Ze Frank's Life Games

Games as Epigrams

Submitted by costik on Thu, 07/17/2008 - 00:57.

Type:

Flash

Developer:

Ze Frank

Play "Christian"

Play "Buddhist"

Play "Atheist"

On occasion, I've referred to five-minute games that have an emotional impact (like The Crossing) as the gaming equivalent of tone poems; these games from Ze Frank are more like quips or epigrams -- five second games with a bit of a sting. You kind of have to play all three to get the point.

In a sense, they're little one-off jokes, but in another sense, they're interesting because, they demonstrate how with a bare minimum of assets and mechanics, an interactive system can still create endogenous meaning: the platform is life, and what happens when you leave it says something about your view of the existential universe. Just as one line of a poem can compress a universe of feeling, so these tiny little Flash apps have something to say.

cheating at christianity

Submitted by jonathanpeterson on Thu, 07/17/2008 - 13:51.

With a little contemplation, you can change your mind after choosing an elevator.

Is that a bug, or a hidden message about esoteric christianity?

So if you dont already know

Submitted by q4norm on Thu, 07/17/2008 - 14:45.

So... if you don't already know

Ze Frank's best content is the 1 year video blog he did, called the show, archived and available here: http://zefrank.com/theshow/

which inspired a community of fans now mostly living at http://postorg.org.

and his main page has many teency little flash games on it, as well as various videos and such, that will entertain for many short bursts at a time: http://zefrank.com/ Not all of them have a comical point to make such as atheist and the likes...

Sports Racers, Racing sports...what is *your* power move?

oh and here's the show where he talks about these games: [goes to grab link] Er...his sites being upgraded right now so a lot of stuff is down...but I think its here:

http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/05/050106.html

;)

Fatherhood

Fatherhood

Fatherhood is a Rogue-like, at least to the degree of being a turn-based ASCII game, with a command-set that will be familiar to players of this type of game. However, it's certainly not a dungeon-crawler -- indeed, there's no combat whatsoever.

The basic set-up is this: on a randomly generated map (some pre-generated maps are also included), some number of rivers are about to flood their banks, and some number of forest fires are burning. You're a Dad, and your three kids are running about the game as well -- they start near you, but have a tendency to wander off. You can halt fires and floods by picking up boulders and moving them to choke points -- and you win by making sure that neither you nor any of your kids drowns or is burned to death.

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