At this year’s IndieCade, we had six hours of showtime – three hours on Friday afternoon, and three hours on Saturday morning.  We fit six games into those times, which means that we were able to serve about 20 people with a daily dose of serious fun.

Pretty much everyone enjoyed the game (as you can see from the photos below). Most of them were impressed by the fact that we’d created an honestly fun serious/educational game. Which is great!

 

We spent most of the rest of the time at IndieCade exploring the games on display. Not that there weren’t serious things going on with the professional side of the event, but after all the work that went into our IndieCade show, and the rather intense networking at IndieXchange (the pre-festival developer day), we felt like we deserved some fun.

A quick shout-out to the most fun and memorable games that we played:

(acknowledging that we only had time to play about 10% of the games on show)

• Joggernauts: A colorful, creative, and fun party/platform game.
• Cantankerous Cats: A quick-but-intense card game with a rather silly theme.
• Operator: Dr. Strangelove meets Portal.
• In Tune: A surprisingly thought-provoking game about intimacy and consent. I’d be curious to play more … but only if it were in a place not in the public eye.
• Maze of Heart: A killer Kinect app. I think not yet available for general purchase / play 🙁
• Typoman: A game with a great premise. Not sure if the fun would hold up for an entire playthrough, but great fun for a game tasting.
• Fire and Flora: (Yes, a little self-serving, but I think we’ve got some right to be proud 🙂

And then a special thanks to Remy, and the folks of Classroom Aquatic, for featuring Fire and Flora in their in-game quiz. It was super-cool to have people come up and say, “Hey! We saw you in Classroom Aquatic!”

What’s next for Fire and Flora? As of this moment, the game is about 80% finished. It needs a couple more iterations to fix the last few balance issues. It also needs a visual redesign. Much as we’d like to do that, and as much potential as there is in this game, we haven’t yet found a good market for it. And we’ve really only got the peoplepower to work on one game at a time. This means that we’re going to continue focusing on The Puzzle of Life.

The Puzzle is aimed more at an elementary-aged audience, which turns out to be a much larger market. The Puzzle also has much more potential for expansions, modding, and community-building.

So, stay tuned! We’re continuing to playtest the Puzzle in classrooms around Southern California (so far, to great success). And we’re still aiming for a Puzzle Kickstarter in Spring or Summer of ’16. So, there’s lots of good new stuff, coming up just about every day.

Lastly, if you’re a fan of serious games, please take a look at our Patreon campaign, and share it with your friends. By becoming a Patron, you can join our quest, and help to build a better world through play.

 

We’ve had several cool happenings over the last month. Most importantly, Fire and Flora has been chosen as an Official Selection for IndieCade 2015!

This means that Fire and Flora was hand-selected from a pool of over 1200 games to be featured as an official part of the Table Games portion of the festival. We’ll have two time slots of 2-3 hours each where we’ll be sharing Fire and Flora with any/all comers – teaching the game, playing the game, talking about serious games, and handing out prizes (yes, there will be prizes for our players :).

This is a big deal for several reasons. First off, it’s a big honor. Secondly, it means we’ll get serious face time with both publishers and with the public, helping us to improve our visibility. Most importantly, it gives us an opportunity to advance our mission – to promote the understanding and appreciation of science, nature, and life – by sharing Fire and Flora with the world!

In other news, we’ve scheduled two more playdates. In November, we’ll be bringing the Puzzle of Life to two classrooms at Toluca Lake Elementary in North Hollywood.

 

Then, later in the month, we’ll share the Puzzle with the students of the Sycamore School in Malibu. This is also a big deal, as the Sycamore students will be the first group to playtest out our extended Puzzle-based outreach program. In five hours over five days these students will: play with the Puzzle; learn about ecological systems and systems thinking; research plants, animals, and ecosystems; and then design new Puzzle pieces and new Puzzle sets based on their research.

 

 

 

 

The first month of our Patreon campaign has rolled to a close – and so far, we’re doing good.

We promised several sorts of rewards to our Patrons, depending on the level of support. Folks who contribute at least $10 per month will receive a small tangible something in the mail. This month, our tactile reward consists of a set of temporary tattoos:

 

In our kid-oriented programs, these have been a big hit, and while all of our Patrons are adults, I’m confident that they’re the sort of adults that like to play, so I think they’ll enjoy these as well.

 

With this first month down, I’m feeling pretty good. In our modern information age, where attention is a scarce resource, having the support of kind and thoughtful people (as opposed to paid likes on Facebook or Twitter) is a big deal. This means that, while I very much value the financial support of our Patrons, I value the moral support even more. Thanks!

 

We’ve got a few more photos from our recent outreach work. These are from Carpinteria State Beach, where we shared The Puzzle of Life with some young folks in the Junior Ranger program:

You can also find these photos on Facebook Facebook photo album from Carpinteria State Beach.

Over the past three years, we’ve been highly successful with kids, parents, players, schools, fun, learning, and all the friendly sorts of good stuff that we’ve been working towards. We’ve been less successful with our business model, and so – this week – we’re launching an new kind of crowdfunding campaign using Patreon.

Patreon is essentially a subscription-based form of crowdfunding, where patrons offer support to organizations and projects by donating some number of dollars per month.

We looked at a number of crowdfunding options, and Patreon seemed like the best fit to our style of work. While we aim for a big product release every year or two, most of our work is an ongoing process with a very unpredictable schedule. Some months we focus on teaching and outreach, while in other months, we focus on development. Patreon is a good fit to this style of work as it allows us to be flexible – to adapt to the needs of teachers, schools, and development timetables.

