Chronicles - Face Cramp Games

New Game Alert! Let’s Get Pickled

Face Cramp — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 23:51:26 +0000

We’ve got another game for your playing pleasure. And this one’s littered with pickles, and other wild characters.

What is it with these pickles?!

I dunno. You tell me! What is up with pickles? They are just so dang …. pickley.

This game doesn’t just have pickles though. Your brain might get a workout matching the cards against Bot! I’ve been told that Bot doesn’t take it easy on players.

Anyway give our new pickle-infested game a try. Click the Pickle Fickle Fat Rat logo, below, to play!

And click that Post Comment button, even belower, to share any feedback! (Need more pickle encounters? Rats too wild? LMK!)

Click to play Pickle Fickle Fat Rat

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Digital Long Doggy

Face Cramp — Wed, 05 Nov 2025 19:11:18 +0000

Obvs, I’m in my vibe coding era. I’m adding to my list of digital games built with ChatGPT.

A while back, I had this idea for a 2-4 person table-top game about caring for your dachshund doggy so it grows nice and long - as dachshunds will. I decided to see if I could make it a digital single player game.

In place of the roll and move mechanic I had planned for the table-top version, I decided to reuse the Traverse grid mechanic for pet-care task collection.

I’ve got a playable prototype! And I’m ready for feedback. Leave a comment, or contact me with any thoughts or suggestions.

Play 'Get A Long Little Doggy' Play 'Get A Long Little Doggy'

Yet Another Way to Create Games

Face Cramp — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 18:16:00 +0000

I’ve created games using many methods over my decades of being a creator of games.

timeline depicting historically accurate-ish account of events

In high school, I got my first chance to create a digital game, using some basic DOS prompts. It took hours to get the most basic interaction that rewarded the user with a super simple animation (a waving Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes).

Other than that one digital experience, up until the late ‘90’s any game I created would use tangible materials, like cardboard, construction paper, rubber bands, and other kid-friendly materials. I created a fishing for numbers game, a squirt the right answer with your squirt gun game, a rocket to the moon (with your own TP tube rocket) game, a pin the petal on the flower game…. lots of one-time use (for a party or a classroom event) games, often just re-themed versions of existing classic games.

While I continued making, essentially, paper-based games through my daughter’s elementary school years, in 1998, my dad gifted me his old computer. He was upgrading, so I got his hand-me-down 486.

I was instantly hooked on the internet, and I quickly learned basic HTML and basic Photoshop, which I applied to creating digital learning games for my preschooler. These games were, again, super basic interactions. An example: An instruction would read, “Click on the red square.” If you clicked the red square, you went to a Congrats page. If you clicked on any of the other squares, you get a Try Again page. And this was rethemed for numbers, musical instruments, animals, etc.

A friend saw what I was trying to do and introduced me to Flash 4. :::::angels singing:::::

What a game-changer that was for me. I learned to “code” games using Flash. I could draw, animate, and create much cooler interactions with much cooler rewards.

I eventually created a website for preschoolers that became pretty popular. JuliasRainbowCorner dotcom (sadly, I don’t own it anymore, but you can still find references to it out there) trading 1st and 2nd position in Google search results for “something cool” for quite some time with another website - which may or may not still exist. Kids could play games, hear music, see animations, and they could “create something cool” in lots of different ways.

That website helped me land a job that turned into a career creating digital learning games. Over time, the technology shifted to new versions of Flash and then to HTML5. I didn’t stay hands on with the coding of games, and I was happy to get to just focus on the experience itself - the stories, the characters, the rules, the flows, the rewards. I worked with a wonderful team of coders and artists to create hundreds of engaging learning games.

In a career shift about 6 years ago, I stopped having the opportunity to focus on games as part of my job.

So, back to tangible materials I went! Over the past couple of years I have created a board game, a few table top games, and a couple of card games. They are all still prototypes that I occasionally get a chance to work on, since I now do it on my own time. I still love getting my hands on physical materials to create games, and I surely always will.

