Key information
Jordan Magnuson, founder of TIGSource and author of Game Poems: Videogame Design as Lyric Practice, recently hosted a "Game Poem" jam. Co-organised with the National Film and Television School and featuring judges like Shuhei Yoshida, the event challenged developers to create short, subjective works that function as ritual spaces rather than traditional content delivery systems.
Submissions like Luis "Ludipe" Díaz Peralta’s Sometimes I Wonder About The Other Me exemplify this approach. The game uses a 2D platforming structure to explore themes of choice and identity, forcing players to control duplicate characters that eventually vanish. Unlike standard branching narratives, the game focuses on rhythmic, speculative re-enactments of alternative possibilities.
Other entries demonstrate varied mechanics. The Sunfarer team’s The Other Line uses frustrating queue-based movement to mirror the act of reading verse, while Chris Barrett’s Faulty Mirror employs keyboard-controlled hands and auditory illusions to evoke feelings of alienation. Misery Tourism’s Still Life utilizes cellular automata to grow and distort faces, creating a "stress toy" that explores themes of composition and decomposition.
These projects highlight a productive antagonism between poetry and gaming. By rejecting market conventions like "polish" or linear narrative, these works treat the game poem as a self-sabotaging, experimental medium that continuously questions the relationship between the self and the other.
