from the gaming-like-it’s-1929 dept
We’ve now arrived at the end of our series of posts about the winners of this year’s public domain game jam, Gaming Like It’s 1929! We’ve already covered the Best Remix, Best Deep Cut, Best Visuals, Best Adaptation, the honorable mentions, and the Best Digital Game. Today, we wrap things up with a look at the Best Analog Game: This Is Not A Game About A Pipe by Mac McAnally.
Probably the most iconic painting to enter the public domain this year is René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images, best known to many as the “this is not a pipe” painting. We knew it would almost certainly yield a few entries in the jam, and one of these stood out strongly. This Is Not A Game About A Pipe is the type of game we don’t see too often in these jams: a full-fledged original card game with novel mechanics that both honor the source material and make for a truly fun and endlessly replayable experience.
The basic idea is a standard trick-taking game. The rules are then filled with comedic surrealist energy, best exemplified by the four suits that exist in the game’s custom deck of cards: Pipes, Cards, Tricks, and Winning. Yes, “Cards” is a suit. So is “Tricks”. And yet the game itself has you using cards (only some of which are Cards) to win tricks. You might win a trick with a Trick card, or lose a trick with a Winning card, or the opposite, or… this is sounding confusing isn’t it? Well that’s kind of the point — and yet the rules themselves are not actually confusing at all, and it’s quite an easy game to learn! In addition to having its own bizarre suit, each card is also capable of either affirming or negating the suit of another card: declaring that it “is” or “is not” what it purports to be. Players must manipulate these mind-bending mechanics to find valid plays and attempt to win tricks.
Our judges were blown away by just how cool and original the game is, emerging from only three short pages of rules. It feels like the sort of game that could become a genuine classic. And it is so firmly rooted in the painting it’s based on, and the concepts and questions that the artist loved to explore, that you can’t help but feel like Magritte would thoroughly approve. For all that, it’s a worthy winner of this year’s Best Analog Game.
Congratulations to Mac McAnally for the win! You can get everything you need to play This Is Not A Game About A Pipe from its page on Itch. That’s a wrap on this year’s winner spotlights, but don’t forget to check out the many great entries that didn’t quite make the cut! And stay tuned for next year, when we’ll be back for Gaming Like It’s 1930.
Filed Under: game jam, gaming, gaming like it’s 1929
