I enjoy the occasional New Year's Resolution, and this year I have a couple.
- No buying board games this year. Instead I will play the ones I already have. Last year I set myself a modest board game budget which kept things reasonable, but I already have many excellent games now, and I found myself more and more asking "would I rather play this new cool looking game than one of my favorite games I don't get to the table enough?"
So this year I will put some dedicated play time into my favorite 20 solo games:
It's a Wonderful World
Mage Knight Board Game
Voidfall
Cloudspire
Dorfromantik: The Board Game
Endeavor: Deep Sea
Worldbreakers: Advent of the Khanate
Jump Drive
Unstoppable
Lost Ruins of Arnak
The Castles of Burgundy
Nusfjord
Sleeping Gods
Terraforming Mars
Wondrous Creatures
Roll Player
Underwater Cities
Baseball Highlights: 2045
The Guild of Merchant Explorers
Mechs vs. Minions
Factory Funner
A Feast for Odin
Black Forest
Fang & Flame
Blackout: Hong Kong
Project L - Keep going with my stretching and calisthenics, reducing the amount/difficulty enough so that I can easily do three sets of each exercise each weekday. Last year I found myself procrastinating on calisthenics especially; as long as I reduce the barrier to getting started (as I did with jogging) it should be possible to keep it up this year.
- Come up with and write down one idea each day of the year. I thought I might try dividing the ideas into categories - puzzles, computer games, board games, stories, songs, apps, and activities. Each day of the week I'll do one of the categories to keep it varied.
Puzzle Idea #1
With that in mind, today's idea is in the field of puzzles. I've always been intrigued by the idea of fonts where the glyphs can be read as different letters depending on the direction you are reading them. In the past I've tried designing crosswords where all the clues are written as horizontal words, such that when you do vertical words you just turn the crossword sideways. I designed a blocky SVG font that had some letters that could be parsed sideways (o -> o, t -> t, l -> r, H -> I, e -> m/w, z -> n, c -> u, etc.) but the intersection rules made it difficult to actually design a "proper" crossword that worked.
So, what if I go simpler and use the font to do a "Strands" kind of puzzle instead? I could require that the letters at the bend are parseable as sideways letters. The puzzle would look odd for sure with letters in all kinds of directions. But it seems cool.