The Conscious Videogame

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Game Overview

Inspired by the writings of G.I. Gurdjieff and Russell Smith’s study of octaves. Although knowledge of these teachings is not required to play the game, much of the meaning and significance will be lost without understanding the concepts behind it.

With that in mind, this overview is intended to ‘close the gap’ on some of this understanding, and hopefully provide enough background for the game to make sense to a beginner. It is supplemented by the official game rules which explain game play in greater detail.

Introduction

We begin the game much like we all begin in life, with no skills and little control over what happens. You are at the mercy of chance as a roll of the dice and of fate as the laws your game is governed by. As you progress and develop over the course of the game, you will be given new abilities and more control over what happens to you.

The object of the game is to “complete yourself” in as few turns as possible.

At times you will have several options available and it is not always clear which one is the right choice. For this reason, it is not possible to play the game perfectly. However, with experience and consideration, some of the choices become clearer and the game becomes easier to play. This is a fairly complex game with many rules which does take some effort to master. It’s called The Conscious Videogame because keeping conscious of the various goals and developments as the game progresses can be quite challenging — that’s the point!

The Parts

Board Spaces

The colored dots at the top of the window are the board spaces. Yellow spaces are food. Blue spaces are air. Red spaces are impressions. The black cross is the player's current position. These are the three types of being food and landing on them creates a piece of stuff on the corresponding part of the player’s Food Diagram. Orange with a black dot in the middle are card spaces, and will add a card to your card hand. Green with a red dot in the middle are law spaces. Landing on a law space causes a “magnetic center moment”. During magnetic center moments, one additional game card may be played from the card hand. See the Law Cards section for details about what happens when law spaces are passed over.

Rolling the dice and moving your player is the end of the current turn and begins a new turn. It's worth noting that the game is played with a 10-sided die that has values 0 through 9. As you progress in the game, you can acquire the ability to roll again or take the opposite side of the dice.

Food Diagram

The matrix of colored dots to the right of the game window with yellow, blue and light red spots represent three octaves of being food, or the Food Diagram. The yellow spots are for Food and Drink, i.e. what we normally call food, ingested in the mouth and digested in the digestive organs. The blue spots are Air, another type of being-food, eaten with every breath and digested in the lungs and blood vessels where it mixes with digested food. The four red spots are Impressions. This type of food is absorbed by through the sensing organs: eyes, ears, nose, mouth and nerve endings. Impressions are digested in the brain, where it mixes with the other foods after they have already been transformed into the food of the brain.

Pieces enter at the left for air and the bottom for food and impression. They work their way up by harnel-miatznel and by receiving various shocks at certain points. A black dot on or next to the note means food exists at that note. Please refer to the game rules for more details about this important process and the shocks involved. It is critical for surviving death.

Knowledge and Being

The three rows of face cards, aces, and jokers on the left side of the game window are the knowledge and being parts of the player. They represent the six centers of a man:

1. Diamonds – Instinctive Center
2. Clubs – Moving Center
3. Hearts – Emotional Center
4. Spades – Intellectual Center
5. Ace of Diamonds, Clubs and Hearts – Higher Emotional Center
6. Ace of Spades, Extra Joker and Joker – Higher Mental Center

Dividing the diagram down the center vertically, cards to the left belong to Being, while cards to the right belong to Knowledge. Each face card within a suit represents a subdivision of that center. Jacks are the unconscious, or automatically functioning part. Queens are the part that functions when attention is drawn by a subject. Kings are the part that functions when conscious will is controlling attention from within. Take the moving center (Clubs) as an example. The jack would be automatic reflex and stimulus/response in the muscles. The queen would be playing catch with a ball or swimming in a pool – activities that keep the attention without any special effort. The king would be something which demanded absolute control and perfection of movement, e.g. a professional ballet dancer, or painter with perfect brush control.

When a third piece is added to a card on the Parts of Being diagram, this causes a bumping to occur. One of the pieces is discarded from the board, and another piece is moved one place to the right, e.g. the Extra Joker bumps to the Joker; the King of Diamonds bumps into the Jack of Clubs. The parts on the right edge of the diagram are bumped up one row and begin at the left, e.g. the King of Spades bumps into the Ace of Diamonds and the King of Clubs bumps to the Jack of Hearts. The exception is the Joker which does not bump. Extra pieces simply accumulate there.

See The Path for more information on how this diagram affects game play.

Power Buttons

The row of buttons along the top of the window are the powers available to the player. As you progress along The Path, new buttons will appear enabling new abilities. In the beginning the only options available are a roll of the dice and playing cards. The red square is the current roll value.

Card Hand

The playing cards at the bottom of the window are the cards in your hand which can be played in combination to create pieces on the Parts of Being diagram. This is the chief means to progress along The Path, so collecting and playing cards is important to player development in the game. Two or three cards from the same “grouping” are played together to make a piece on the corresponding card of the Parts of Being diagram. Number groupings are: 2, 3, and 4 to create Jacks; 5, 6, and 7 for Queens; 8, 9, and 10 for Kings. If the selected cards are the same suit, grouping and different ranks, the corresponding face card of that suit is created. Playing all three ranks from a grouping at once creates two pieces on that face card, thus it is a more efficient use of your cards.

