As we announced a few weeks ago, it’s nearly time for the latest installment in our series of public domain game jams, Gaming Like It’s 1930! It’s an extra special jam this year as we begin a brand new decade of works entering the public domain, and as always it will begin on New Year’s Day (a.k.a. Public Domain Day, a.k.a. this Thursday!) and run until the end of January.
Head on over to the game jam page on Itch to sign up and read the full rules. There are also some ideas there for works that you could draw on, but we encourage you to go do some digging of your own, especially if you want to compete for the Best Deep Cut prize (personally, I suggest searching the Internet Archive for things dated 1930 to find some truly unexpected treasures). For extra inspiration, you can have a look at last year’s winners and our series of winner spotlight posts that take a look at each year’s winning entries in more detail.
A couple months ago we offered up the few remaining copies of our social media card game, One Billion Users, after fulfilling orders from our Kickstarter backers. Quite a few of you took the chance to snag one, and now we’re down to an extremely small number remaining: at time of writing, we only have ten undamaged copies of the game, and a few dozen of the damaged copies that we are offering at a deeper discount.
So if you haven’t gotten a copy yet, or you know someone who might want one, now’s your chance. And remember, gift-giving season is nearly upon us!
Also: there are still some of our original Kickstarter backers who haven’t completed their surveys, meaning we can’t yet send out their games. Don’t worry, we’re holding onto them and not selling them as part of this sale. If you’re reading this and you’re one of these backers, please complete your survey as soon as possible (if you’re having issues, there’s more information in this Kickstarter update).
Over the past few months, we’ve been fulfilling the orders for all the backers who helped us launch One Billion Users, the social media card game, on Kickstarter. Now that process is almost complete (except for a few backers who haven’t yet completed their orders and should do so as soon as possible) and we’re left with a very small quantity of additional copies that we’re now putting up for sale. If you’ve been regretting that you missed your chance to get the game, this is your absolute last opportunity!
If you act fast, you’ve got two options in our online store: a regular copy of the game for $30, or one of the copies that was damaged in transit from the manufacturer for a discounted price of $22.50. All damage is to the boxes, not the contents of the game, so these copies are 100% playable.
Meanwhile, we’ve been getting great reactions from our Kickstarter backers who have received the game:
My One Billion Users game arrived today, so I probably won't be going into work tomorrow! I've long been looking forward to this. /cc @mmasnick.bsky.social
Of all the cards in @mmasnick.bsky.social’s excellent One Billion Users game, this was the only card that I felt like he probably wanted to use a specific name but had to restrain himself and just invoke a broad archetype instead.
One last thing: there are still some backers who haven’t completed their surveys, meaning we can’t yet send out their games. If you’re reading this and you’re one of them, please complete your survey as soon as possible (if you’re having issues, there’s more information in our latest Kickstarter update).
1929 was the year the Marx Brothers made their film debut in The Cocoanuts, a movie where they ostensibly run a resort hotel but mostly just engage in their regular antics. Cocoanut Hotel adapts this career turning point for the famed comedians in both content and spirit, turning it into (what else?) a full-fledged hotel management sim. Just as in the original, the story (and now the mechanics) primarily serve as a vehicle for the comedy, resulting in a game that’s both fun to play and filled with entertaining material from start to finish.
As the player, you are tasked by your boss Mr. Hammer (a.k.a. Groucho) with getting the hotel to maximum capacity in 30 days. To achieve this, you must tweak the rate for rooms and your various expenses. You’re given little information on precisely what impact these choices will have, which turns the beginning of the game into an intriguing and often-surprising puzzle as you experiment with your options. Each day brings various events, whether that’s shady characters checking in because you don’t spend enough on security, not-so-clever con men raiding your savings, and of course, U.H.A. (Unexplainable Harpo Activity):
Ultimately the game isn’t too challenging, but it isn’t mindless: you need to engage with the mechanics and figure out how to win. It’s peppered with fun details, including a couple jokes about copyright, and above all it feels like a complete and quite polished product. For that, Cocoanut Hotel is this year’s Best Digital Game.
Congratulations to Geoffrey Golden & G.C. Katzfor the win! You can play Cocoanut Hotelin your browser on Itch. We’ll be back next week with the last in our series of winner spotlights, and don’t forget to check out the many great entries that didn’t quite make the cut! And stay tuned for next year, when we’ll be back for Gaming Like It’s 1930.
This is it: we’re about to lock in our order quantity for One Billion Users, the competitive card game about running a social media network that we funded on Kickstarter last year. If you haven’t yet become a backer of the campaign, you can still make a late pledge to order as many copies as you want. If you’re already a backer, you can fill out this form to let us know you want additional copies. Either way, today is the last day that we’re accepting orders, so if you want to guarantee that you’ll get the game, this is your last chance.
We have no plans to produce more copies of the game after this. There’s a small chance that we’ll have some leftovers after fulfilling everyone’s orders, in which case we might make them available at some point, but we can’t make any promises.
Thanks again to everyone who helped make this Kickstarter a success. We’re confident this is a game you’re going to love playing, and we can’t wait to get it into your hands. Keep an eye on the Kickstarter updates for more information as production proceeds, and for now here’s one more sneak peek at some cards from our sample copy:
Do you have what it takes to run a social media network that grows to one billion users and beyond? That’s the question in our new card game, One Billion Users, which we successfully funded on Kickstarter last year. Now the game is entering production, and since we have no plans to make more copies after this, it’s your last chance to get one for yourself. The Kickstarter is accepting late pledgesthrough the end of tomorrow, Wednesday May 7th.
(For those of you who already backed the campaign but want to purchase additional copies, you’ll have a chance to do that before your order is fulfilled, as long as you let us know about your intent to buy additional copies by the end of tomorrow.)
