The Guest Toothbrush

Beside the bathroom sink, precisely parallel with the edge, lay a plain blue toothbrush. She poked her head out into the attached bedroom. No clues for her there. Her hosts had said that no one else used this bathroom. Did they expect her to use this toothbrush? Without touching it, she examined the toothbrush. There was no wear on the handle that she could see, the brand name still standing out proud and sharp. Bending down close, she thought she saw the bristles splitting a bit at the ends. By manufacturer's design, or a sign of use?

She checked the trash can under the sink, but didn't find the plastic packaging of a toothbrush fresh from its wrapping. Had they opened it, then taken out the trash? Unknowable.

Would her hosts be insulted if she didn't use the toothbrush? Would they know? Maybe that's why it was so precisely placed. She bent close again, looking for a single hair laid on it to reveal that she'd touched it. Or maybe it was a test. If she used it, they'd be disgusted and never invite her back.

She brushed with the toothbrush she'd brought, thinking about how she overthinks these things.

War for Christmas

It started when some families started celebrating Early Christmas. It was a matter of convenience. The modern age created more complicated families, and those families would celebrate early, at whatever time fit all their complicated schedules. The most common Early Christmas was the weekend before the 25th. As the custom spread, retailers and advertisers pushed their Christmas blitzes earlier and earlier. More locally, communities pushed the date earlier and earlier in a form of competition. Children, excited and gloating over the bounties of their Early Christmasses, infected families with envy. Children who hadn't yet celebrated the commercial holiday cried to their parents, who planned an earlier Christmas for the next year.

Eventually, communities stabilized by mutual cease-fire. Many wound up holding Early Christmas in early November, but some places celebrated as early as July. Authorized Christmas dates appeared in neighborhood homeowner association agreements.

Of course, some communities declared that only certain dates were acceptable. December 25th was a popular choice in the Bible Belt. But the upheaval opened the door for some to declare that late September was Jesus's true birthday. Then believers began to insist that others celebrate on the "correct" date.

Thus began the First Christmas War.

Game Review: Instant Dungeon!

Instant Dungeon! is a game with a simple concept and a clean, polished execution. It drops you into a procedurally-generated dungeon populated with items, monsters, and treasure, and your job is to navigate the dungeon, use the items to avoid or kill the monsters, get the treasure, find the key to the next level, and get through the door. It's even simpler than it sounds: the dungeon halls are only wide enough for one, and one touch from a monster kills you, so you need to find ways to circumnavigate the creature or kill it. You carry one item at a time, use it with one key, and every item is single use. In the end, you have three functions: move (one of four directions), use item, and pause. Simple. Not necessarily easy.

As you play, the game scales up complexity. Dungeons become larger, more intricate mazes, with a greater number of monsters. The items scale up in complexity too, and require increasing tactical awareness to use well: the dagger kills the first monster it hits. The axe kills every monster in a straight line until it hits a wall. The fireball is like the axe, but fires in two directions. The shield protects you from one hit, but you have to use it deliberately. The helmet you can put on, and it will protect you without action. And so on.

Complexity doesn't always mean difficulty, and it wouldn't here except for one additional factor: the darkness. As you go deeper, the darkness becomes more oppressive, until you can't see any more than what's in nearby line-of-sight from your character. This ramps up the difficulty more than the size of the mazes or the monsters, because you become far more likely to turn a corner into an enemy, or to get boxed in by two monsters you can't see.

Speaking of complexity, I'm not sure the procedural generation adds much to the game. The levels are rather similar anyway. It feels rather like the gameplay/decision-making loop is too small for the fact that the level is different than it was last time--or even than the last level--to make much of a difference.

Every fifth level is a boss level, with a unique monster whose attack pattern you must figure out to get the treasure. The boss levels are authored and break up the routine of mazes and monsters.

Multiple game modes don't add much to the game. As simple as the game is, it's hard to see how they could. Instead of getting the most treasure, the other modes require you to kill a certain number of specific monsters, or to rescue people from the dungeon. This last is the only mode I've seen where you backtrack through dungeon levels you've already been through, and also the only time I've seen a bug in the game. (The third captive was displace to be off-map, so I could see the "Help" speech bubble but not reach the captive, making the game unwinnable.)

Instant Dungeon! has a nice collection of character sprites for you to choose from, of all genders and types, and it defaults to a random selection. The captives are likewise drawn from this pool of sprites, and not always any particular gender. I thought that was nice, from a feminist point of view.