But, here we are in 2025 with yet another way to create digital games. Hello, A.I.!

While many hear demons screaming when they think of A.I., I am currently having another angels singing moment. I am feeling another “the possibilities are endless” moment happening right now. It’s the late 90’s all over again - and come on, admit it - we could all use some late 90’s vibes here in 2025.

I took an afternoon to see what ChatGPT could help me with, and I am pleased to present my first whack at coding with A.I. and my first digital game in about 6 years. I started super simple with another endlessly rethemeable game mechanic - remember the matching cards, aka memory.

My first A.I. game collab:

Riddle My Memory

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Does Humor Belong in Games?

Face Cramp — Sun, 05 Oct 2025 16:47:08 +0000

I’ve been creating games in one form of another since I was 10 years old.

Alllll the way back in 5th grade, I had an amazing teacher, Mrs. Clemente, who assigned the class a book report. This book report could be delivered via any medium of our choosing (ie; it didn’t have to be a boring written report about what happened in the book)!

I chose to deliver my report in the form of…. a game show!

It was a scripted game, where my best friend played the host, 2 other friends got to deliver the funny/incorrect answers, and I played the “straight man” who gave the correct answers to questions about the book.

The class laughed and cheered, but I have a clear snapshot in my head of Mrs. Clemente howling with laughter, wiping away tears, as she watched. As I look back, that was a defining moment for me.

I went on to a career where I got the opportunity to create digital games with an educational purpose - from literacy to science. Included along with that learning goal, was always my own personal goal of making the learner laugh, and whenever possible, giving their teacher a chuckle as well.

So, to answer my own rhetorical question from the title* - abso-flunking-lutely!

Just like those educational games, there are many goals for any game - from gaining points and winning to connecting with friends. And for me, one of the goals is always going to be causing anything from a quick-nasal exhale, to a chuckle accompanied by an eye-roll and a groan, to a face-cramping, tear-inducing roar.

*Shout out to Frank Zappa for the title of this post. And yes, humor also belongs in music.

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Tokens, and Meeples, and Pawns - Oh My!

Face Cramp — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 21:37:58 +0000

Tokens, meeples, pawns, markers, pegs, chips, figures — whatever you call them, when prototyping, we can always depend on the ole’ trusty craft closet to provide something to represent the players. These little wooden figures are perfect! Just a little paint, and we’ll call these…. Peeple!

Uh oh. Watch out! Side Quest coming….

Apparently, meeple is singular. And not the same kind of singular that sheep and moose operate under. The plural of meeple isn’t meeple - it’s meeples. It seems like it should be merson and meeple, but we don’t make the meeple rules, so… ::shrug::

…okay, Side Quest complete.

Time to give these Peeple a little more detail…

Kinda Pawn, Kinda Meeple… Peeple!

New Rock, Paper, Scissors Variation

Face Cramp — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 15:36:41 +0000

Finally! The Rock, Paper, Scissors variation every no one has been asking for is here!

There have been many variations created for this classic only-hands-needed game. The World Rock Paper Scissors Association (No. For real!) has done great work to document so many of them. You can check those out on the WRPSA website.

We thought we’d join in on the fun and share a Face Cramp Games ™ Rock, Paper, Scissors Variation.

This new variation pulls from old school cartoons (i.e. expect comical violence, and laugh when it happens).

Title: Gun, Bunny, Carrot

Logic:

Gun beats bunny. (Don’t worry! Cartoon gunshots aren’t fatal!)
Bunny beats carrot.
Carrot beats gun. (A cartoon carrot down the barrel is a time-proven way to thwart a cartoon gun.)

Print the image below to play with picture cards or hand gesture cards.

What other variations are out there that we need to know about? Share them with us!

Tic-Tac-Toe Twist

Face Cramp — Sat, 12 Jul 2025 01:58:29 +0000

No, it’s not a new dance craze. It’s a silly twist on the classic game Tic-Tac-Toe!

