The fascinating obscurity of Edward Page Mitchell

I recently reread H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine (which, upon rereading is an amazingly cozy work) and decided to look up if it really was the first time machine story. (I knew it wasn’t the first time travel story)

I was vaguely aware that the Spanish writer Enrique Gaspar had written about time machines before Wells but I learned that American journalist Edward Page Mitchell is considered the first with ‘The Clock That Went Backwards’ in 1881.

And that was an interesting rabbit hole to go down.

Edward Page Mitchell (1852 - 1926) was a journalist who also wrote science fiction (and apparently horror and fantasy) He wrote about using science to make someone invisible and time machines before Wells did. He also wrote about faster-than-light travel.

And, from what I can tell, he was fascinatingly _not_ influential.

Almost all of his science fiction was published in the New York newspaper the Sun and anonymously at that. It would be around ninety years before it would be republished. It is not unreasonable to assume that Gaspar or Wells would have never read it.

In fact, it’s amazing that he was rediscovered at all.

After finding this out, I went and read ‘The Clock That Went Backwards’

First of all, I think calling the titular clock a time machine is a stretch. While there are discussions about science and how the 16th century clock maker knew secrets that later generations hadn’t figured out yet, there’s never any science explanation. It’s basically magic as far as the narrative is concerned.

Second, the story _does_ deal with paradox. When the narrator and his cousin go back in time, his cousin plays a key role in Dutch history and stays to become his own great, great , great, etc grand uncle. And it might be the earliest (certainly one of the earliest) examples of that. Man, he beat Heinlein’s ‘By His Bootstraps’ by over fifty years!

Third, it is very readable. I was prepared for purple prose but even the parts where the story is lecturing us (and one of the characters is a college professor so lectures fit in) are clear. Now, Wikipedia says that the story was written as a story for boys. It is more of an adventure story. Both of those elements could explain the more plain writing style. But I’ve read my share of pulp fiction and Mitchell does better than a lot of it. And I hate the argument that true art has to be confusing and difficult.

I don’t think you can argue that Mitchell was a secret major influence on science fiction. People would have needed access to his work for that to have been the case. But I do think you can argue that he should have been. If ‘The Clock That Went Backward’ is any example, he would have been huge if people could have read his work.

And, having had one good experience, I do want to read more of his work. It’s not a question of his place in history. It’s the quality of his writing.

The timer turns Magic Rabbit into a mad tea party

I first came across Magic Rabbit because it was one of the many games that was offered as a free Print and Play during the Covid lockdown. (I don’t think they are still available, sorry) I downloaded the files, looked over the rules and wasn’t sure if I was interested.

Well, the Covid lockdown pushed me deeper into solitaire and solitaire-friendly games. In the process, I expanded my ideas about gaming. When I found my old laminated sheets of Magic Rabbit tiles, I now asked myself why hadn’t I already tried it?

Magic Rabbit is a real time, cooperative game. There a nine numbered hat tiles, nine numbered rabbit tiles, and five pigeon cards. Oh, a magician tile but that’s just to orient the line. You’re also going to need a timer. 

Shuffle the rabbit tiles and lay them out face down in a line. Then shuffle the hats and lay them down face up on the rabbit tiles. Your mission, and if you’re playing the game, you chose to accept it, is to get the rabbits and hats in numeric order.

But the pigeon tiles are there to make life harder. Depending on the number of players, you place two to five pigeons on stacks. You can’t do nothing with stacks that have pigeons on them.

On your turn, you can a) look at a rabbit without revealing it to anyone else b) swap two hats or c) swap two stacks. After you may your move, you _may_ move a dove.

Again, if a dove is on a stack, you can’t do anything with that stack. You can’t even lift up the dove to check the hat number.

And you only have two minutes and thirty seconds to play the whole game. That’s what the timer is for. 

The physical game comes with three envelopes that contain increasingly challenging ways to play the game. I don’t have those since I’m playing the free PnP version but I don’t need them to appreciate the base game.

Magic Rabbit is a very simple game made up of very simple parts. It’s easy to understand what’s going on. However, when you add the complications of the timer and pigeons, it gets challenging. Especially the timer. Oh boy the timer.

