on a map of anyplace you choose – a web-based game that brings neighbors together in the real world.

The first game of Turf was created by Gabe Smedresman at Yale University in January 2007, and lasted 40 days. Called Old Campus Tree Risk at the time, it was a strategy game and would-be art piece, where the board was the freshman quad, each residential building formed a team, every student could be a player, and trees flew with banners reflected the state of the game.

The Yale Daily News: “Students hazard all in campus Risk game”

Old Campus Tree Risk was a tremendous success: 62% of undergraduates played – 3300 people, many of them playing an online multiplayer game for the very first time. Gabe released the code behind the game open-source, and Harvard ran a thrilling game a few weeks later: alliance, betrayal, hacking, bribery, and several Youtube videos ensued.

The Harvard Crimson: “Houses Compete in Bid For ‘Risk’ Supremacy”

Wall Street Journal: “Facebook Ignites Entrepreneurial Spirit at Harvard”

The game was mentioned by Bill Clinton (!) at his 2007 Harvard Class Day address.

Turf followed up its successful first season with games at Reed College, Olin, Stanford, and Harvard.

Harvard Independent: “Winner Take All”

Stanford Daily: “StanfordTurf invades campus”

A two player cooperative game where one player, in the role of Sarah Winchester in the early 1900s, built what would become the Winchester Mystery House, while another player encounters ghosts in the house a hundred years later.

In 1884, Sarah Winchester, haunted by the victims of her family’s rifles, was cursed to build a house for the rest of her life. The whole family died shortly thereafter. But one hundred years later, a tarot dealer is told that to bring the girl he was destined to love into existence, he must rewrite the family’s past, saving Winchester and her descendents from their untimely fates. One builds a house, the other weaves a story. They meet in The Mansion of Crossed Destinies, a cooperative two-player game where you build your level as you play in it.

While I was working at The Go Game I wrote a historical narrative game — a cross between participatory theater, role-playing, and an adventure game — inspired by the history of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office in California. I ran the three-hour game twice, with about 25 players each time. Players played as supporters, and walked around the game zone centered on Castro Street, earning the endorsements of several actors playing the roles of Harvey’s friends and competitors. Local bookstores, drugstores, and the Castro Theater were all in on the game and helped provide clues.