CloneJam Porpentine is fast approaching

I asked my good friend Andrew Hofmann, poet, twine-er, writer and cyber-artist if he’d craft some words about Porpentine and her games. (He first introduced me to many of her works.) He said he’d love to. He is enthused for #CloneJamPorpi as well!

So without further ado, the words of Andrew Hoffman:

Trash and Slime and Jams

The Porpentine CloneJam is almost here (Nov 14-16), bursting with crystals and trash and slime and art situated in the locus of women’s experiences! Porpentine, probably one of the most important people / trash harpies / enema witches working in hypertext fiction right now, helped usher in the popularity of Twine and helped encourage the representation of minority populations in game development through her curation work on Free Indie Gam.es and her RPS Column, Live Free, Play Hard. Her games are rich, unique, and full of style; #CloneJamPorpentine gives you to opportunity to be inspired by that style.

If you need help firing your neural cortex, come on down to Glass Arcology Zone 57, where we have our Inspiration Mainframes rigorously trained to beam Porpentine’s work right into your eye sockets! <3

Howling Dogs

Classic, classic Porp, still smoldering fresh n’ hot with its own burning brilliance—hypertext fiction re: the systems that entrap us, the treachery of images, and their escape. Immersive prison escapism simulator simulator. This is no time for Howling Dogs.

Ultra Business Tycoon III

NFO (Required to Complete Game)

Explore Ultra Business Tycoon III! Feel the virtual capitalism writhing around you! Commit corporate sabotage! Pull yourself up by your bootstraps and earn a MILLION DOLLARS in order to enter the Mammon Gates!

There’s more to it than that, of course. A deeply moving exploration of abuse, memory, familial relationships, and the role videogames and art have to play in all of this.

armada

For the graphical among us. Explore swamps, collect crystals, defeat spooky monsters with your slime attacks. Movement looks like dancing 100% of the time. Rich RPGish world full of secrets and delights, a place simultaneously superficially lived-in and horrifically empty.

their angelical understanding

Monetary training. Landscape traversing. Desolation amid fantastical locales. Desolation amid our vulnerable human insides. Angels are the enemy. Your friend is the antagonist. The atmosphere palpable with personal history.

with those we love alive

Courtesan servant / obscure-material blacksmithing simulator with city-roaming and interpersonal elements. Permeable border between game and reality creating a mode of self-illumination in the religious-manuscript way; the game leaves the physical marks of its influence. Sleep is progression; daily lived experience, ritual forming, is its material. Magical palace be damned—the small and personal transcends aristocratic horror.

So Now

Inspired? Expired? Respired? Then GO OUT THERE and make a CloneJam PorpJam in honor of that spire—crystal spire, slime spire, trash spire—delicious, slimy, porpy jam happening from November 14 to November 16.

Craving more Porpentine? Here’s her website and a longer list of the games she’s made. Protip: you can still download Everything you swallow will one day come up like a stone here: .She also has a cool tumblr and twitter. Want to support her writing, her games, her art? You can give her some cool $$ at her patreon or purchase some of her writing or some t-shirts at her store.

Thank you, Porpentine, for all the games you made and all the things they meant to us.