Comment by 🌲 lojikil
This post and others like it are part of what made me think about adding support for Gopher+-style interactive queries; I think with just a few additions, you could have a pretty browser-neutral way of supporting more complex input from users, without requiring much support from the client side. gemini://bbs.geminispace.org/u/lojikil/30755
2025-07-31 · 9 months ago
6 Later Comments ↓
😈 dimkr · 2025-07-31 at 13:46:
I had a checkers game but I took it down due to low demand, should I bring it back?
🦂 zzo38 · 2025-07-31 at 19:14:
If a Pokemon game by correspondence play (with perhaps a minimum of 12 hours per turn and a maximum of a much longer time) is made with Gemini then I might look.
You could have a ASCII text describing the current game state and the battle log, and using Titan to upload the team (except for random battle mode). For making the move you can use a short notation that I have the idea of: "a" to "d" for the four move slots, "e" to "h" for the four active pokemons (only relevant in a double battle), "i" to "n" for your six pokemons in your team, and further characters to specify mega-evolution, Z-moves, etc. For example, "ahj" might be a valid command in a double battle, meaning: your first active pokemon selects its first move slot targeting the fourth position, and your second active pokemon switches to the second pokemon in your team.
🐙 norayr · 2025-08-02 at 01:36:
if there's low demand it is one more reason to keep it: not much load.
even if nobody plays it, sole existence of such capsule makes geminispare more lively, shows that there are options and shows how such game would look and work like.
i am a big proponent of keeping everything alive and i am at the same time not sure we all should even want software as a service games and many other programs.
but that is a different different topic.
👾 jecxjo · 2025-08-03 at 16:55:
Got some UI working for "Space Yahtzee". Will have to find a better name.
☯️ dragfyre · 2025-08-04 at 11:50:
hmm, i haven't added my two cents yet.
i love smol games, have loved them since i was a kid making goofy joke programs in BASIC on an Apple //e.
Everything I've made so far, from bots to CGI scripts, has been for myself because i love it and want it around. if other people want it too, then so much the better. i guess that kind of directs where i put my (already quite limited) free time, because i'm not likely to take on something that i won't enjoy myself. 🤷♂️
🐑 zipsegv · 2025-08-09 at 08:20:
I think Gemini games are kind of cool; it's cool to see what people can do given the limits of the protocol. I think games would best be text-based though and try to limit the use of graphics (e.g. via preformatted blocks); that preserves accessibility so anyone can play. As well as that, games should be slow-paced; one should be able to ignore the game for a few days and be able to drop back in where they were not having missed anything. I think something paced similar to nationstates would work well, where you handle a few events every day, but you can skip days or weeks and just handle them later if you want.
I've seen an idea for a Pokémon-like suggested above, and I think that could work (perhaps every day you could get a new encounter or something?) although I would try to simplify the control scheme as much as possible while still keeping it fun.
In addition, I think multiplayer games should always be playable even if there's a single active user. ideally multiplayer games would be "optionally multiplayer" where there can be player interaction but the core of the game works whether there's other players or not. (in the case of a Pokémon-style game, I'd think being able to "challenge" other players to a battle would suit this)
Original Post
— On Gemini Games [adavies.foo]
On Gemini Games — Hello everyone! Im new to the geminispace , and I could not avoid to note that there are not much games here. The idea of having more games here, and the ability to implement them, is something that really interests me, so I made a posts about it in my capsule: I would love you to read it and let me know what you think! I do believe that this would be a really nice addition to Gemini.