Telemaphoneroo

I’m still not back to regular here and then gone times yet, but I do have something cool to share. Telemaphoneroo is an online telephone game inspired by: 1. playing Gartic Phone with Biome folk and my colleagues at Abertay, and 2. my tendency to narrate what I’m doing when I’m cooking, adding in random extra syllables to the words (so fork becomes forkalork; spoon, spoonaloon).

It starts with everyone entering a two-word phrase, and for each turn you add a syllable to another player’s phrase, gradually building up elaborate nonsense phrases. And it’s all hooked up to the browser’s text-to-speech synthesizer, because part of the fun is listening to the computer trying to pronounce the weird accumulation of syllables you end up with.

I put together a short trailer with the help of some Biome folk to give you an idea of how the game usually plays out.

It’s also worth noting you can set up custom settings, so you can swap out the “two-phrase + extra syllables” rules for your own rules (you can see some example alternative rules on the about page).

You can play the game here

Once you click the Host Game button you’ll get a link that you can use to invite your friends. I’d recommend playing with 5+ players; if you can’t gather that many people you’ll probably want to increase the number of rounds in the Custom Settings so that the game doesn’t end too soon.

Further Reading

The Hurting Kind by Ada Limón:

There’s a tree over his grave now, and soon her grave too though she is tough and says, If I ever die, which is marvelous and maybe why she’s still alive.

A fascinating article about the Sea Wolves of the Heiltsuk Nation in Canada by Ziya Tong.

I found myself playing this track by AG Cook & Cecile Believe on repeat this month.

An article by Fraser MacDonald in the London Review of books tracing the faultlines between the increasing number of rewilding projects and Scotland’s incredibly problematic history of land ownership.

An excellent technical history of the net by Lorie Emerson, making a persuasive argument that the design of the building blocks the internet is built on were - from the beginning - shaped by political motivations that give the lie to the idea that the internet has ever been neutral.

I am late to the party, but this made me smile.

“Amateur ain’t a slur, it just means love.”

I enjoyed this ASCII walking sim by Max Cahill and Ben Porter.

Well, looks like it’s Autumn now. The trees at the end of my garden make the most amazing sound in the wind, and my lawn is accumulating their discarded leaves. See you soon 🍂🍃🍁