Remember When

A game about mazes

27apr2009: I designed the game Ambagibus almost ten years ago. It was sufficiently enjoyable that I gave copies to lots of people I know and even used it as a stocking stuffer one Christmas. I forget what I called it originally, but it was called The Philosopher's Maze for a while (too self indulgent), then Ambages Philosophorum (bleah), and later Ambages (too hard to pronounce). The current name is Latin for 'about mazes.'

I submitted it to a game company or two, but it was declined. Submitting games to publishers, waiting for their reply, sending follow up letters, and that whole rigamarole is too much like submitting philosophy papers to journals, following up with them, and the scholarly rigamarole - in short, too much like work I have to do as part of my day job. So the game spent several years sitting idle in the back of a drawer and on my hard drive.

This is a bit of a copout, perhaps, because it is not clear that this game is worth publishing. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the proof of the game is in the playing - but the proof of the publishable product is in the publishing. Regardless, I am skipping the whole pudding submission process and making the solitaire version of the game available. It (like many of my games) is available here as an electronic document under an open license.

Also NEW: I've changed the image in the upper left corner of this page. It started as a photo of me at a workshop in Pittsburgh, and I hammered on it some in Photoshop.