Please support us on Patreon, and then share this link with your friends: https://www.patreon.com/mindfulmammoth.

By becoming a patron and supporting us with a monthly contribution, you can join our quest and help to create a better world through play.

Over the last two weeks, we (the Chief Fun Officer and I) brought the Puzzle of Life to five very different groups of kids in two very different venues:

• One group of elementary-aged kids in the “Life in the Cosmos” Camp at CMSC
• One group of middle-school kids in the “Life in the Cosmos” Camp at CMSC (photos here)
• One group of preschool children (and their parents), at the August edition of the Young Explorers Program at CMSC
• Two sets of Junior Rangers at Carpenteria State Beach (one last Thu, and one last Fri).

Overall, it went great, which I find very exciting. In creating the Puzzle, one of my primary goals was to create something flexible, so that different people/groups could engage with it in whatever way was comfortable/fun/appropriate for them. After these past two weeks, I feel confident that we’ve achieved that goal.

Since I am really excited about all of these events, I was really looking forward to sharing some photos, and I thought we’d worked out all the necessary permissions. Unfortunately, that turned out to be more complex than expected. At the moment, we’ve only got one set of photos, and we can only reference them via weblink (here). Over the next couple weeks, we may get permission to share more of those photos, or we might not. We’ll see.

Still, the photos that we do have are great, as they really showcase the flexibility of the Puzzle. Looking closely, you can see that each group of middle-school kids took the Puzzle in a different direction: ocean ecology, friendly heckling (note the ‘those guys’ tile being eaten by the Kraken), and Halo.

We’re now looking to schedule fall events, so if you know of anyone in SoCal who would be interested doing some playful learning, please let us know directly, or share our public address: [email protected].

 

 

Last week, I flew out to Pittsburgh for the 2015 Serious Play Conference. The airplanes were frustrating – with lots of delays – but the conference was great. There were somewhere around 150-200 people, all with unusual and interesting ideas – myself included.

I feel honored to have had the chance to be one of the speakers, and to be able to share my work with my colleagues in education and game design. In the past, I’d shared my work at science-type conferences, but this is the first time I’ve had that opportunity at a game/play conference.

A few of the many interesting ideas on show:

• A prototype VR system to help astronauts deal with the monotony of long-haul space travel;
• Happy Atoms – chemistry toys that use magnets-and-springs to model real chemistry in a tactile manner.
• A whole bunch of amazing games from the American Museum of Natural History.
• A sobering but useful outline of the way that public schools make purchasing decisions about educational materials – from Mitch Weisburg.

… and many others. The serious play community is pretty diffuse, spread more-or-less randomly across the country, and so the conference was a rare and great opportunity to talk shop with thoughtful and like-minded people.

Next on the list for Mindful Mammoth: Finishing up the materials for our soon-to-be-launched Patreon campaign, and organizing ourselves for our upcoming events: meeting the Young Explorers at the Columbia Memorial Space Center, and playing with the Junior Rangers of Carpenteria State Beach.

 

This July and August, I’ll be making several visits out to the Columbia Memorial Space Center, where I’ll be doing some Puzzle-based outreach programs.

First up, at the end of July, I’ll join the Earth science day at their “Life in the Cosmos” summer day-camp. Then, a couple days later, I’ll run the August edition of their Young Explorer’s Academy. If you have preschoolers (3-6), and you’re interested in giving them some early exposure to fun science-oriented activities, you should give this program a good look.

In other news:

• Construction continues on the Puzzle of Life website.
• There are several new faces on the Mindful Mammoth team page. Two of those are long-time partners, and long overdue for official recognition. The newest member of the team is Andrea Cao, who is helping us to construct a Patreon pitch.
• We are, indeed, working on a Patreon pitch, with the goal of raising funds to help support our ongoing work in both outreach and game design. We plan to officially launch the Patreon campaign later this month.

As always, stay tuned for more good news. And if you run into anyone looking for interesting environmental science outreach programs, tell them to give us a holler through email: inquiries AT mindfulmammoth.com. We’re happy to help out wherever we can.

 

Bling is an important ingredient in games, fun, and learning. Knowing this, I called up Marcus Bieth of Mark III Graphic Design, and asked for his help in creating a title design for the Puzzle. I needed something colorful, friendly, and just a little bit mysterious. Together, we came up with this:

 

I like it. It’s got a good variety of critters, some of whom are a bit shy. That shyness was a key part of the design concept, because I want to get across the idea that there is depth to nature – that if you give things time, and follow up first looks with second looks, you will be rewarded with sights of hidden critters and knowledge of hidden ideas.

Using this design as a centerpiece, my next task is to build a website. I’ve staked a claim to ‘puzzleoflifegame.com’. The URL is a bit long, but all the shorter versions were already claimed by cybersquatters. Both ‘pol.com’ and ‘puzzleoflife.com’ were up for sale, but the asking price was $1000+.

Puzzle Website ToDo’s:

• Sooner:
  • Puzzle Overview
  • Puzzle Development Timeline
  • Links to draft versions of the Player’s Guide and the Yellowstone Storybook
  • Draft educational materials for teachers
• Later:
  • Better educational materials: lesson plans, ecosystem ideas, and storytelling suggestions.
• Wishlist:
  • Tileopedia, having a thoughtful entry for each tile in the basic set.
  • Quality, moderated forums for sharing of player-developed stuffs: ideas, artwork, new/custom tiles, and Puzzle-based stories (akin to the one I’ve told in the Yellowstone Storybook).

Stay tuned – the Puzzle website is coming …

 

 

The Puzzle of Life is now on its way to IndieCade. This is the second of my two submissions for this year. Once again, goodbye friend, and good luck!