Hello hello! It's the end of the month, or beginning of a month, and I did another game jam, this time Caltrop Jam 2! First time using Caltrop Core, or I guess, any existing system, so that was a fun new experience! 

Lights Out is a game about partying through the end of the world and hitting those last-minute goals before the lights go out for the final time. I used Caltrop Core as a token system. Having played a lot of token based games lately (shout out to my new favorite Our Haunt by Rae Nedjadi) and tokens felt right in this instance too. I leaned into a faction experience with game, the party you choose to attend being your faction and providing you with virtues and vices you use to move tokens around. But even though it has this faction emphasis, it's still a game about relationships as your faction moves really lean into how your interact with the people around you. 

If you check it out, you might notice the ending is quite open-ended. The parties both have goals and beliefs about what happens after the end of the world, but there's no end-game mechanic to establish who's right. This was, obviously, by design. The point of the game, to me, is hardly  about what comes after and who is right. It's all about that build up to the end. I always picture the ending as the count down on New Years Eve, but the movie ends just as you hit midnight. 

Of course, when it's in your hands, maybe you'll play it differently, and that is always the magic of game design. What the game becomes when others play it. So I hope you enjoy this glitzy little tragedy. And if you play it, let me know about it! How did you answer the last question? What did you choose to do with your last few hours?

That's all for me! I'm most likely not joining a game jam this month (unless I see one I really really like); however, I am working on something fun for May.  

What do you hope I'll put out next? Pirates? Werewolves? The fabled Truckstop Apocalypse? Feel free to speculate in the comments and thanks for the support!