I guess this is currently my passion? Flickgame has been such an easy to use tool for making tiny games that it’s been satisfying making little interactive comics. My newest one, World in Motion, is a little silly. It’s about the summer of 2010 in Ann Arbor, Michigan when I went to Encore Records and a younger, irony-poisoned me bought the 12″ for the New Order song World in Motion, which you can listen to on YouTube while playing. I also recommend eventually listening to the weirder B-Side as well, since the game is about that. For whatever reason a friend and I referenced this song a lot. We were big New Order fans but did not like this song, but were fascinated by how popular of a song it was in their catalog. As an American, a lot of this stuff did not have any context for me either. All I knew was that Lily Allen’s dad is in the music video for some reason and does the voice of a soccer player, who does the rap in the single, in the b-side.

The game is set in Encore Records, as I mentioned above, at their old location. My understanding is that the landlord increased the rent too much and they had to move a few blocks over. It’s still a fine record store but I liked the older and bigger location more, where I could spend even more time digging through records. Does this mean my game is an anti-landlord statement and my most political game yet? Not really, but I do think this made me dislike landlords even more. This all happened right before the pandemic too, so the move happened and then nothing filled that space for a year. So well played to that landlord. Another records store in downtown Ann Arbor, Underground Sounds, has also moved since then because of landlords. There’s probably a larger game or something in my about my evolving relationship with a city but realistically I’m more likely to make 20 or so tiny games about it instead.

I think I also like making incredibly specific games that are only for a handful of people. Not because I think it’s particularly clever or meant to be gatekeeping. I just like making things that I know a couple of friends will hopefully think are fun to play for a minute. Don’t have any clever insights there, I just like making stuff and hyper fixating on very specific things.