Each day will allow you to explore another creators' work and thoughts.

January 1, 2019 11:05 AM

#meditationgames: a project by Rami Ismail (@Vlambeer) “One morning in late 2017, I stumbled upon a small game called TEMPRES. It is a simple minimalist puzzle game, and it might have taken no more than five minutes of my time to figure out. I left the game both impressed by developer tak’s clever design, but also by the feeling of having played this short game early in the morning. Since that day, aided by an amazing crew of curators, developers, and support, I’ve collected custom-made games by over 350 developers – one for each day of the year. Every developer was asked to pick a day that means something to them, or just a random day, and to make something inspired by that day. The idea was to create a meditation of sorts, a reflection, or to capture a particular moment. Meditations is a launcher that, every day, loads a small game and an accompanying text as a meditation, distraction, lesson, or inspiration for that day.”

FAQ:

How does Meditations work?

The file you download is a launcher that will allow you to access today's Meditation. To do this, the Meditations launcher occassionally downloads files of up to 500MB containing the required files.

What kind of games are in here?

Meditations are free games made in approximately six hours. They're often small, experimental, and minimalistic - and can frequently be personal. Many of these games have been inspired by the day that they're available on, and will relate in some way to the creators' life or interests. In general, they will feature no text, and should take you approximately five minutes to complete.

What happens if I miss a day?

Every game is only available on the day it was made for. That means that if you miss a day, the Meditation will be available again next year.

posted by Fizz (11 comments total)

This is pretty great, but unfortunate how inaccessible it is: requiring you to wait until next year if you miss one, use a launcher, etc. Hopefully it gets more open after the first year.
posted by adzm at 11:35 AM on January 1, 2019 [1 favorite]

Ah the impermanence of life illustrated.
posted by softlord at 12:12 PM on January 1, 2019 [1 favorite]

On the one hand they are very unstable but it gives them a halo of magic and interest
posted by lacestita at 12:18 PM on January 1, 2019

I spent way too long figuring out Tempres.
posted by Scattercat at 12:37 PM on January 1, 2019 [3 favorites]

This feels like an internet experiment from twenty years ago, and I love it!
posted by Eleven at 12:39 PM on January 1, 2019 [2 favorites]

I can't get it to work. :(

Downloaded .exe extractor, opened in folder, clicked Meditations.exe... nothing. I know it's supposed to download the month's worth of minigames and that could take a while, except I can't see any indication that it's downloading.

(Windows 7 computer; have MalwareBytes installed.)
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 2:35 PM on January 1, 2019

Got it to launch. Mediations.exe didn't work, but inside the data folder is MeditationsLauncher.exe; that worked.

Tempres is interesting and I'm utterly failing to figure out how it works.
posted by ErisLordFreedom at 3:17 PM on January 1, 2019

Re Tempres: I had to look this up but rot13:

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posted by divabat at 3:24 PM on January 1, 2019 [1 favorite]

i figured out tempres pretty quickly and was really impressed. it's so simple that there are only a few ways to change up your inputs, the limited scope of it made for an interesting design.

currently the launcher is downloading the second day's game even though it's only 10 PM, which makes me think the whole thing is synced up to Dutch time (where Rami is based out of)? that's going to make it harder to check in every day, it should really read the local time of your computer and work off that IMO.
posted by JimBennett at 6:56 PM on January 1, 2019

Yay! Glad this is getting some attention, I was one of the many many devs involved. (Look out for Feb. 9!)

I think Rami mentioned that it's synced to GMT. I wish there was a way to set it to local time too, but maybe it was too hard to get the ephemeral unlock mechanism to work that way.

(Apparently there's a Feb. 29 game that won't unlock til 2020!)
posted by speicus at 9:12 PM on January 1, 2019 [4 favorites]

Neat post. I think I would really enjoy this, but most of the time I am at a desktop or laptop is work time; I wish there was facility for phone or tablet. I understand why not, but if someone does make something like this accessible on mobile, I hope I hear about it!
posted by nat at 10:39 PM on January 1, 2019