#microgame

BUCKET OF BUGS: You have an empty garden, and a bucket full of lovely bugs. A little summer's day microgame, with Programming by @thewaether and art by me. WASD to move, CTRL to crouch, and click to Pour Out A Bug

PLAY IT HERE:

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Ardennes Offensive, aka the Battle of the Bulge, fought in the winter of 1944-45. The many wargames recreating this battle include:

The Battle of the Bulge by Avalon Hill, 1965 -- The designers credited General McAuliffe with authenticating their research, while AH's advertising also mentions inspiration from the Henry Fonda film of the same year

The Battle of the Bulge, 2nd edition by Avalon Hill in 1981 with Rodger MacGowan box art depicting General Patton

The Ardennes Offensive by SPI, 1973, designed by Jim Dunnigan

Wacht am Rhein, SPI, 1977, a grand tactical simulation across 4 map boards, larger and more complex than SPI's other Bulge games

The Big Red One, SPI, 1980, a simpler approach to the same subject with shorter rules, fewer pieces, and a small map, originally released in 1979 as Bulge: The Battle for the Ardennes, then rebranded as a tie-in with Samuel Fuller's 1980 film

One Page Bulge by Steve Jackson Games, 1980, one of their few historical microgames, with Dave Martin box art

☼IZER

or: CAD (Cards Against Dixit)

or: CADizer

a draft tournament, but for stories

a story-draft

Play

Everyone plays one card (face down), then all cards flip over, then everyone silently picks two other people' cards to combine into a sentence, then players take turns leaning forward to hold down the (central, comically dramatic) old tape player-style record button, stating one sentence that connects two other players' cards together, then releases the record button.

Turns

Sentence-sharing moves counterclockwise. Between turns, player hands are passed clockwise. Play starts with 10 cards per player.

Setup

Player with the smallest hands chooses between the Image deck (Sunrise pattern) or the Word deck ("IZER" in best font ever) then draws 10 cards from that deck. Player to their left draws from the Opposite deck. Continue in this way until everyone has a hand. Game can be played by bringing to the table: a standard Dixit deck, a standard Cards Against Humanity deck, and your favorite voice-recording app.

Table

Set out at your gettogether's (see list at IZER cards w114-w138 and p235-p249: "Gettogethers" to generate and post to your favorite social media event calendar a random gettogether) food table to create a mystique-y, alter-like spot for people to record a sentence then draw (and place over) one of the available cards from both decks composing the current spread.

Emoter play

Load up your favored instrumental music -- lyrical music is banned for being too powerful & hands-on-sy for most-people's off-the-cuff improv abilities. Use either the full app^[1] ^[1] (Hand-coded features built especially for ☼IZER-style group play; 50% proceeds go to support Neurodiversity Awareness Organization I Don't Know the Name Of Off the Top of My Head; settings support user-generated BYO-[CSS layout] defaults to There-Now-Even-Bees-Can-Read-It visual setting; compatible with Cocktrice and ttSimulator) or use your favored image-sharing app to post alternatively a single word or a single jpeg \attention-hacking gifs & image macros banned in original version of game for being too powerful & hands-on-sy for most-people's off-the-cuff improv abilities\ or use your presence just like a chimp in a tree would and just hang out. You've your music, good people; express permission: granted.

Lore

All the horizonizerites have gathered at your table. Given time and the learning of generator code they will probably go away. Horizonizerites fall from the horizon instead of falling from the sky like everyt in life. Since they fell at eye-level directly into the eye, they're ability to tell stories is still unfiltered, unprocessed, raw, and possibly unsettling for some.

Know