Instant Dungeon! is a fun diversion. Simple gameplay executed very well, and good for an hour or two of play. Instant Dungeon! is available for $1.99 from steam, desura, and others.

The Last Employee

It was her first day of work, and she was already late. Her brother had forgotten to wake her, but excuses would get her nowhere. So she ran. The castle sprawled rather than loomed. She ran in one of the servants' entrances and threw on her black maid's dress and white apron, tying it as she went.

No one waited to scold her in the head maid's office. That's when she noticed the quiet. No one else had been at the changing room. The hallways were empty. The kitchen was still.

Following a sound, she walked out to the courtyard. Amid the lord's famous roses stood the castle's lord, its entire host of employees, and a beautiful stranger. She joined the crowd at one end, as far from her employer as she could.

"Until that time, you and yours shall be cursed," proclaimed the stranger. With that, the lord writhed, twisted, and became bestial. Rippling outward, a light washed over the servants, changing them as well.

The light flowed through the crowd like a wave, changing them as it went. It rushed toward her. Seeing her fate about to be written, she took in her breath and said,

"I quit."

To Shoot a Man in Reno

He whistled as he walked down the dark alley. When someone stepped out from behind a dumpster with a pistol, he acted surprised. "Gimme yer wallet," said the mugger.

He stroked his chin in thought. "Mmmmm, nope."

The mugger's posture changed. He couldn't be sure, but it looked like surprise. "Whatcha mean, nope?"

"I mean," he said, "I'm not in danger."

"Not in danger?" The mugger waved the gun. "Whyinell not?"

"We're in Reno," said the man.

"So?"

"Shooting someone in Reno? Like that Johnny Cash song? Way too cliché."

The mugger looked around, then at the other end of the alley. "Just... gimme the wallet."

"No one shoots anyone in Reno anymore," he continued. "Too embarrassing. Look, you don't want to be cliché, do you?"

"Not... really."

"So you're not going to shoot me, so my wallet is safe. Simple as that. Want to walk through the alley with me? I'm on my way to a party. Hey," he exclaimed, "you should come! Probably ditch the gun, though."

The gunshot echoed through the alley. He squeaked, and fell down.

"The line's 'shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.' Me, I need the money. Way less clichéd."

Game Review: Lyne

Many games claim to be simple to learn and difficult to master. Lyne achieves that elusive goal of elegance in design and applies it to the game entire. The game's art and music are simple: clean shapes, colors, and lines; simple tones and rhythms timed to your choices. All make the game stand out visually and musically. Taken together, they make the game beautiful and meditative. That feeling meshes perfectly with the gameplay. The goal is to draw an unbroken line between two endpoints of like color and shape, hitting all the similar markers in between without crossing any previously-drawn lines. Lyne escalates this simple premise by introducing multiple shapes, and then color-neutral waypoints that serve as intersections for lines that otherwise can't cross. Add in the requirement that each intersection must be used a specific number of times, no more and no less, and you have all the ingredients for a puzzle game of scalable complexity.

Lyne is pleasant to play as a break from an otherwise-busy day. It's easy to play for two minutes or twenty, and if you reach the limit of your ingenuity working on the puzzles that come with the game, Lyne also produces a set of new puzzles each day for your puzzling pleasure.

Lyne is available for $2.99 on Steam and can also be purchased for your phone, I guess.

Ilyich's Binding

"For your betrayal, you must keep us safe." The whispered words echoed in Ilyich's ears as the blackness receded. His bleary eyes blinked open, showing him the smooth, translucent deck of one of the great Arks. He pushed himself to his feet, standing against the dizziness. The great, smooth deck swept out before him, dotted with low structures grown of the same pale material. He could feel the gentle swell of the water holding him aloft.

He couldn't walk. Looking down, he saw the flexible material of the deck grown over his feet. Following it, he saw he had no covering but the elegant feathers of the keepers of the Arks. He was the ship.

People boarded him. They made their homes in the Ark's structures and below decks, and ate from the gardens that grew there. They tried to befriend their keeper, who would protect them on the waters. He would only mutter or yell, "I was a man."

On the day of departure, they asked where he would take them. "Nowhere," he answered. He flexed his new muscles, his deck and halls. He forced them out, and sailed away. "Better to go mad in solitude than serve you."