puzzle

Tetris (Russian: Тетрис [ˈtɛtrʲɪs]; portmanteau of "tetromino" and "tennis") is a tile-matching puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Soviet Russian software engineer Alexey Pajitnov.[1] The first playable version was completed on June 6, 1984,[2] while he was working for the Dorodnitsyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the Soviet Union in Moscow.[3] He derived its name from combining the Greek numerical prefix tetra- (the falling pieces contain 4 segments) and tennis, Pajitnov's favorite sport.[4][5] The name is also used in-game to refer to the play where four lines are cleared at once.

Tetris was the first game to be exported from the Soviet Union to the United States, where it was published by Spectrum HoloByte for the Commodore 64 and IBM PC. The game is a popular use of tetrominoes, the four-element case of polyominoes, which have been used in popular puzzles since at least 1907. (The name for these figures was given by the mathematician Solomon W. Golomb in 1953.)

The game, or one of its many variants, is available for nearly every video game console and computer operating system, as well as on devices such as graphing calculators, mobile phones, portable media players, PDAs, Network music players, and as an Easter egg on non-media products like oscilloscopes.[6] It has inspired Tetris serving dishes,[7] and it has even been played on the sides of various buildings.[8]

While versions of Tetris were sold for a range of 1980s home computer platforms as well as arcades, it was the successful handheld version for the Game Boy, launched in 1989, that established the game to critics and fans as one of the greatest video games of all time. In January 2010, it was announced that the games in the franchise had sold over 170 million copies—approximately 70 million physical and 100 million paid mobile downloads—making it the second best selling paid-downloaded game of all time behind Minecraft.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Puzzle Agent 2 is an adventure/puzzle game by Telltale Games, in collaboration with Graham Annable. It is the sequel to Nelson Tethers: Puzzle Agent. It was released on June 30, 2011.

The game begins as Agent Nelson Tethers, the sole member of the Puzzle Research Division of the FBI, is given his first field assignment. The factory that produces the erasers used by the White House has stopped production; any attempts to contact the factory are met with bizarre puzzles. Tethers must visit the factory in Scoggins, Minnesota and get it running again.

In Scoggins, Tethers is told that the factory was closed after an unidentified accident, and that the factory's foreman, Isaac Davner, hasn't been seen since. Further investigation is impossible because the factory is sealed by a complex lock requiring three keys.

Tethers' search for the keys and for additional clues to Isaac's whereabouts is hindered by mysterious gnome-like creatures called the Hidden People by the townspeople. The Hidden People seem to be supported by a local lodge called the Brotherhood of Scoggins. The lodge head, Bjorn, tells Tethers that the Hidden People have “chosen” Isaac, though he is unable to explain exactly what that means.

Finally, Tethers gains entry to the factory. Inside, he finds Isaac, driven mad by puzzles given to him by the Hidden People. Tethers tries to rescue Isaac, but the Hidden People drag Isaac off before he can be saved. The factory starts back up soon afterward. Back in Washington, Tethers is congratulated for his work, and is reminded that the disappearance of Isaac is a matter for local law enforcement.

The story continues in the sequel, Puzzle Agent 2.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Re:Activism is an analog game with direction provided through SMS and cell phone technology. Players race through neighborhoods to trace the history of riots, protests, and other political episodes in the history of New York City. Teams pit themselves against the clock and test their puzzle-solving skills to locate important sites representing acts of civic engagement and struggles for greater social justice. Activated by text messages from Re:Activism Central, teams reaching target locations respond to site-specific challenges that reinforce the historical content. Players must also activate strategic thinking by choosing to focus on racing or puzzle-solving, or a combination of both, to win points and become the most-active activists to win the game. Re:Activism was initially developed for, and first played during, the Spring 2008 Come Out And Play Festival. It has since been documented online and adapted into a downloadable kit to encourage redesign for use in other cities.

(source: Website PETLab)

Sonnet One Four is a cryptographic experience. While the puzzle is relatively simple, each tweet is representative of a line of the poem, in scrambled, random order, each tweet is meant to take you on your own unique journey to matching the clue to the line of the poem. Each line is unique and thus you as an individual will ultimately take your own path to not only interpreting the poem, decoding/encoding the poem, but you will also take different implications away from the clues. The clues sometimes are metaphorical, otherwise they are literally pointed at a word or phrase within the line of the poem the clue correlates to. In summation, when you start trying to match tweets to meanings and the lines of the poem as we have assigned each tweet to, you may in fact Google different things, or think of different references and meanings true to your experiences (intertextuality). I expect people will use the internet as a main resource to decode/match each tweet to each line but that is because I made the twitter that way. However, you could use other resources or prior knowledge. The digital aspect of the twitter is important though, it is current, it involves metrics like trending and popularity, it takes on the Shakespearean sonnet in a totally new, unexpected way. The way that the twitter functions as an art piece is in how it is an interactive installation of poetry which can be projected in a public space for people to strive to understand. You have all the answers in front of you, the name of the sonnet, each line in coded form, but the goal is to make your own meaning of the poem with our guidance.

(Source: http://conference.eliterature.org/media/first-encounter-jaci-jones-jaso…)

Wandering Meimei / Meimei Liu Lang Ji is a bilingual interactive fiction app designed for mobile interfaces for the Chinese market. This story is an intertext to the traditional Chinese comic strip, Sanmao Liu Lang Ji (Wandering Sanmao), a homeless boy. Meimei, meaning little sister, is an allegorical character and contemporary representation of the largest migrant population the world has ever seen: the migrant female factory worker. Through the app, you can make contact with the character Meimei who works in a smartphone factory in the Pearl River Delta city Guangzhou. Meimei's only technology and access point to the outside world is through her own phone. The social media hub and interface enable you to enter and become a part of Meimei's story.

(Source: ELO Conference 2014)

The reader finds, in the first level of reading a letter of Eugenia Vilasans, overlapped with a photography of her. The letter was written in 1926 and stayed hidden until she died, she confesses her adulturey in the letter. After this introduction a link invites to recompose her story, there are disorganised fragments. The image is a metaphor of the hypertext: postcards, newspapers cuts, pages from personal diaries of different dates, letters of the lover conforming the plot. It is an epistolary story that must be assembled like a puzzle.

Myst is a graphic adventure puzzle video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan (now Cyan Worlds) and published by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in 1991 and released it for the Mac OS computer on September 24, 1993; it was developer Cyan's largest project to date. Remakes and ports of the game have been released for Sega Saturn, PlayStation, 3DO, Microsoft Windows, Atari Jaguar CD, CD-i, AmigaOS, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS, iOS, and Nintendo 3DS. Myst puts the player in the role of the Stranger, who uses a special book to travel to the island of Myst. There, the player uses other special books written by an artisan and explorer named Atrus to travel to several worlds known as "Ages". Clues found in each of these Ages help to reveal the back-story of the game's characters. The game has several endings, depending on the course of action the player takes. Upon release, Myst was a surprise hit, with critics lauding the ability of the game to immerse players in the fictional world. The game was the best-selling PC game until The Sims exceeded its sales in 2002. Myst helped drive adoption of the then-nascent CD-ROM format. Myst's success spawned four direct video game sequels as well as several spin-off games and novels. (Source: Wikipedia)