So I thought we could talk about seeds in SeedComp here and maybe bat around some ideas and get a sense of who might be tackling what seed. People may feel a little secretive about this, but discussing it doesn’t commit you to doing it, and I’d love to know who’s considering what seed-- it would keep me on the edge of my seat.
If I’m going to write a game for SeedComp, I have to pick something soon instead of dithering, which I’m doing a lot because all the seeds look good. I’m thinking mostly right now about Icarus’s Flight (who’s CSR?), @rovarsson 's The Magic Word, and @sophia 's After the Accident (although it makes me VERY NERVOUS to think about gamifying a living person’s poem. Dead poets cannot be disappointed in my games).
I’m also thinking about @sophia’s After the Accident.Morning From Hell and @bjbest60’s When Life Gives You Apples also appeal to me, but I have less of a clear idea what I’d do with them.
Regions of the Acid Factory has my attention currently, tbh. Not sure if I’m going to have time to do anything with it so I don’t want to call dibs, but aaah sci-fi dystopian hellholes are so up my alley.
There are already so many good ones! It’s been hard to choose already… (and we still have about 2 weeks to go still!)
I’m not sure if I’ll time to… but @AmandaBThe Inborn Love of Beauty with KADW’s Regions of the Acid Factory are quite tempting… or Death Amongst Spider Lilies by kimchi-pancakes?
Personally, I think it would be amazingly awesome to play multiple games based on the same seed. I hope some of them do get more than one taker, because I feel like that will be the funnest thing.
I’ve only lightly browsed the seeds that have been submitted so far – figured I’ll wait until closer to the deadline to engage more carefully, given that I’m rather IF-overcommitted at the moment – but I have to say, even in said light browse, I found @OverThinking’s While Rome Burns calling to me; a core mechanic just fell into my head as soon as I read it!
EDIT:
Oh I missed that one. The actual seed itself seems fine, but that title surely belongs to a piece about rival LSD manufacturers at Caltech in the '70s, as told by Hunter S. Thompson.
When the seeds first came flooding in, I thought they all sounded pretty interesting, but when I took a closer look, I realised that first appearances can be deceiving. It’s not quite so easy to make a game out of most of them.
One thing I noticed was that some (most?) of the seeds lend themselves to a narrative game. Very few lend themselves to a parser game. As I’m a parser person, I short-listed them with a simple YES or NO. The ones on my YES list are:
Bringer of Grain and Seed
Feathured Fury
Galactic Delights
In a Tomb with a Donkey
Killer Robots
Literature Intimate
Morning from Hell
On Guard
I really like the last one, but another one is screaming out, “Pick me, pick me!” (I won’t say which one) and a third one is a very strong contender. To be quite honest, it’s all a bit of a blur and I can’t even remember what the others were about.
I probably won’t start on anything until all the seeds are in. Even then, I’m not sure if I’ll have enough time because of other projects I’ll be working on. We shall see.
When I die, I will surely face a tribunal of dead poets whose work I stole. Browning’s the one I’m least worried about. I’m pretty sure Hopkins would be absolutely horrified. I mean, this was a dude who burned any of his poetry that he deemed insufficiently pious.
Maybe next year you could have a Secret Santa Seed Comp in which the round 1 seeds are randomly assigned as presents to the round 2 gardeners, who are then duty bound to ensure sprouting.
It’s my bird one, isn’t it? I don’t think there is another seed in which POOP is a necessary and valid command, and I just know you have always wanted to write a game where pooping solves the puzzle.
At the moment @rovarsson’s In a Tomb with a Donkey is calling to me, along with bits and pieces of a few others… but I’m a few days behind with following the seeds so there may be more that catch my eye. There are so many flooding in!
You are standing in the middle of a round hall. Reliëfs of Fortuna, Apollo, Justitia jut forward from the marble walls. Between two massive pillars on the east side the sun is rising.
The rose-fingered sunlight of dawn illuminates an oaken bench. Behind the bench your judges are seated: Sappho, Milton, Tagore and Khayyam.
