These sources cover how games work, how they get made and how they are remembered. They include larps as well as video games. This page lists 25 sources, oldest first where dated.
The Firemen: Hot stuff
The review covers The Firemen, an action game from Human Entertainment. It praises how fire is turned into enemy types with clear rules. The evidence is one quick playthrough that the reviewer says took 48 minutes. The page shows an update date of 29 April 2026.
Network Wars and the Mystery of the Disappearing AI
Lantz uses one strategy game to ask when an AI counts as a player. The evidence is play experience and thought experiments. The essay ends by saying a person is a player only while developing a strategy. Two reader comments extend the idea.
The Collective Ambition Behind Odysseus, a Game-changing Sci-fi Larp
Adrian Hon interviews Laura Kröger, lead producer and narrative designer of Odysseus. The talk covers design, organisation, ticket pricing and what a paid version would need. The evidence is the producer's own account and figures. The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Odyc.js – A tiny JavaScript library for narrative games
The thread discusses Odyc.js, a small JavaScript library for pixel-style games, linked at odyc.dev. Commenters share example games, question the word narrative and compare other tools. The creator replies often, so the thread is partly a Q and A.
What was Radiant AI, anyway?
The thread discusses a blog.paavo.me post about Radiant AI, the NPC system in Oblivion. The poster is also the article's author and replies in the thread. Commenters mix developer anecdotes, design arguments and tangents about Starfield and AI dialogue.
Micro and Macro History
This design diary is by Holly Nielsen, a historian who co-writes Amberspire. It uses the game's giant mausoleum to show how large-scale history and everyday events interact. The evidence is the author's reasoning and three example event outlines. The post is part of the developer's promotion of the game.
Game design is simple, actually
Raph Koster, a game designer and author, gives a twelve-step overview of game design. It treats games as problems that players learn to master. The evidence is the author's experience and small examples, such as Snake and Pac-Man.
1000 Blank White Cards
The thread has 364 points and many comments. Commenters compare the card game to Calvinball, Mao, Fluxx and Nomic. Most of the material is personal play stories, plus a few notes on theory.
Post announcing a rough hexagon map game
This is a very short social post with a link and a screenshot. The author calls the game extremely rough. The screenshot was not viewed, only its alt text. The author later posts a design doc link.
I'm Making Strandfall, a Solarpunk Orienteering Larp
Adrian Hon announces Strandfall, a three-hour outdoor larp made with Alex Macmillan. The post explains why the game uses custom hardware instead of smartphones. It is an announcement of plans, with concept images and no results. One link-back, one reader comment and one author reply follow, dated October 2026.
Amberspire review: a sci-fi city-builder that knows when enough is enough
Josh Broadwell reviews Amberspire, calling it one of the best city-builders in years. The review praises the dice-based building and the way a city passes through historical eras. It criticises the repetitive late game and a mausoleum that feels like window dressing. The evidence is the reviewer's own play of several cities on PC.
BELTRUNNER: game design postmortem
The author made Beltrunner, an arcade game on an Asteroids base, for GMTK Jam 2026. The post walks through ideas that were kept, dropped or changed after play-tests. It also lists engine features the game forced into the author's Jinks tool. The evidence is the author's own account, with no player data.
The invention of the MMO
Virginia Postrel tells how Lucasfilm's Habitat ran on the Commodore 64 through the Q-Link network. The essay mixes hardware and pricing facts with interviews. Sources include the creators, a museum founder and the archivist. Its evidence is quotes and anecdotes, not measurements.
Nomic
The article summarizes the game, its original rules and its main variants. It draws on Peter Suber's own writing and a Douglas Hofstadter column. A notice on the page says the Online section needs more citations.
Need for Speed Underground 2 online in the browser
The thread discusses nfsu2.xyz, a fan port of an old racing game. Commenters share play reports, technical tips and nostalgia. A large part of it argues over copyright, abandonware and donations. The evidence is anecdote and opinion.
Bevy Engine
This is a project landing page. It lists the engine's features in short blurbs, with claims about speed and licensing. It ends with a long list of paying supporters. It offers no benchmarks or code.
boardgame.io documentation
The docs start with core concepts and a Tic-Tac-Toe tutorial. The concepts page links to guides on immutability, events, phases, turn orders and stages. The evidence is runnable code samples, not benchmarks.
TinyCity
This is a short README for a hobby game. It lists features, play tips and credits. The screenshots were not viewed. It offers no code review or performance figures.
A History of Real-Time Strategy Gameplay From Decryption to Prediction: Introducing the Actional Statement
Simon Dor argues that gameplay history must follow what players do. Games as objects are not enough. The article offers a tool called the actional statement. It tests the tool on 1990s magazine reviews and guides for Dune II.
