I’ve spent the past few days painting little animal faces for a Christmas present for my 4- and 5-year old nieces, whom, despite their advancing age, I insist on referring to as “The Babies.”

Animal Faces.

The game is “Memory,” a classic in which tiles containing matching pairs of designs are turned on their faces, then players turn them over attempting to match pairs in the fewest possible turns.

54 Faces.

I got plumb carried away painting these little animal faces, which I think turned out rather cute. There are 54 pieces in all.

I went to Big Lots in search of a box and found this perfect little gem, which is actually a gift card box. I painted over an excessively cheerful snowman with this memory-evoking elephant and sprayed the whole thing with clear coat. The pieces fit in nice and snug.

All in all a successful gift, I think.

A Game to Remember.

Burlesquadelic

Burlesquadelic is a work in progress. That means it’s buggy, broken, unfinished, crude, and without redeeming social value. OK, so those last two points aren’t likely to resolve themselves when I finish the game.

Nonetheless, you’ve been warned.

Burlesquadelic is an Interactive Fiction game written in Inform. A playable link is coming soon.

Go Fly a Bike

Go Fly a Bike is a game of aeroform cyclery.

Avoid zeppelins, murder jellyfish and annihilate storks. Snatch up tasty sandwiches.

Go Fly a Bike is a Flash game.

Click to play.

Enchanted Library

Enchanted Library is a work in progress. As it stands, you’ll be tempted to think it’s a critique of Randian Objectivism. However, it will eventually contain puzzles inspired by a number of literary works from various genres.

Note that Enchanted Library is unfinished.

Enchanted Library is an Interactive Fiction game written in Inform. A playable link is coming soon.

Redneck Driver

Redneck Driver is a game about drinking and driving, evading cops, and running over cats. It’s in poor taste and is amateurly executed.

It’s what you get for free. Play it sometime when you have a meeting in fifteen minutes and no time to start something productive.

Redneck Driver is a Flash Game.

Click to play.

Easter Egg Hunt

Easter Egg Hunt is cute, imperfect, funny and irreverent.

Very helpful testers found bugs that I hope to fix at some point. Until then, content yourself with finding a dozen eggs and try not to concern yourself with things like functional scoring mechanisms.

Easter Egg Hunt is an Interactive Fiction game written in Inform. A playable link is coming soon.

The Geek Game

The Geek Game, which didn’t have a name until just now, was my first assignment in a Flash game programming class. So don’t get your hopes up too much.

What it lacks in technical expertise, it makes up for in charm. I hope.

The Geek Game is a Flash game.

Click to play.

Dead Pilots Don't Fly

The best part of this game is its title.

Dead Pilots is a mess of a first-time N00B IF game that needs not a couple of tweaks, as my testers so kindly implied, but a major overhaul. Play at your own risk.

Will fix someday.

Dead Pilots is an Interactive Fiction game written in Inform. A playable link is coming soon.

The Old Man and I make all our Christmas presents. This year I made him a “Piecepack.”

The gift.

For those who haven’t heard of it (and I hadn’t til researching Christmas gift ideas), the piecepack is “a set of boardgame parts that can be used to design and play a wide variety of games.” It contains tiles, coins, pawns and dice in four colorful suits. It’s public domain and a couple hundred rule sets have been published out on the web.

It was easy, as many of the parts came fit for purpose from                   http://www.craftparts.com.

The booklet contains a dozen or so top-rated games as reviewed by the “piecepack mailing list”.

Box, booklet, dice and tiles.

Everything fits neatly in the box.

Piecepack parts.