Just added Z-Ward and Z-Ward-X to the online store, as well as the skully patch (available for a limited time only!).

Happy New Year and see you at PAX-EAST April (and possibly at MAGfest in January).

- Jared

Z-WARD and Z-WARD-X have arrived safe and sound at Skull Mountain. They’re available for order now on the MMT site and *all* orders will start shipping when I return from Maine on Monday.

I have the shirts and other goodies (!) but I’m still awaiting the buttons and patches. Here’s how I’ll do the shipping: the $10-$20 orders will go out first (because I have all the materials here) followed by the $25+ orders in January. Cool?

Print copies of Z-WARD-X (the expansion) may be available in print once the kickstarter orders are sent out. Thanks for your support!

Wired.com did an excellent piece on humans pretending to be video games and Action Castle got a mention!

I’m offering a Skully t-shirt to all $50+ pledge backers once I reach my new stretch goal of $5000.

Check it out here!

Help Kickstart Z-Ward here.

I’m kinda floored. Less than a day into the kickstarter for Z-Ward and I’ve raised 50% of my goal. I’m already thinking of writing another Parsely game during the winter months. Maybe a micro-green for the holiday season? Anyway, thanks to everyone for their support!

If you’re new to the Parsely games series from Memento Mori Theatricks, here’s a great way to get started! I’m offering two of the most popular games together for $10 and throwing in a little extra for your treat bag—the high school-themed Blackboard Jungle. Parsely games are perfect for parties, classrooms and even haunted hayrides. Spooky Manor takes the players inside a mysterious mansion and offers several different endings. Pumpkin Town is a kid-friendly exploration game set in a land of witches, ghosts and giant squids. Order now to get them in time for Halloween!

Dirty Secrets of Game Design – SEM1120296
Learn five dirty secrets that the game industry doesn’t want you to know. Use them to make your games better. Designers Luke and Jared share their jaded, sometimes humorous view, of the world of game design. Jared will do this entire seminar in a character voice!
Thu 4pm – 1 Hr – Marriott Indiana C

Game Design Is Mind Control – SEM1120297
Games compel people to make irrational decisions that they would not otherwise undertake. Come and watch Luke and Jared make fools of themselves as they try to prove this point. We promise; we will control your minds!
Fri 2pm – 1 Hr – Marriott Indiana B

Action Castle – SEM1120298
Relive the days of yore when the command line was king! GO WEST and LIGHT LAMP in a live-action text adventure with a few hundred of your closest friends.
Fri 3pm – 1 Hr – Marriott Indiana E

InSpectres The Movie: Behind the Scenes – FLM1127763
We will be talking about the process of making InSpectres and showing a short sneak peak from the film. Yes, it’s real.
Fri 6pm – 1 Hr – Westin Capitol III

Return to Action Castle – SEM1120299
Return to a land of action, a land of castles, RETURN TO…ACTION CASTLE! Many years have passed since a new king was crowned…find out what happens next in this massively multiplayer live action text adventure game!
Sat 2PM – 1 Hr – Marriott Indiana E

Hey Jared,

A friend of mine introduced me to your Parsely Adventures last summer and suggested I write you about my experiences…

We teach at iD Tech Camps, a nationwide computer camp, our site at Princeton University. We teach classes including video game creation/modding, web design, video editing, and programming to campers 7-17 years old. They LOVE your Parsely adventures. Starting with the first two last year, they eagerly awaited the release of Spooky Manor and Space Station late in the summer. As you have no doubt have learned, the educational value and social skills impact your games have are incredible. Going beyond “team work” and “problem solving”, the ability to parallel the these games with computer skills fits our camp perfectly. Programming classes at our camp are the most popular, with nearly a third of our 112 students a week working in C++, Java, or iPhone App development. After running a game, I quiz them, which works especially well for the programming students. It gets them thinking like a computer and they understand how they have to be very specific when creating their programs to get their desired results. In the beginning students are giving commands that are paragraphs and expecting them all to work, only to be met with the response, “I’m sorry, but I do not know how to sneak past the troll and if the troll sees me then hook him with the fishing pole and then run into Action Castle.” Soon enough they get the drill and can “LIGHT LAMP” with the best of them. We’ve had a number of students these past two summers create their own text adventures, one even memorized Jungle Adventure and created it in Java. It has even opened their eyes to Zork and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Outside of camp, I teach Kindergarten and run a before and after school program for K-5 outside of Philadelphia. After last summer, I still had the Parsely bug and I needed more people to run them with. I knew 5 and 6 year-old kids would be a lot different to play with than teenagers, but the challenge intrigued me. So I tried it out. THEY LOVE THEM. Holy crap they love them. I took my class of 13, sat them down, gave them a toy dinosaur to pass around, and told them they were in a small cottage. With children of this age, I’m not stressing programming points and proper wording, but focus on problem solving, creative thinking, and map recognition/exploration. I draw the map on the chalkboard as they play and teach them north, south, east, and west. We got through Spooky Manor, but Space Station is still pretty difficult even for teens.

What was funny to me was months after playing these games we had a social studies lesson on maps. Their worksheets included following signs and directions and creating their own icons to designate their favorite landmarks. They beasted these papers, since they had already mastered these concepts through playing your games. This confirmed they were learning skills that were not just important to me, but to our pre-established curriculum. When running the games with my older students (up to 5th graders), I omitted the visual map, and ran the game like usual.  They got so into it they started writing their own adventures that we ran for our after school program. Parents are specifically pleased to see their children spend time outside of class on creative writing and puzzle making. They’re understanding core concepts well; for instance I tell them to never leave the player out of options: they are either able to survive to the end or they die, never left stuck. The part in Jungle Adventure with the monkey demonstrates to them well how there is always a solution available to get the skull back.  The 10 year-olds typically help out the 5 year-olds and it’s really fun to watch them figure out the puzzles. I don’t know why, but everyone tries to unlock the tower door with the fishing pole.

Anyway, I thought you’d get a kick out of the experience I’ve had. I’m having another friend run your latest two adventures for my buddy and me (since we’re just as excited to play the games as run them ourselves) and my students at school are looking forward to playing them in the fall.

Thanks for the amazing games, the awesome times, and educational opportunities you’ve given me, my friends, and my students.

-Ryan K.

P.S.- I just remembered, we get a variety of students at camp, some falling somewhere on the autism spectrum. We played Flaming Goat a few weeks ago. An autistic student was the first in the group to encounter the goat, and without hesitation, poured the sprite on it, as if it were a normal command. The game also got him interacting more with other campers than I’ve seen him do in previous sessions. It was really crazy, funny, and awesome.

Heading off to Hartford tomorrow with Luke to attend Connecticon, an anime con we’ve attended for the past few years. We’ll be doing panels with the Front Row Crew guys Rym and Scott for Geek Nights, and I’ll throw down with some Parsely.

Actual People, Actual Play Episode 47