Download, print, cut, and play Tick Taco for the outrageously low price of two clicks, a pinch of ink, and a sheet of paper.

Download Tick Taco Download Tick Taco

Trying to Fix It? Maybe Just Nix It.

Face Cramp — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 23:41:39 +0000

After some play testing of one of our developing games, one of the game cards had created a few edge case what-happens-ifs that had to be accounted for in the “beyond the basics” rules section.

It was a fun mechanic - the play testers liked playing it - but was it really worth so much potential confusion? We’d “handled” it, but who really wants to dig that deep into rules in the middle of a game? (This isn’t D&D - this is a casual party game. Ain’t nobody got time fuh’dat.)

As we considered getting rid of this card and realized we’d be able to remove three known (so far) edge case Q&A sets, the path was clear. This card, as fun as it could be to play, was too high-maintenance. It had to go.

In this case, we only started to consider getting rid of it because we had another card we thought might be a fun twist, and we wanted to be cautious about adding too many different mechanics, so we began to examine them all.

From this, we’ve learned (even if we don’t have something that might be better): If it’s creating confusion, and we’re doing a lot of work to fix it, the solution might just be to nix it!

Free Games on This Day of Freedom

Face Cramp — Fri, 04 Jul 2025 17:18:52 +0000

The puppy shivering under the bed tells us it’s the fourth of July! Happy Independence Day! Boom! Pop! Whiiizzzz!

Freedom, as they say, isn’t free. But these games are!

Good ole Dad used to say, “there ain’t no free lunch.” He didn’t say anything about games, though, so, no strings attached! But you’re on your own for lunch.

If these free word find games don’t cramp your face, we hope they at least tickle your funny bone. You’ll find some familiar themes and even a 4th of July holiday-themed word find!

Dad also used to say, “You get what you pay for.”

Enjoy!

Pardon Our Growth

Face Cramp — Thu, 03 Jul 2025 01:34:12 +0000

So, you may have noticed that we’re brand spanking new. Actually, you didn’t notice, because we are so new that you don’t even know we exist yet! It’s okay. That’s not your fault. Our hope is that someday you might.

We’ll be here plugging away, developing games that we dream might land on your kitchen table someday - someday soon even!

Currently we have a handful of games “in the hopper”, as they say. They are casual board and table-top games with a few different themes, aimed at a few different audiences, but all with the same goal - your face, cramped with laughter.

We’ll be creating ugly prototypes, writing confusing game instructions, imagining weird game mechanics, and tweaking them all as we do play-tests with fun and patient play testers! And we’ll share the most embarrassing stuff - as it happens.

There might be pickles.. and dachshunds. You won’t want to miss it!

Image shows game development fun spilling out of the top of the ole’ Face Cramp Games hopper

A Trivial Pursuit (TM)

Face Cramp — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 00:57:56 +0000

Trivial Pursuit (TM) is one of THE greatest game titles of all time. It plays with words in a way that I’m 100% there for. 1. It’s all about trivia, and 2. a synonym for a trivial pursuit might be “meaningless activity”, which much of the world would say describes games. It’s truly brilliant!

On the surface, games may not seem like a worthwhile pursuit. We live amongst so much turmoil and trauma, why would anyone waste their time on meaningless activities? The reason for the question is the reason that games are truly worthwhile. Life is hard, and humans need joy.

People have begun to generally accept that childhood play is important for developing a WHOLE human, but I’m not sure if those same people understand how valuable it is to keep playing as you get older. Games provide the opportunity to connect with others, to laugh, to spend time free of all of the weighty pursuits life hands out like lemons. Playing inspires creativity. It reduces stress. It gives you a socially acceptable opportunity to dominate your friends and family!

And if you ask me, none of that is trivial.

Dachshund Puppy meets Trivial Pursuit (TM) wedges