Simple doesn’t mean easy, from either a design or a play standpoint. It’s easy to understand what your end goal is but trying to do that in under three minutes isn’t easy. It is manic and fun though. Magic Rabbit isn’t the first game I’ve seen with a timer. But you don’t need to an invent a new wheel to make a car go vrooooom. 

After I finishing making a copy and playing it, I learned that Magic Rabbit had been a Spiel des Jahres recommended game in 2022. That doesn’t surprise me. 

I have played some good real time games. Escape: The Curse of the Temple and Falling come to mind. And Magic Rabbit joins them. I

may not need two speed tile games but Magic Rabbit does a good job being the one I do want to play.

Toem celebrates the amateur photographer smart phones have made of all of us

Indie cozy games are a big part of our family’s video gaming. And Toem is one that everyone but the cat enjoyed and that’s probably just because she doesn’t have opposable thumbs.

Many indie cozy games have a strong emotional core, some serious feels after you dig a little. A Short Hike is built on Claire’s relationship with her mom and Lil Gator is about the title character’s relationship with his sister. Even Unpacking unpacks the story of the unseen protagonist.

Not Toem! You are just a cute little Arthur-like critter (you know, an aardvark that doesn’t resemble an aardvark in any way) who is going around taking photos and helping people. Wheeeee!

Seriously, the level of sweet, lowkey joy in Toem is pretty high.

While there is a goal, to find and photograph the titular phenomenon of the Toem, the game is really about exploring the black-and-white, hand drawn world of the game. 

Your photographer has been sent off into the world by their nana who has also given them their antique camera. You travel to each new area by bus. But you don’t buy bus tickets with money. No, you earn them by getting stamps from helping people out.

And it is a world of quirky, individualized inhabitants. All sorts of strange but always friendly creatures. Toem is not just a harmless world but an uplifting one. It’s a quirky world but one that makes you feel welcome.

Smart phones have made amateur photographers out of all of us. Toem is a celebration of that. Toem takes something that so many of us do all the time (photography), something that might already be a game in a way, and makes it own game out of it.

I don’t know the reality of The Invention of Morel

The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares is a well regarded masterpiece and an important part of Latin American literature. So I feel incredibly provincial since I had never even heard of it until earlier this year. And I’ve finally read it and it was worth the read.

The Invention of Morel is a short work, really a novella. So I’d recommend going out and reading it because I cannot discuss it without spoiling it entirely.

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The Invention of Morel may be about an unreliable narrator alone on an island full of holograms but it might also be about an unreliable narrator alone on an island who is going completely mad. It definitely discuses the nature of what is real.

An unnamed political refugee fleeing from persecution manages to reach a mysterious island that allegedly has a disease that kills everyone who lands there. He discovers a complex that includes a huge building that is called a museum. Seriously, the description of this elaborate building is insane. It would be bizarre in a major city, let alone a deserted island. 

Then a group of vacationers suddenly appear in the museum. The unnamed refugee, who is terrified of being captured, hides from them in the marshlands, where he has to deal with dangerous tides and malnutrition. Despite his fear, he spies on the vacationers and develops an obsession with a beautiful woman named Faustine.

Eventually, the refugee figures out that the vacationers are just recordings, endlessly replaying the same week. A power cut had turned it off when he first arrived. More than that, we learned that the process of being recorded is lethal. The inventor Morel tricked his friends into coming to the island so he could spend an endless week with the woman he was in love with.

The refugee is able to splice himself into the recoding so he had spend eternity with a woman he has never actually known, dying in the process.

Wow. There is a lot to unpack.

First of all, the narrator is definitely unreliable. In fact, the footnotes from the fictional editors seem to be specifically designed to hammer home the inconsistencies in his journal. His obsession with Faustine is raw and uncomfortable. At the same time, he is under such extreme conditions that his instability makes him believable.

While I used the word hologram earlier, the recordings actually replicate people and objects for all five senses. Which opens up the question of what is real. The narrator wonders if the recordings think the thoughts that the originals had at the time, if they have their souls.

And there is the fact that the people who get recorded die. In fact, their deaths resemble radiation poisoning. Does the process kill them or do their lives get absorbed into the recordings?

Morel’s decision to commit suicide and murder almost all his friends is completely psychotic but the narrator sympathizes with him. The reader (and quite possibly Casares) might strongly question if the recordings are the same as the original but the narrator buys into the idea. For me, this was less about are the recordings being ‘real’ and more how these recordings affect someone who is crazy.

