Blog Archives
Gooey-Free Classification
Two years might not seem like enough of an interval to warrant a second edition, but Connor Wake’s Out of Sorts is not your average board game. Actually, it’s become something of a counterpoint for me. While Wilmot’s Warehouse has become the proof of concept for what a modern memory game can accomplish, to such a degree that I have played it something like fifty times, Out of Sorts is that but bizarre, that but frightening, that but even more unwilling to guide its players by the hand. Because it is weird, my appreciation is even more boundless.
How weird is it? Here’s the premise: You’ve been abducted by an alien and put to work categorizing their spacefaring library. Presumably the delay of lightspeed means they’ve only recently learned of Melvil Dewey’s book classification system. “There are less racist alternatives!” one might protest. Yes. We have more pressing problems at the moment, but too true. Unfortunately, the alien doesn’t know about those Dewey-free alternatives. All it knows is that humans are good at sorting books. And it owns a lot of books.
Afterlives
Sometimes I think about the afterlife. Not the actual afterlife. I’m suspicious about the probability of any such thing. But the afterlife as it appears across faiths and cultures, as reflections of our lived values and fears.
Take Club Spooky and That’s the Spirit!, the forthcoming duo by Connor Wake, whose Out of Sorts was one of last year’s unanticipated (and overlooked) hits. These small-box titles present contrasting soteriological outcomes for our disembodied souls, one an endless celebration and the other an endless process of self-doubt. To my Manichaean mind, one of these afterlives must be paradise and the other purgatory. The only problem is that I can’t tell which is which.
The Gooey Decimal System
Surprising absolutely nobody, this inveterate library-hopper actually knows and utilizes the Dewey Decimal System. Unfortunately for everybody else in the human race, especially those with a far more vibrant social life than myself, the existence of Melvil Dewey’s sorting method is the one thing our galaxy’s extraterrestrials have learned about us. Now a gang of disparate humans has been abducted to sort an alien library. Eep.
2024 has been an excellent year for memory games, if only thanks to the stupendous Wilmot’s Warehouse. Connor Wake’s Out of Sorts, which like Marceline Leiman’s High Tide will be available at next month’s Indie Games Market at PAX Unplugged, is proof that the genre still has a few unswept corners to explore.
SPACE-BIFF! 