Bottled Cities
A downloadable game
What is a map but the story of an imagined place?
Bottled Cities is a small city-building game for one or more players that is played with a good handful of six-sided dice, a scrap of fabric as large as you would like, a pencil, a copy of the rules, all stored in a jam-jar. You must provide your own jar.
It is played by pouring the dice onto a blank map-scroll and using the prompts provided in the rules to interpret the results
The rules are available as a small print-and-play foldable zine (folding instructions included), or as a single-sheet game, whichever you prefer, and is best played on any available flat surface not currently occupied by a cat.
Bottled Cities was written for the Jam Jar Game Jam, and as always, you are adviced to consider using any of the tools included in the Safety Tools Toolkit when playing.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $3 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Comments
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You won't give me a beautiful jar upon purchase? D:
Rip v_v
Alas, shipping costs an arm and a leg these days. You'll have to source your own beautiful jar. (v_v)
I love random seeds, but I love them even more if they're tactile and feel a bit like a puzzle, each part influencing its neighbors, shaping a cohesive narrative...
Here's a very useful initial map of a town I created for use in a campaign. Note that in the process of map creation you also create elements of locational history and culture, very useful for world building!
I really love this setting builder for its elegant simplicity and nice physicality. In a couple rolls of 6d6 across a paper towel and an hour I made a little map of a peninsula and an island I can explore further with other games that need some kind of location seed. The prompts are excellent because they all contain a simple question that leads to future storytelling, both within the session and in other games.
Well worth the price.
(I am weirdly tempted to use this to replan my Animal Crossing island too.)
Created a second map while I created my cozy town in Cozy Town. Helped me a lot there! Now for a very cozy solo campaign.
Like all of your work that I've seen, this looks fully-realized and elegant. From what I can see.
For some reason your description of the game makes me almost-but-not-quite want to purchase it. I'm not sure what's lacking in the sales pitch, I suspect the game's quite good. Maybe in a while I'll come around to clicking buy. It's not very expensive, after all.
Thank you
If you can figure out what it is that is lacking, feel free to tell me. I wish I could share more of the actual games rules-text, but as it is only a one-page game, there isn't much I can share without essentially giving away the whole game - and then people wouldn't purchase it anyway.
Ymmv on that one.
Is there way you can give a sense of what the game contains, without just screenshotting the whole thing? For one of my games I actually have bullet points: "The game contains Rules (28 pages) and Setting (28 pages):" This might be an idea to give people a better sense of what we'd be getting.
Ok. I bought this. It is totally worth the price.