The popular digital game Paraulògic has become a book. These reverse paths are becoming more frequent and well-trodden. Jordi Palou and Pau Vidal, two well-known lyricists, are responsible for El llibre del Paraulògic, which contains 90 unpublished games and 120 exclusive online paraulògics, as well as curiosities and a great sense of humour, how could it be otherwise.
The success of the Paraulògic has been so great that even the Institut d'Estudis Catalans organized a conference to analyze this phenomenon. Pau Vidal explains the novelties to La Vanguardia: “The plus of the book about the game is that it is like a kind of treasure map. If we understand the digital game as a treasure that the player goes out to look for every day, what we do in the book is to give it a kind of map”.
Vidal affirms that "each player approaches the game in a different way, and in the book what we do is arrive at meaning through form, take advantage of morphology, to arrive at semantics, and vice versa".
Thus, in the book there are puzzles and challenges, like in a crossword puzzle, on the left pages; and on the right, for example, words that have a few letters in common, or fifteen-letter words.
"We have done it to make the player understand that he can play in many different ways than he is surely playing," Vidal continues. There are those who look for the tuti or the tutis from the start, there are those who start with monosyllables... Everyone has their own strategy, but there are very few who reach the end”.
The goal is to show that you can play in different ways to achieve the same goal. “In addition, we have been a bit of a hooligan with the ghost tuti, which is a transgression, because we don't always have to pay attention to the rules. It is good that we free the infantile impulse to invent words. Over the years we are repressing it, but it is good not to always repress oneself, ”says Vidal.
“The book demonstrates the polyphony that the game offers to approach him. It also favors the collective game, which I think is the first impulse that the publisher had when it came up with this idea, ”he concludes.
Catalan version, here
