02-16-2007, 05:21 AM
I am currently working feverishly on a new Civilization-Style Game, to be called "Origins - How We Became Human".  This epic work, with turns a 1000 years long and hexes 1000 miles across, will be my first "German-Style" game, co-produced with Sphinx Spieleverlag, and will everythin in both English and German.  It will have box, two mounted boards, plastic playing pieces, full size color cards, the works.  But pulling together everything for a relase in time for the great games fair in Essen Germany will be dicey.
The game will focus on those developments that distinguished our species from the other animals.  The first Era of the game features Archaic and Modern Humans, as well as Erectus, Neanderthals, and the "Hobbits". This part of the game is a bit like American Megafauna, with the players developing instincts and brain functions. In Era II, cognitive fluidity is achieved through the medium of language, allowing the creatures to form concepts using word-based memes.  In Era III, using a mechanism inspired by the notorious psychologist Julian Jaynes, players will gain consciousness, the ability to visualize themselves and others in a mindspace and narraticize out the solutions to problems.  Now the players have the problems of finding authority for their lives (religious and otherwise), the social groupings they will live their life for, and coping with new patterns of behavior, including altruism, deceit and treachery, suicide, as well as the nature of Art, Politics, Technology.  each card features a particular society and what they contributed to civilization.  An ambitious project!! A prototype will be unveiled Feb 17 2007 in the Orccon Convention.
The game will focus on those developments that distinguished our species from the other animals.  The first Era of the game features Archaic and Modern Humans, as well as Erectus, Neanderthals, and the "Hobbits". This part of the game is a bit like American Megafauna, with the players developing instincts and brain functions. In Era II, cognitive fluidity is achieved through the medium of language, allowing the creatures to form concepts using word-based memes.  In Era III, using a mechanism inspired by the notorious psychologist Julian Jaynes, players will gain consciousness, the ability to visualize themselves and others in a mindspace and narraticize out the solutions to problems.  Now the players have the problems of finding authority for their lives (religious and otherwise), the social groupings they will live their life for, and coping with new patterns of behavior, including altruism, deceit and treachery, suicide, as well as the nature of Art, Politics, Technology.  each card features a particular society and what they contributed to civilization.  An ambitious project!! A prototype will be unveiled Feb 17 2007 in the Orccon Convention.