Appendix B: Inspirations (that are games)

updated: 2025-03-23.

For personal reference, with occasional annotations. (The reminders of acronyms are for my benefit!)

Gamebooks

  • David Fickling and Perry Hinton, illus. Peter Andrew Jones. Starflight Zero. Puzzle book.
  • Steve Jackson. Creature of Havoc. Fighting Fantasy. Clever use of randomness and tightly constrained branching/merging structure to railroad narrative in service of world/character/story (complimentary).
  • Steve Jackson, illus. John Blanche. Steve Jackson’s Sorcery!: The Shamutanti Hills; Kharé—Cityport of Traps; The Seven Serpents; The Crown of Kings. Fighting Fantasy.
  • Steve Jackson, illus. Steven Lavis. The Tasks of Tantalon. Puzzle book.

Game Design and Meta

  • Dungeon Year Design Journal (Pandion Games).
  • Power Kill by John Tynes. Meta-TTRPG and manifesto critiquing the morality of typical “dungeon hack” TTRPGs of the era and beyond.
  • Play Dirty by John Wick. The game designer, not the movie character!

Interactive Fiction (IF) and Text Adventures

  • PataNoir [IFDB] by Simon Christiansen. Inform. Unusual use of literalized metaphor as magical realism in parser IF mechanics.
  • Slouching Towards Bedlam [IFDB] by Dan Ravipinto and Star Foster. Inform. Steampunk meets metanarrative.

Keepsake Games

  • Shing Yin Khor. The Bird Oracle. Solo game. Cards and personal oracle development meet multilevel marketing scheme and agony aunts.

Tabletop Games: Board Games

  • The Crew. Logic and deduction.
  • Pandemic Legacy. Legacy cooperative game.
  • Starfighter (Yskari Games, designed by Stéphane Boudin—look, this is a hard-to-search game name!). Starship battles and formations.
  • Turing Machine. Logic and deduction.

Tabletop Games: Card Games (non-CCG)

  • Dungeon Solitaire. Solo card-based roguelike. Tomb of Four Kings (rules available for free) runs off a standard poker deck; Labyrinth of Souls runs off a standard Tarot deck.
  • Fluxx. Mutable rules.
  • Galdor’s Grip. Fascinating “in your hand” one-player card game.
  • Isaludo. A collection of ten solitaire games played with a standard poker deck. I especially love Loot the Loop.
  • Poker. 🙂
  • Regicide. Can be played with a regular poker deck.
  • Space Hulk Death Angel. Elegant implementation of facing and small-unit tactics. Unusually, scales gracefully from 1 to 4 players.
  • Star Realms. Deckbuilder. Abstract gameplay given “sci-fi” flavor from card names and art. Also beautifully implemented as a mobile game.
  • Tactical Deck. “A solo RPG strategy game” with spy thriller vibes; runs off a standard poker deck.
  • Yomi. Fighting card game; also has a videogame implementation.

Tabletop Games: Collectible Card Games (CCGs)

  • Legend of the Five Rings CCG (Alderac Entertainment Group).
  • Magic: the Gathering. I don’t think this needs further introduction!

Tabletop Games: Miniatures and War Games

  • BattleTech.
  • Warhammer 40,000.

Tabletop Games: Roleplaying Games (TTRPGs)

