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.

IO9 calls Crazy Boat “The Best Sci-Fi Distraction on Facebook”

The New York Times Magazine calls Crazy Boat “Enormously Compelling”

Forbes calls Crazy Boat “Weird, witty and compelling: like Farmville if you could grow peyote”

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.

Use your real-world facebook profile to earn skills for your in-game persona like “philosopher”, “spy”, “soldier”, “musician” or “politician.”

Play in groups of up to four per boat — your actions are critical to the success of the group.

Crazy Boat builds a rich narrative using the quality-based narrative system pioneered by Fail Better Games in Echo Bazaar.

Gatsby introduces you to nearby people with interests you share, whenever you check in on foursquare. My good friend Haan Lee drew the illustration of Gatsby.

Check it out at meetgatsby.com

Gatsby won Twilio’s SMS app contest!

Mashable: Connecting Foursquare Friends Who Like Cats and Circuses

CNet: Meet Gatsby, matchmaker for Foursquare users

PSFK: MeetGatsby Matches Strangers Through Foursquare

The Rundown: Link Foursquare to real life with Gatsby

ReadWriteWeb: Connect With Like-Minded Foursquare Users Around You

Many people are too busy for organized guided tours, and others don’t want to buy and lug around a thick travel guide just for a short business or family trip. And yet, most people still want to discover and learn about the cities they visit and inhabit. Scenic Route helps these individuals get more out of travel, on their own schedule.

Scenic Route is a mobile website that builds customized routes for urban walks. Given your destination and a time allowance, Scenic Route builds a meandering walking route to that destination, filling the available time with stops along the way. Each stop reveals a hidden surprise about the city: a short message left by a user or verified guide. At the end of your walk, you’ve explored new streets and uncovered a unique set of local knowledge through a fun, spontaneous activity that fits into the available moments of your day.

Visit my partner Catherine’s website at paradeofkites.

SF Chronicle: Streets give up secrets on Scenic Route app

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

“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).

View Le Livre Secret des Buttes Chaumont in a larger map

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