Sat. Nov. 8, 12-5pm
Toronto Reference Library
789 Yonge St. (Bloor-Yonge subway)
Free
Facebook event

WordPlay is our free one-day festival celebrating the most interesting uses of writing and words in contemporary games. Come on by this Saturday for some texty funtimes!

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 Highlights

• a new reading nook with iPads to enjoy some of the showcase games on!
• last year we debuted The Entertainment, this year Porpentine made a game just for WordPlay!
• WordPlay 2014 Awards Ceremony, with envelopes and everything!

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Schedule

Between 12-5, the public is invited to play the 25 showcase games chosen by the jury in the Learning Centre. In the reading nook in the Browsery our friends at OCAD and Ryerson have lent us some iPads for you to play some of the showcase games on.

The Atrium stage will feature the following programming:

12:15pm
A live audience playing of Aisle, a one-move text adventure set in a grocery store by Sam Barlow. Narrated by Jason McIntosh.

12:30pm
Hadean Lands: The Alchemy of iPhones and Social Capital
Interactive fiction legend Andrew Plotkin from Boston, MA will be discussing Hadean Lands, a text adventure made for iOS which he Kickstarted 4 years ago and released just last week. He will be introduced by XO podcaster Keith McNally. (Emily Short says of Hadean Lands, map pictured above: “This game ranks off the charts on the ingenuity measure.” For a chance at a free cross-platform copy, email us at hadean@handeyesociety.com.)

1:15pm
Coffee: A Misunderstanding
Deirdra “Squinky” Kiai (who made the IGF-nominated Dominique Pamplemousse) from Santa Cruz, CA will be presenting their queer and socially awkward interactive play about the weirdness of online friendships, where all the actors are audience members.

2:15pm
How Do you Make Writerly Games?
15 minute demos of different tools that allow you to make writerly games. Aaron Reed (gamemaker and author of Creating Interactive Fiction With Inform 7, cover detail pictured here) will be doing parser-based tool Inform 7, Jason Stevan Hill from Choice of Games will be doing ChoiceScript, and WordPlay festival director Jim Munroe will be debuting a new touchscreen-friendly tool he and Juhana Leinonen have developed called Texture.

3pm
A live audience playing of a never-before-seen game by Porpentine, that she made for WordPlay 2014. Narrated by Twine gamemaker Kaitlin Tremblay.

3:15pm
United We Fall: Storytelling Systems in Dungeons of Fayte
Montreal’s Brent Ellison and Tanya X. Short from Montreal will be talking about their cult narrative game Dungeons of Fayte, which was a big inspiration to The Yawhg. Yawhg co-creator Damian Sommer and Hand Eye Society co-founder Miguel Sternberg will be introducing them.

4:30pm
WordPlay 2014 Awards
New this year! Our esteemed jury will have made their decisions regarding the three WordPlay awards selected from the showcase games. Representing the jury will be D. F. McCourt.