We’re very excited to get the game into people’s hands, and are on track to do so towards the end of this summer. Here’s another peek at our sample copy from the printer:
As we announced last week, our recently-Kickstarted card game One Billion Users is about to enter production, which means this is your last chance to secure a copy for yourself. The Kickstarter campaign is accepting late pledges from now through the end of Wednesday, May 7th.
We recently received our proof copy, and it looks and feels great. We can’t wait to get the game into people’s hands:
Currently we don’t have any plans to produce more copies of the game beyond this run for our Kickstarter backers, so this is very likely your last chance to get your own copy of One Billion Users.
(For those of you who already backed the campaign but want to purchase additional copies, you’ll have a chance to do that before your order is fulfilled, as long as you let us know about your intent to buy additional copies by the end of May 7th.)
Regular followers of the jam are surely familiar with David Harris, our one regular entrant who has won a category every single year. And I promise the judges aren’t just playing favorites: this year’s entry is once again suffused with the sort of thoughtful creativity that always makes David’s games stand out. Calder’s Circus (I Think Best In Wire) is inspired by the work of Alexander Calder, best known as one of the earliest creators of kinetic sculptures or mobiles. In 1929, he presented Cirque Calder, an improvised circus performance utilizing dozens of wire and wood figurines. Calder’s Circus the game doesn’t just take inspiration from these performances — it continues them.
Players are tasked with creating their own circus, by building their own wire figurines and telling tales of their performances. Thus it becomes a combination of a crafting/artmaking game with a storytelling game, which thrusts players right into the heart of Cirque Calder‘s unique combination of sculpture and performance. Thanks to the robust design notes David Harris has included with the game, which walk through his creative process in detail, we can understand this aspect of the game design his own words:
Isn’t this a game about wire-bending not narrative? Only if you’re looking at the tree and not the forest. Calder was sketching in wire but he was creating a circus and the performance of that circus was his end goal.
In the game, this manifests as a lightly-competitive group exercise in which, after constructing their free-standing circus scenes from wire (or pipe cleaners if you want to play with kids, who would definitely get a kick out of this), they compete to tell the stories of each others’ performances, randomly determined to be either triumphant or disastrous. The player who tells the best stories becomes the ringleader, and must name the circus and present its dramatic introduction.
As the aforementioned design notes describe, to create this game David immersed himself not only in Calder’s work but also in the context surrounding it: Calder’s life in the art scene in Paris and his comments on his own creative process, and his relationship with real life circuses and the fraught history surrounding circuses themselves as a form of entertainment. It’s no surprise that the result is a game that feels more like a continuation of Cirque Calder than just an homage to it, and a game that is a fitting winner of Best Adaptation.
Congratulations to David Harris for the win! You can get everything you need to play Calder’s Circus, as well as David’s design notes, from its page on Itch. We’ll be back next week with the next in our series of winner spotlights, and don’t forget to check out the many great entries that didn’t quite make the cut! And stay tuned for next year, when we’ll be back for Gaming Like It’s 1930.
Last year, we were thrilled with the success of our Kickstarter campaign for One Billion Users, the Social Media Card Game. In case you missed it at the time, One Billion Users is a fun, fast-paced game where 2-4 players compete to build the biggest and best social media network.
Now, the game is about to enter production, which means this is your last chance to secure a copy for yourself. The Kickstarter campaign is accepting late pledges from now through the end of Wednesday, May 7th. After that, we’ll be locking in our order quantity with the factory, and the games will be en route to backers some time this summer.
We currently have no plans to produce any further copies of the game beyond this Kickstarter run, so this is most likely the last chance to get your hands on One Billion Users. If you aren’t already a backer of the Kickstarter campaign, place your late pledge now before it’s too late!
(If you are already a backer and want to purchase additional copies, let us know).
Thanks again to everyone who helped make the Kickstarter a success. We’re excited for this game to make it into people’s hands, so you can find out if you have what it takes to run a social media network with one billion users.
One of the requirements for digital entries in these game jams is that they be playable in the browser, which puts a limit on just how graphically ambitious they can get. But A Warning pushes that limit to its breaking point, in service of a striking aesthetic built around a selection of Disney animated shorts from 1929 combined with lighting effects and a 3D-rendered interface.
Screenshots really don’t do it justice; you need to see it in action. The game is a simple but tantalizing video puzzle, in which you are tasked by President Herbert Hoover (by way of a fully-voiced briefing video) with uncovering secret messages that Walt Disney has hidden in the films. You’re then tossed into the main interface with minimal instruction, and must experiment with the rotating slices of animation and the various buttons that swap out the soundtrack and apply color filters to the visuals, possibly revealing hidden elements. Piece by piece, you must reconstruct the cartoons and their secret layers, all while they continue to play before your eyes. Uncover all the secret messages and you’ll make it to the ending (but no spoilers: you’ll have to get there for yourself!)
Last year was the year that Mickey Mouse’s new public domain status made waves and headlines, but while that was certainly an important milestone, we can’t forget that it just marks the beginning of what we now get to celebrate for years to come: masterpieces from the golden age of American animation entering the public domain. These are historic works that pioneered styles and techniques which continue to define animation today, and the visual feast they provide deserves to be celebrated. A Warning does just that, and does it with flare, while also being a very fun little puzzle game to boot. For all that, it’s this year’s winner of Best Visuals.
Congratulations to DigNZ for the win! You can play A Warning in your browser, or download the PC version, from its page on Itch. We’ll be back next week with the next in our series of winner spotlights, and don’t forget to check out the many great entries that didn’t quite make the cut! And stay tuned for next year, when we’ll be back for Gaming Like It’s 1930.