Documentation | Monogatari
The saved URL points to Step 3 of the guide. The text fetched was the welcome page and sidebar contents, not Step 3 itself. It explains the engine's script, action and component loop and lists where to get help.
The Interactive Fiction Community Forum
This is a category index, not an article. It lists the forum's sections and topic counts as of the saved copy. It shows what the community discusses, and it does not show any single discussion.
The Level Design Book
This is the book's landing page and contents, not a chapter. It shows the structure of four planned books and says the work is unfinished. Only the home page was read.
Visual Story-Writing: Writing by Manipulating Visual Representations
The source is a short README. It describes a research prototype that draws a story as a timeline with character movements. Editing the visuals prompts suggested changes to the text. It gives build steps and notes on the OpenAI key it needs.
Home | RPG in a Box
This is a product page that lists the tool's editors and features. It also promotes a crowdfunding campaign and a winter sale. The page offers claims and screenshots, not tests. Images were not viewed.
Exteel
The article covers the setting, items and payments, the game modes and the shutdown. It is an unsigned reference entry. The text read shows no citations, only passing mentions of sources.
Connections to other subjects
These links are this wiki's own reading, not claims the sources make.
- Network Wars and the Mystery of the Disappearing AI and Kishotenketsu - a plot structure without conflict, from Fiction and literature. Lantz says game bots are rules, like gravity, and not opponents. The kishotenketsu post says that structure does without conflict. Both loosen the assumption that drama needs an adversary. What would a game built on a twist be?
- Game design is simple, actually and The Coming Loop, from Harnesses and agent loops. Koster says rules with no goal make a toy. Ronacher says a harness loop needs only a useful signal to continue. Together they offer a test for any agent loop. Does it have a goal, or is it a toy that writes code?
- The Collective Ambition Behind Odysseus, a Game-changing Sci-fi Larp and Care at Scale, from Society and technology. Chachra treats infrastructure as a system of collective care. Odysseus shows this at small scale, with over two hundred volunteers running a spaceship. One organizer spent about 2000 hours and will not repeat it as a volunteer. So it also shows what care costs its carers.
Glossary
- Abandonware
- Old software that its owner no longer sells or supports.
- Aerogate
- A capture point on a map that teams fight to hold.
- Affordance
- A cue that tells a player what an object lets them do.
- API key
- A secret code that lets a program use a paid online service such as OpenAI.
- Arbitrage
- Profiting by buying an item in one place and selling it for more in another.
- Arduboy
- A tiny handheld game platform.
- ARG
- Alternate reality game, a story told through real-world clues.
- Asteroids
- An arcade game where a ship shoots drifting rocks.
- Attract mode
- The looping demo an arcade game shows while no one is playing.
- Avatar
- The character or figure that represents a player in an online world.
- Backdraft
- An explosion caused when fresh air reaches a fire starved of oxygen.
- Baud
- A unit of modem speed, here about 30 characters a second at 300 baud.
- Bithell Games
- The publisher named in the review.
- Bitsy
- A small editor for making tiny pixel games.
- Blockout
- A rough first version of a level built from plain shapes.
- Build order
- The planned sequence in which a player constructs buildings and units.
- Calvinball
- A made-up game from the comic Calvin and Hobbes, with rules that change mid-play.
- CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
- A license allowing non-commercial sharing and adapting, with credit, on the same terms.
- City-builder
- A game where the player plans and grows a town.
- Client-server
- A design where a central server does most work and small clients show results.
- Clockwork larp
- A larp built from interlocking tasks that keep the story moving.
- Collider
- The invisible shape a game uses to detect hits.
- Core loop
- The action a player repeats over and over in a game.
- Debug Panel
- A built-in panel for making moves and viewing state while developing.
- Deterministic
- Always producing the same result from the same situation, with no chance involved.
- Discourse
- Open-source forum software.
- Discursive formation
- In Foucault's term, a set of statements linked by regular patterns.
- Dupe bug
- A flaw that creates items or money from nothing.
- Dynasty
- A round of BlogNomic that ends when a player wins.
- Entity component system
- A way to build games from plain data pieces and functions that act on them.
- EPaper display
- A low-power screen that stays readable in sunlight.
- Fluxx
- A commercial card game in which cards change the rules during play.
- Free roam
- A game mode where the player drives around the open map without a set race.
- Game pillars
- A short list of goals that keeps a project focused.
- Game state
- The data that records everything about a game at one moment.
- Game tree
- A map of possible future moves that an AI can search.
- GMTK Jam
- An annual game jam, a contest where people make a game in a short time.
