Product Spotlight: Games About Communication

We've somehow managed to stock a number of titles that deal with language and communication. Gaming, I think, is the perfect medium to explore both of those themes, and there are more and more titles coming out that delve into them. I thought I'd like to highlight the titles we have in stock.

• Dialect, by Kathryn Hymes and Hakan Seyalioglu, is a GM-less game for 3-5 players that explores the creation of a new language as well as thoughts on how languages become extinct.

• In the 1970s Nicaragua had no official sign language for use by the deaf community, but in 1977 fifty deaf children were brought together at a school, where they created a common sign language that allowed communication. Sign is a card-based game that explores this process, and examines how language evolves.

• Rather than focusing on the creation of language, Signal to Noise is a game for two players that focuses on the slow collapse of communication, with one player taking the role of an interstellar explorer, writing letters to the other player back on earth. As the distance between the two increases, the clarity of the missives decrease.

• Along a similar theme, a loud noise in a quiet place, by Marx Shepard and others, deals with temporary hearing loss.

• Inspirisles teaches American Sign Language as part of a game where the players take on the roles of the descendants of King Arthur, transported back in time and place to the British Isles.