Dramedy at the end of the world

More fruits of last year's writers' strike have ripened and fallen to the ground: screenwriter John August has just released the pilot to proposed webseries The Remnants, an apocalyptic sitcom about a tribe of survivors who raid abandoned houses in the suburbs of LA for Pringles and Wiis in the aftermath of a civilization-ending disaster of an indeterminate nature. The tone is hip and ironic, what August describes as "a cross between The Stand and The Office." The well-formed cast includes Justine Bateman, Michael Cassidy, Ben Falcone, Ernie Hudson, Amanda Walsh, and experimental web artist Ze Frank (whose burgeoning collection of flash oddities, artsy webcamery, and multimedia playthings is well worth the detour).

Following the model of Dr. Horrible, The Remnants was conceived and produced during the dark, idle days of the WGA strike and shopped around to advertisers and sponsors for possible development as a new webseries. Though it was at one time under consideration by NBC, its chances aren't looking so good. The upside is that the pilot is now being released to the public, so we at least get to see what we're missing. And maybe it'll somehow generate lots and lots of interest and develop into something in the future.

You can watch the embedded video below, or see it in HD on Vimeo.

Via io9.

Catch up on your sci-fi

Battlestar Galactica returns to tv tonight with the first episode of the long-awaited Season 4.5. If you haven't yet, you definitely need to refresh yourself first with Sci-Fi's highly entertaining recap, Catch the Frak Up!, with rapid-fire narration by Starbuck. Covers pretty much everything, from the twisty plot turns to the universe basics ("'Frak' is a swear word, papers don't have corners, and there's more than one god").

Part I



Part II




And while we're on recaps, if you've never gotten your head around that whole Star Wars thing, get the broad outlines with Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it).

My friend Amanda had never seen a whole Star Wars film. When I asked her if she wanted to watch the original trilogy she said that she would, but that she already knew what happens. So I took out my voice recorder and asked her to start from the top.

Via io9.

Choose your own vignette

Game designer Daniel Benmergui of Ludomancy has been experimenting with some very interesting stuff. In some brief posts on the subjects of Experimental Gameplay and Defying Genres, he sounds the call for a radical departure from run of the mill games and tried and true mechanics, and his growing collection of innovative, unclassifiable game prototypes in no way belies these intentions.

I wish I were the moon looks to be the inauguration of a new genre. (Perhaps an inevitable side effect of successfully defying genres is creating them.) The game consists of a small scene of movable characters and objects, and how you manipulate them determines the outcome of the story. This is done with a camera which can take snapshots of the elements in the scene and place them in a new position, a kind of copy-paste mechanic. If there is a goal at all, it is to replay the game different ways in order to discover all of the possible endings — but Daniel freely admits that even this is a "gimmick", and the real point is simply to explore the emotional experience of the game.

While the underlying mechanic is unusual, the style is equally singular, with its simple pixellated graphics, dreamy, poetic atmosphere, and quiet, understated storyline, which is inspired by Italo Calvino's story The Distance of the Moon.





Storyteller is the next game to build on this mechanic. The gamespace is a triptych of three moments in time that tell a miniature fairy tale, and the characters can be moved around in any of the three timeframes to instantly change the outcome of events.





Third is The Trials, which allows for the elements to be duplicated instead of simply moved. This game, like its predecessors, explores themes of conflict, longing, and contentment.





Finally, there is Night Raveler and the Heartbroken Uruguayans, which also showcases similar themes (love, loneliness, loss), but with a new mechanic: you play an alien (?), floating around the city strategically cutting the lines that join people and letting new ones form. Some may find true love, and some may be left in the cold. As with the other games, this one is about exploring the consequences of your choices.





And this is why I suggest that Daniel has created a new genre: Gregory Weir of Ludus Novus has created (I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors, an intriguing game modeled on the style of I wish I were the moon, with a storyline inspired by Lovecraft. You play a tentacled sea creature who is revealed for the first time to the humans of the world above, its attention attracted by the enchanting colors of balloons, and the choices you make determine the outcome of this tricky first contact scenario.

Gregory has been kind enough to share an illuminating postmortem of the game in place of his usual column on GameSetWatch.

Last night I dreamed I was an immense beast, floating in darkness. I knew nothing of the surface world until I fell in love with the majesty of colors.

Yogic physics

I am a great lover of serenity and silence, but there are times when I long to talk back to my yoga instructor.

Now, I hate all the New Agey trappings that the trendy modern brand of hipster yoga is cloaked in, so there are plenty of times during a typical practice where I must simply shut my eyes and tune the chatter out. For me yoga is no more than an effective and agreeable physical exercise, and I would gladly excise the vague mystical overtones and pseudotherapeutic insights that are usually served along with my sixty minutes of physical conditioning. Sometimes it gets to me.

Last week, as we were being goaded to assume a crazy pose where you tip your head back and lose your balance, the instructor embarked on a miniature sermon about fear and letting go: "It's okay if you lose your balance, it's okay if you fall. As children, we weren't afraid to fall. We did it all the time, we loved it. As we got older, something changed, and we became afraid of looking foolish, afraid of losing control. Falling became a shame, an embarrassment. Remember how it used to be when you were a child. Let yourself feel again what it's like not to have that fear."

I had a very strong urge to open my mouth and respond.

"WE HAD MUCH LOWER CENTERS OF GRAVITY THEN!"