- GPT-4o
- An OpenAI language model that the tool calls to read and edit story text.
- Guardrails
- Limits meant to keep an AI system from saying certain things.
- Hacker News
- A news and discussion site run by the startup firm Y Combinator.
- Hex map
- A game board made of hexagonal tiles instead of squares.
- Hot reloading
- Applying changes to a running program without restarting it.
- Human Entertainment
- A Japanese game company that made The Firemen and the Clock Tower series.
- IFComp
- A yearly competition for new interactive fiction.
- Illusia Ry
- The Finnish non-profit association behind Odysseus.
- Indiegogo
- A website where people fund projects in advance.
- Interactive fiction
- Text games and stories where the reader types or picks actions.
- Jinks
- The author's own game engine and development environment.
- Juice
- Extra sound, motion and effects that make actions feel good.
- Knutepunkt
- An annual conference on Nordic larp.
- Label
- A named place in the script that the story can jump to.
- Larp
- Live action role playing, a game where people act out characters in person.
- Level design
- Building a specific scenario for players rather than the general rules.
- LLM
- A large language model, an AI system that writes text.
- Lunar Division
- The studio that made Amberspire.
- Macrohistory
- History at large scale, such as wars, eras and long-term change.
- Mao
- A card game with secret rules, where breaking a rule earns a penalty.
- Marching Cubes
- A method that smooths blocky voxels into rounded shapes.
- Mausoleum
- A large tomb; here the moon itself is built over one.
- MCTS
- Monte Carlo tree search, a bot method that tries many simulated games.
- Mechanaught
- The game's name for its giant customizable fighting machines.
- Mesh networking
- A radio network where each device can relay messages for others.
- Metagame
- The shared set of common strategies that players in a game use over time.
- Microhistory
- History of small things, such as a community, a person or a building.
- Micropayment
- A small real-money purchase inside a free game.
- MicroPython
- A slimmed-down version of Python for tiny chips.
- MMO
- A massively multiplayer online game, where very many people share one world.
- Mornington Crescent
- A British radio panel game, played as if it had a vast secret rulebook.
- Move
- A single action a player can take that changes the game state.
- Mutable rule
- A rule that players can change by vote.
- Narrative designer
- A person who shapes how a game tells its story.
- Nomic
- A game in which changing the rules is itself a move.
- Nordic larp
- A tradition of larp from the Nordic countries, often focused on emotion and art.
- NPC
- A non-player character, played by crew rather than by a paying player.
- Open source
- Software whose code anyone may read and reuse.
- Orienteering
- A sport of finding your way across land with a map.
- Panic Soft
- The name of a loosely linked series of games from Human Entertainment.
- Paratext
- Material around a work, such as its box, manual and marketing.
- Prestige
- A score in the game that marks how far a city has advanced.
- Procedural generation
- Making game content by rules and randomness instead of by hand.
- Procedurally generated
- Created by an algorithm each time, instead of designed by hand.
- PuzzleScript
- A browser tool for making puzzle games from simple rules.
- Radiant AI
- Bethesda's name for the system that gives NPCs goals and daily routines in Oblivion.
- React
- A popular JavaScript library for building user interfaces.
- Real-time strategy
- A game type where players build and fight at once, without taking turns.
- Recompilation
- Translating a finished program back into source code to build it for new platforms.
- Render graph
- A set of linked steps that together draw each frame.
- RP2040
- A small, low-cost microcontroller chip made by Raspberry Pi.
- Scouting
- Gathering information about an opponent or map before committing to a plan.
- Self-amendment
- A system that contains rules for changing its own rules.
- Shader
- A small program that tells the graphics card how to draw.
- SNES
- Nintendo's 16-bit home console, called Super Famicom in Japan.
- Solarpunk
- A style of fiction that imagines a hopeful future built on clean energy.
- Torus
- A surface where leaving one screen edge brings you back at the opposite edge.
- Transmuting
- Turning an immutable rule into a mutable one so it can be changed.
- Trenchbroom
- A level editor for building game maps.
- Turn-based
- A game where players act in turn rather than in real time.
- Visual novel
- A story game made mostly of text, pictures and choices.
- Visual scripting
- Building game logic by connecting boxes instead of typing code.
- Vite
- A tool that builds and serves web projects while they are being developed.
- Voxel
- A tiny cube used as a building block in 3D art.
- WebAssembly
- A format that lets compiled programs run inside a web browser.
- WebGPU
- A browser interface for using the graphics card.
- Worldbuilding document
- A reference text the writers keep about how the game world works.
- ZZT
- An early PC game-making tool from the 1990s.