The Invention of Morel doesn’t give us its own answer for what is real or what makes up reality. One interpretation is that the recordings aren’t even real in story and the narrator is a raving lunatic. It does give us plenty of food for thought. I like being asked to think.

Harbingers makes Mysticana’s Nine Perils better

Mysticana - Harbringers is the first Mysticana expansion I’ve tried that isn’t an entirely new game hit an expansion for one that already exists. It’s an expansion for one the system’s starting games, Nine Perils.

Mysticana is game system from Button Shy, an eighteen-card deck that different expansions let you play different games. The base deck has three suits that have a rock-paper-scissors mechanic built in. While nothing will ever beat a regular deck of cards as far as a flexible gaming system is concerned, Mysticana keeps on delivering for me.

Nine Perils was the solitaire option for the base deck. It was my first impression of the system and I am sure it was for a lot of people. You lay down nine cards in a row. You flip one over and play a card under any space each turn. The goal is to have each played card be greater than the card it’s under. The twist is that if the cards tie, it and the next card in the line get resolved by the card after that one. So, you could end up only having to worry about five perils if you play your cards right.

My initial impression was that Nine Perils was nice with one clever bit but it was a good clever bit. However, over time, I noticed that I kept on pulling out the Mysticana deck and playing it, even if I hadn’t been trying the other games. Nine Perils really grew on me.

Harbingers adds six double-sided cards to the game. One side are harbingers, which do bad stuff. The other sides are visions, which are one shot, helpful powers.

Harbingers changes the game from one round to three. You shuffle the new cards and deal out three to be your visions for the game. They let you do things like move cards or rearrange the deck. But you only get to use each once per game, not round. 

Set up the line as usual. Then shuffle the three remaining harbinger cards. They go over the line, landscape style. Each one affects the three cards in the line beneath it. And they all add restrictions that make the game more difficult. My least favorite one makes Avatar cards automatically lose.

In the first round, one harbinger goes in the middle. The second round, you place two, over the second and seventh card. In the last round, you place all three harbingers over two, five and eight so every card is affected. 

And, yes, you have to win all three rounds to win the game. 

I’m not prepared to say that Harbingers fires Nine Perils but damn if it doesn’t add a lot to the game. And it does so without removing core that makes Nine Perils have a strong ‘one more time’ factor.

I’m actually not sure what brings more to the game. Harbingers force to you change the way you play. I definitely have a pattern of how I play Nine Perils but the harbingers make me break out of that. On the other hand, the visions give you a level of control you didn’t have. And that adds depth to the play.

Harbingers also has variants. One is to play one round with you deciding how many harbingers and visions to set out. Another is to play it as a two-player cooperative game. Having an official one-round variant will help Harbringers hit the table more often for me, to be painfully honest.

Nine Perils is a game that has really grown on me and become part of my regular rotation of games. And Harbingers just makes it better.

Mysticana - Wild Magic is the Schotten Totten/Scopa mashup I didn’t realize the world needed

I realized that I hadn’t really looked at the Mysticana system so I decided it was time to do something about that.

Mysticana is what Button Shy calls a foundation deck. It’s what I would call a game system (like a regular deck of cards) but most of the games require small expansions. To be fair, Looney Pyramids work the same way. 

I decided to start into the expansion games with Wild Magic, which could be described as Mysticana’s take on Schotten Totten. Which isn’t a knock. Building on a preexisting idea is a core element of developing, well, anything. And Schotten Totten isn’t a bad place to start.

Of course, the real question isn’t have you given us a Schotten Totten that can be played with a Mysticana deck. The real question is ‘have you added anything new?’

Yeah, it adds a card drafting using fishing mechanics like Scopa or Casino. It also adds special powers but Knizia already did that himself when he redesigned Schotten Totten as Battle Line.

The base Mysticana deck consists of three suits with six cards each. (The suits have a rock-paper-scissors relationship) Wild Magic adds a seventh rank to each suit and three double-sided cards of special powers.

It’s a two-player game where you are building opposing columns for each suit. There is a solitaire mode with an automated opponent.

