Poesysteme
Poesysteme is a game I developed as a student project. It is an attempt to mix poetry with Darwinian evolution, and to illustrate the changing lives of words and languages.
The player is asked to add words into the game world, where they will live under natural rather than linguistic rules (reproduction, nourishment and predation). Once added, a word can no longer be controlled directly by the player; he can only modify the environment where this word evolves.
At any time, the player can take a “snapshot” of his game world, in the form of a poem composed of all the words that live there; some he has added himself but many new, unknown words birthed during play.
Upon reading the poem (out loud, preferably) these new words are given a sound and a meaning by the player/reader, who will, maybe, decide to use them in everyday speech…
You can download the game here. Keep in mind that since it was developed on XNA 3.0, you’ll need to have all it’s dependencies installed.
You’ll find that every generated poem is automatically saved in the folder you installed the game. Feel free to spread them around and use them as you see fit.
[...] often run out of words to describe what I want to talk about. My approach in these cases is to just make up a new word. 6×4 picture [...]