Speed and family crises

"Where lies the boundary between meaning and sentiment? Between memory and nostalgia? America and Americana? What is and what was? Does it move?"
--Donovon Hohn, A Romance of Rust

Two siblings, working out their family obsessions while on a road trip through haunted America. Sounds familiar? Well here’s my take on it.

This is a two player game and it is designed to get very personal. The two characters are siblings who’ve drifted apart but are brought together by a family calamity. Did I mention that the kids were raised as monster hunters driving around with their parents in an RV and dealing with weird supernatural events. Well until dad died and then it was just the two of you and mom.

Then you grew up, and drifted apart, and maybe got a life away from fighting the supernatural. And then calamity, and well your now in a hot car speeding across the landscape trying to refind what you used to be to each other, rebuild a family and stop evil from happening.

The supernatural is all about story cycles and all about America, the hidden highways and byways. The game will examine all things American: guitars, cars, kids, motion, passion, enterprise, and change, in a fervent attempt to reconcile the American past with the American present, using only legend and highway maps as guides. Understanding that this is a country obsessed with roots but founded on uprooting, that has always been characterized by restless internal migration: people are always leaving home to find a better, truer home.

So yes, this is my UnknownUSA for those keeping track (robotnik did ask for it). But then this is a fairly old set of tropes and I'm finally itching to do something with it.

Mechanics wise? All in the drama. Gumshoes without non-investigational abilities. Where the only knowledge of the supernatural the characters have comes from that of the players and clues discovered in the game.

History Hacker

This sounds like an interesting show.

“History Hacker” is a new show on the History Channel that purports to be about taking a hands-on look at the history's greatest inventions and new ways to hack them. The pilot episode, which is all about Nikola Tesla and his pioneering work with electricity, airs tonight, Friday, September 26th at 8pm and midnight. Here’s the History Hacker teaser video.

Meet Nikola Tesla, the unsung genius behind the most miraculous advances of the Age of Electricity, and Hacker-extraordinaire Bre Pettis who will break the history of electricity down to its nuts and bolts. Bre will show you how to build your own versions of Tesla’s greatest inventions and takes you on a journey from New York City’s ultra modern power plants, to one of the world’s most advanced satellite research labs, and then onward into the future of energy…unlimited wireless power.

This sounds like it might be interesting, I'll have to see if I can stream it at some point.