There’s a pool of face-up cards that starts off with two cards. Each turn, you play a card to the pool and capture cards according to the following rules. You get all the cards of the same rank. You get a card of the same suit and one row lower. And, if you play a seven, you also get the lowest card of its weaker suit. All the cards you draft get added to your columns.

When you get down to one card, you add that to your columns. You THEN have to check for backfires. If you have precisely two cards of the same rank, you flip the weaker suit over and it now counts as minus one.

Compare the values of each column to see who wins which suit. High card wins ties. Most column wins.

The advanced game adds the special powers, which are called styles. Most of the styles are actually pretty low-key, often making adjustments to the final scoring. With that said, Wild Magic can be tight so slight shifts can be big.

What struck me about the game is how fluid and intuitive it became. After having to consult the rules regularly on the first play, my subsequent plays developed a smooth rhythm. To a degree that surprised me.

You only have nine moves and those go by fast. At the same time, the element of backfire makes the game more than just trying to grab all the cards you can. Wild Magic is light but it’s not mindless.

On the downside, I have to admit that it’s a little frustrating how you sometimes have to make moves that don’t draft any cards and trying to set up moves will inevitably be disrupted by your opponent.

Wild Magic isn’t perfect but it recycles different ideas well. And it is surprisingly bingeable.

Very, very early impressions of the Wayfarer

 This is a very, very early impression of The Wayfarer. That’s because I’ve only been playing the Poland map (which I assume is the base game because it’s used as the example in the basic rules) and there are eleven more maps (most of which have additional rules) plus two expansions.

It’s a Print-and-Play Roll-and-Write about traveling across the world and recording the memories of your journey. In actually, it’s a solitaire area of control game that is abstract to the point where the theme isn’t really a part of gameplay.

Each map is a hex grid of the country or state or island and each hex is one of six different kinds of terrain. (The percentage of each type of terrain varies, depending on the map)  Oh and each hex has a die face on it. There are also small groups of some of the hexes surrounded by dotted lines.

The core mechanic is simple. Roll four dice. Pick three. You can cross out three hexes that match those dice but they have to be part of the same line of hexes. They don’t have to be next to each other, they just have to be on the same line. Do that twenty times and figure out your score.

On the three base maps (Poland, Spain and Switzerland), there are two ways to score points. Filling in the groups within the dotted lines and getting points for each type of terrain. The scoring for terrain types starts off in the negative (with having negative twenty five of you have none of a type) so I _think_ diversification is a good idea.

When I first looked at Wayfarer, I thought ‘that’s it?’ Not only did it seem pretty darn simple, maybe too simple, I also was disappointed that you weren’t forming any kind of path. You weren’t planning out a journey. You were just crossing off hexes with restrictions.

However, when I actually sat down to play, I found that having so wide open a decision tree made the game a lot more interesting than I expected. If I had to create connections, the game would rapidly have become frustrating. And between trying to fill in dotted-line-enclosed areas and collect terrain, I found that I had goals and actual tough decisions. 

The Wayfarer is almost entirely abstract (although I am curious how well the terrain types match up with the real geography) but the actual gameplay was enough for me to have fun. It doesn’t hurt that it’s the sweet spot of being short enough to easily find the time for but long enough to feel like a ‘full’ game.

Each map set adds some additional way to get points, some additional wrinkle to the mix. And one of the expansions adds additional goals. (The other is an alternative to dice) So, in theory, there’s a lot of content.

The fact that I want to keep playing the Poland map and then move on to explore the rest of the game is a good sign. The Wayfarer is simple but filling.

A Year In… is flawed and painfully simple but charming

I’m surprised that I never came across A Year In… before last week because it’s the kind of game I like to track down. A print and play game that is solitaire friendly, low ink friendly and has a chill theme. It just goes to show that there’s so much out there.

A Year In… is a flip and write game that uses a standard deck of cards. Everything, including the rules, is on one sheet of paper. Sometimes, cramming everything in like that can lead to not enough room to really get the rules across but A Year In… is simple enough that that’s not a problem.

The idea is that you are setting up a village, one that is clearly inhabited by friendly talking animals if the artwork is anything to go on. You have a grid and a couple of tables for landscape features and villagers.

At the start of the game, you shuffle the cards and discard 10 sight unseen. We will get back to why this is important. After that, you flip a card each turn and use the tables to add something to your map.

