IO9: “The Best Sci-Fi Distraction on Facebook”

NY Times Magazine: “Enormously Compelling”

Forbes: “Weird, witty and compelling”

We called upon some of the greatest mid-century American action serials to make a game that both harkens back to the adventures of yore and puts a new face on the idea of exploration, with an emphasis on the environmental impact of what reckless exploration means to the planet at large. 5% of our in-game revenues go to benefit Project Kaisei, a non-profit dedicated to cleaning up the real Pacific Trash Vortex.

Crazy Boat contains many gameplay innovations. The biggest: it uses Facebook profile data to give players in-game bonuses for their real-world skills and strengths. If you you post messages about the forest to your facebook wall, you might earn the Forest Ranger skill, and if you post about current events, you might score points as a Politician. In addition, in a first for Facebook games, players share their adventures with groups of up to four – and what happens to one affects all four.

I worked on the game with many talented people, including the consummate artist Joe Alterio, front-end guru David Kurtz, and crack iPhone developer Tom Brow.

Join a crafty expatriate as he searches pre-Napoleonic Italy for the fabled Library of the Tiburtine Sybil, said to inform any reader of his own future. Hostile French and Austrian soldiers are closing in on the library, hidden underneath the temple atop Paris’s Parc des Buttes Chaumont. In your quest to find it first, you will face harrowing fights, encounter trying moral dilemmas, and perhaps even meet Napoleon himself.

“Le Livre Secret des Buttes Chaumont” is an interactive short story situated within Paris’s Parc des Buttes Chaumont. Every plot point in the fictional adventure, set in Rome and Tivoli, corresponds to an actual location within the park. The way you choose to navigate the story will guide you on a unique path through the park’s phantasmagorical landscapes.

The colors on the map roughly correspond to the locales in the story.
Gold: Rome Train Station / Ave. de la Cascade, Southeastern Park
Brown: Rome / Eastern Park
Blue: Tivoli / Northeastern Park
Green: Tivoli Forest / Lac des Buttes Chaumont
Red: Temple of the Tiburtine Sybil / Butte Chaumont

To start, click on book #1 (golden).

Book icon designed by Navdeep Raj (http://dezinerfolio.com)
Translated by Annaig Combe and Daniel Levin Becker

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.