  • Amber Diceless Role-Playing by Eric Wujcik. Point-based TTRPG with an auction system. Canon characters appears in wildly different variants for the GM’s convenience, tying to the “one true world and many reflections” conceit of the canon setting (Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber).
  • Bullets and Bourbon: Reloaded by Sean “Mac” McClellan. “Wild West”-themed TTRPG with a poker-based resolution system.
  • Dog Eat Dog by Liam Liwanag Burke. Streamlined mechanics exploring the dynamics of imperialism and colonialism. I’ve never played this and am not sure I want to; the design looks brilliant but necessarily very depressing.
  • The Epic of Dreams: Basilisk Edition. Possibly one of the only TTRPGs I’ve seen leveraging modulo arithmetic for its “dice roll” substitute.
  • i’m sorry did you say street magic by Caro Asercion. GM-less collaborative TTRPG around worldbuilding a city.
  • Legend of the Five Rings d10 (Alderac Entertainment Group), especially Bearers of Jade: The Second Book of the Shadowlands by Chris Hepler and Jennifer Brandes; The Way of the Crab by Rob Vaux.
  • Ten Candles. Horror TTRPG with a foregone conclusion; intriguing and unusual use of game ritual to reinforce atmosphere and themes.

Tabletop Games: Solo Journaling Games

  • Colostle. Solo TTRPG. Combat runs off a standard poker deck.
  • The Jester King’s Dance (Pandion Games). “A solo mystery journaling game of a dark forgotten soul.” Deliciously upsetting; for mature players/readers.
  • Rewwixta (English language edition): “a solo story generation TTRPG where you recount tales of revolt, rebellion, and uprising against colonial powers. It is based on brilli, a Maltese folk game.”
  • The Thaw by Jeeyon Shim (in Hibernation Games, ed. Lucian Kahn). Thematic use of ice cubes as “timers.”
  • Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings.
  • Thrice-Damned and Where Gods Won’t Tread by Richard August. Solo RPG with Elric of Melniboné vibes (among other listed influences).
  • Two Faces by Steve Dee. “A solo RPG of horrific duality.”
  • Wreck This Deck by Becky Annison. “A solo journaling game of demon summoning and deck crafting.”

Videogames: Autobattlers

  • Mechabellum. Current addiction. Has the odd distinction of being one of two games in 30+ years where hobby reading of West Point military strategy/tactics/history textbooks is useful. (This undoubtedly would apply to a lot of RTS games, e.g. the Total War series, if I had the reflexes and non-wrecked-wrists to play games with any twitch component!)
  • Shadowveil: Legend of the Five Rings. Demo based on the Legend of the Five Rings IP.

Videogames: Card Games

  • Balatro. Poker-based roguelike. Does not pretend to have a “story” and gets right down to business with the gameplay, which I like.
  • Fights in Tight Spaces. Card-based roguelike incorporating small-scale tactical placement and combat on a square grid. Minimalist, elegant “story” setting via visual style and brief cutscenes with snarky humor to create “secret agent” flavor.
  • Knights in Tight Spaces. As per Fights in Tight Spaces (above), except fantasy flavored and with party members.
  • Regency Solitaire and Regency Solitaire 2. Solitaire with powers and an adorable railroaded (descriptive, not pejorative) Regency romance storyline.
  • Slay the Spire.

Videogames: Real-Time Strategy (RTSes)

  • DEFCON (Introversion Software, 2006).

Videogames: Roguelikes

  • Balatro. (See Videogames: Card Games).
  • Caves of Qud.
  • Hades. Excellent voice acting, character design/visuals, writing, and music, plus leveraging the mechanical “you will die over and over” in a way that reinforces the game’s milieu and themes.
  • Pawnbarian. Terrific, loosely chess-puzzle-themed lite roguelike. One of my new favorites for casual gaming.

Videogames: Roleplaying Games (CRPGs)

  • Fallen London (formerly Echo Bazaar). Browser-based narrative CRPG with immersive atmosphere and unusual worldbuilding via writing and visuals. TTPRG adaptation by Magpie Games forthcoming.
  • Planescape: Torment. Extensive CRPG narrative based on the AD&D 2nd ed. campaign setting Planescape.

Videogames: Visual Novels

  • Doki Doki LIterature Club. Metanarrative horror.
  • Slay the Princess. Metanarrative horror. (Hmm…)
  • Starfighter: Eclipse. Based on Hamletmachine’s (NSFW!) webcomic Starfighter. M/m erotica/romance and military space opera.