Each suit is a specific type of landscape feature, flowers or hills or two types of trees. Each rank is a villager, with face cards being a little more specific. 

Adding landscape features is simple. You draw the appropriate feature in a square. Villagers are a little bit more complex. They have to be placed in a specific arrangement of landscape features. Having a flower on their right and left for instance. Face cards, not only require significantly more complicated patterns, they also have to match a specific suit as well. On the plus side, they count as three villagers.

There are also three shops. Each one requires a set of four rank cards (that you cross off as you go) before you can draw them in. However, that does give you another way to use cards and each one counts as a villager as well.

After the deck runs out, whoever has the most villagers wins. Ties are broken by rank. If you’re playing solitaire, you just do the best you can.

My wife has been playing Hello Kitty Island Adventures, where potential residents have very specific housing requests. I looked at A Year In… and realized that it was a distilled example of that idea. More than that, I am a big Animal Crossing fan and this game definitely has that kind of vibe.

I was completely unsurprised to learn that it was developed during the Covid lockdown.

Luck plays a huge, pretty much overwhelming, role in the game. You can work towards getting a specific goal, namely, one of those high scoring, face cards, as a villager. However, if it comes out too early in the game or has been discarded during the set up, It’s never going to happen.

And discarding 10 cards at the start of the game definitely increases the odds of your plans not working out. At the same time, if you didn’t do that, it would turn into a card counting exercise, which I think would be a worse experience. Discarding those 10 cards turns it into more of an actual game.

From a mechanical standpoint, A Year In… doesn’t hold up that well as a game. The random factor really makes the control you have an illusion. If you are trying to make a lean, mean, efficient village, you are just going to get frustrated. So there are a lot of audiences that aren’t going to be interested in this game and, depending on my mood, I can be part of those audiences.

But when I am in the mood for some whimsy and drawing a pretty, pretty village of cartoon animal people and don’t mind pushing my luck, A Year In… is pretty nice.

It is not a cozy video game PnP simulation. If you want that, that would be A Simple Life. Which does a really good job of it. And if you don’t want that, print and out play A Simple Life because you will find that you do want that, you just didn’t know it.

A Year In… is a simulation of the _idea_ of a cozy game. It has mechanical issues to the point that you could argue that it is unbalanced, but it does a very good job delivering a relaxing experience that has some actual challenge.

A Year In… is an obscure little game that isn’t for everyone. But if the idea makes you go ‘hmmmm’, it will be rewarding.

Comparing specialized decks with standard playing cards

 The Shooting Party isn’t a game that I play often but it wanders back to me every once in a while. Maybe once a year or so. Which doesn’t sound that impressive but there are lots of games I’ve tried that don’t come back at all.

The Shooting Party is a solitaire game designed to be played with a regular deck of cards. However, after learning it, I made a copy of the themed deck and the themed deck has been a major reason I keep on playing it.

That actually annoys me a little. The standard deck of cards is an amazing gaming tool. Have a deck of cards in your hand and you are holding a giant library of games. The history and flexibility of a standard deck of cards is staggering.

While Catan and Dungeons and Dragons were major entry point into gaming for me, Go was another. And I had my moments of anti-chrome snobbery. Which definitely is an ice way of saying being narrow-minded and stupid. 

Theme is more than just adding pretty chrome to a game. (And if chrome helps a game actually sell, that alone is a big deal) It can add narrative to a game. It can help explain mechanics, make mechanics more intuitive.

And little Shooting Party is a good example of all that.

I made a copy of the Edwardian deck, which has lovely images of Hoity Toity aristocrats back before the first world war. I am sure that it is all stock art, but it is very well selected and makes for a visually attractive deck.

The game itself is about being a scoundrel who seduces ladies and steals their jewelry. The imagery of the cards helps reinforce both the narrative of the game and the mechanics, which revolve around using the rules of manners to hurry off guests (ie discarding cards)

Mechanically, the Shooting Party isn’t that much to look at, and if I had only played it with a regular deck of cards, I would have forgotten it by now. However, the Edwardian deck adds enough fun for me to keep saying ‘eh, let’s get it out’

I have been looking at a lot of games that use the regular deck of cards, either all by themselves or as an integral part of the mechanics. And I really like the fact that I have such a flexible tool in my gaming kit to let me try out or look at so many different games. And I would definitely try out a game before making a specialized deck.