Playing cards also causes the self-remembering shock to the Food Diagram. See Game Deck Reference for a listing of the cards available in the game deck (not a normal 52 card deck).

Law Cards

Passing one law causes a single law to be picked from your law hand by random draw. Passing two laws in one move results in a law card drawn by random and one by the player's choice. On turns when law cards must be chosen, a dialog window opens to select the law(s). The selected laws will appear on the main window under the Parts of Being diagram. Law cards are obeyed by selecting a law card and clicking the obey law button. Law cards may also be played as cards by themselves or in combination with cards in the player's hand to create new Parts of Being pieces. On a turn involving laws, they may be played and obeyed in whatever order the player determines to be most advantageous. Because they can have a large affect on the outcome of the game, care should be taken during law turns to choose this ordering wisely.

All law cards must be obeyed before you can roll the dice to end the current turn. There is no requirement to play all the law cards as a card play. Playing law cards does not count as one of the card plays for that turn, so it is encouraged whenever possible.

See Law Card Reference for a full listing of all law cards in the law card deck.

The Path

Players progress in the game by following a path of development. The player begins as a multiplicity of ‘i’s, disorganized and often conflicting or contradicting. The first goal is to find a school. There are four “ways” (types of schools). The first school teaches perfection and control over the physical body and is called the way of the Fakir. The second school teaches perfection and control of the emotions and is called the way of the Monk. The third school teaches perfection of thought or intellect and is called the way of the Yogi. These first three schools demand rigorous training and retirement from “normal life” to a monastery or similarly withdrawn existence. In the game, these schools are found by obtaining all three face cards of a single suit, e.g. a Yogi would have a piece on the Jack, Queen, and King of Spades, a Monk has all three Hearts, and a Fakir would has all three Diamonds or Clubs.

Students in the fourth way schools seek balanced development in the three lines of the other schools. Allegedly this school can produce faster results from a dedicated practitioner. For this reason it is sometimes called the way of the sly man. In the game, this school is found by having a Queen or King piece in three different suits. Once the player finds a school, they can “transform emotions” once per turn by combining two different face cards of the same suit, creating an ace of that suit. This also causes the transform shock in the Food Diagram.

When all four aces have at least one piece, the student reaches the next level of attainment, called Steward. A Steward is one who is working to put the ‘house’ in order. Stewards can be aware of themselves and their faults, and work to fix them. A Steward in the game can create an Extra Joker by combining two different aces, except the ace of spades which is special. This combination causes any shock to the Food Diagram the player chooses.

The final step of development in the game is to get a piece on the Joker. This is accomplishing by bumping through the Extra Joker. Remember a bump occurs when three pieces have been placed on the card. Creating a Joker causes all shocks simultaneously in the Food Diagram. Once a Joker has been created, more Jokers can be made by combining one Extra Joker with one Ace of Spades.

Surviving Death

When the player reaches the end of the board, 245 total spaces, they die. There are also four laws which can cause death to occur earlier. The only chance to avoid perishing like a dog without a soul is to crystallize the astral body before the end of the turn when death occurs. This is done by putting extra pieces off the end of the food diagram – 3 food, 3 air, and 1 impression piece. When a piece of food, air, or impressions passes the highest note, a green chip appears at the end to show how many have been accumulated so far. The astral body will allow the player to survive for a full roundtrip across the board — forward and then backwards.

After making it back around to the beginning of the board, the astral body decays. At that point, in order to continue, the player will need to have crystallized the mental body which is immortal within the limits of the sun. Mental body is created by filling all notes of the astral body and then putting the same 3, 3, 1 arrangement of mental chips off the ends of the octaves. Once the player has crystallized the mental body they can continue playing as long as it takes to Start Over.

After death, the game changes. The player keeps 7 cards from their card hand at death. If they have more than 7, they will have to choose which 7 cards to keep. If they have less than 7, they draw until there are seven cards in their hand. All laws are removed from play and discarded. On the board, card spaces become decay spaces and law spaces become wild spaces. Landing on a decay space causes a piece of the food, air, or impression octave to be removed by random roll of the dice. They should be avoided when possible by using the roll options. Landing on a wild space gives the player a choice of food, air, impression or card space.

The Food Diagram also changes after death. The physical body (chips) is discarded for the astral which turns into chips. As soon as the mental body is chrystallized, the astral body is discarded for the mental. After that it is simply a matter of filling all notes with at least one chip to complete the mental body.

🃏 🃏 🃏 I Start Over 🃏 🃏 🃏

The game is completed when there are three pieces on the Joker, and the mental body of the Food Diagram is complete.
Declare “I Start Over!” and bask in the glow of a well played game.

Install the game.