But specialized decks do add solid value.

Bad rule books destroy games

 A couple years ago, I tried out the pre-Kickstarter demo for a game collection called Dice and Divination. I meant to follow up on it but missed the Kickstarter. Recently, I finally got the collection and have been looking it over.

Dice and Divination consists of seven different Roll and Writes games, each one based on a different form of prognostication. (I can use big words!) Astrology, Palm Reading, Tarot, Tea Leaves, Rune Casting, Dreams and Pendulums.

What is the most interesting bit is that each game is designed to six turns long, with each turn being a roll of three dice. The scoring systems are set up to be comparable so people can play different games at the same time and still be competitive.

But… the collection has a major flaw. 

These are honestly some of the worst written rules I think I’ve seen. And I comb through contests and prototypes where part of the goal is to figure out how to make coherent rules. I’ve seen rules that have clearly gone through Google translate to make it to English. And those were all ore functional than Dice and Divination.

A glaring example of the problem with the rules: remember how I mentioned how players can simultaneously play different games and still be competitive? That is only mentioned in the product description, not in the product itself. It feels like there should be an overview guide that never made it to the finished product.

Many of the games fail to fully explain the scoring. At least one doesn’t even actually include the fact that the game is six rounds. Basic, fundamental rules and concepts have been left out.

I’ve been doing my best to figure out how the games are actually supposed to be played because the ones I have been able to get through have been pretty interesting. There’s clearly some good ideas and mechanics hidden in the collection. The art and theming are also pretty good.

The world of PnP R&W games is a heavily saturated one. It’s not easy to stand out. I think that, between its interlocking scoring system and theme, Dice and Divination could stand out. But the horribly written rules are a huge road block. I think the actual rules might be good, if I could actually get to them.

My March Gaming

March was an interesting month because I would say the focus of my game learning was on play tests and prototypes. (That said, I bet there are folk who that’s their focus for gaming)

I learned:

Stone Age Survival

Lands of Amazement (playtest)

Veggie Fighters (2025 9 Card Contest)

Roll Estate

Endless Nightmare 

Embers (playtest)

True Hero Minigame

Leaping Lions (playtest)

I learned once again that if I try participating in too many playtests, I overextend myself, particularly since there’s life stuff and adulting that has to get done. Leaping Lions did not get much attention from me. (I believe I am allowed to talk about playtests in a general sense, just not distribute files or the like)

That said, I still think that joining the playtest channel is very rewarding.

The other thing I did was go back and try games that have been in my files for years. I honestly don’t know how long I’ve had Endless Nightmare on the back burner. I didn’t find any hidden gems, to be honest. However, it is always interesting to look at where we’ve come from.

My March PnP

When I looked at my print and play crafting for March, I noticed that a lot of what I had made was playtesting prototypes from Buttonshy’s playtesting forum. 

Agropolis

Land of Amazement expansions (playtest)

Darlin’ Corey (RPG)

One Card Maze

Embers (playtest)

Veggie Knight Fight (2025 9 Card Contest)

Dragon’s Horde (2025 9 Card Contest)

Dice and Divination collection 

Pre-Existing Conditions 

Rolling Estate

Leaping Lions + expansions (playtest)

Technically, my ‘big’ project for the month was Agropolis. I think this is the third time I’ve made a copy. Possibly the second. I’ve had to make it multiple times because, my colorblindness on top of a black and white printer, I have to make adjustments with adding symbols to make it viable for me.

That being said, some of the playtests were larger. However, since they aren’t finished products, they are more of a gray area for me. I guess the same can be said for contest entries since many of those are also prototypes. They’re just ones I can write about :)

I also have to admit that I broke my promise to pace myself with playtests. I started out strong but I wasn’t able to give it much focus by the end of the month. Life and adulting was part of it but there’s also just making sure to not do too much.

Dice and Divination is an interesting model for my record keeping. It’s a collection of seven games that are interlocking in that each one requires the same number of 3d6 rolls and the scoring is supposed to be comparable. So you could have a group game with people playing different games. Still, for my purposes, it’s seven different games.

We will see what April will bring. I have already promised myself less playtests so the prototypes I do play can get more attention.