The Best of Lizzie Smithson

Lizzie Smithson is picking Mark Fifty's pocket. Mark Fifty is concentrating hard. Empty Susan's head is exploding in the background. Lizzie says, Oh no! This jerk is unleashing a Fatal psychic attack, aimed at you! In real life, I mean! And you'll be Dead in five minutes, if you don't stop it! If you're still alive five minutes from now, that means you've won! You sure showed him! Well, see ya! Get 8 hours of sleep!

I like games that incorporate an element of real life roleplaying--when I'm feeling, particularly dire, I like to imagine that's Mark Fifty here trying to kill me, and it's a game of mine to wear him out until he gives up. It's silly, but it helps me!

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First, think of a word, any word at all. Then, select up to three letters of your choice. Your goal is to rearrange the letters of the original word and the letters you picked into a new, existing word. Example: Rent plus O plus S plus T equals Monster. Succeed, and you gain one point and can play again with the word you just made. The game is over when you are unable to add any more letters and still spell something.

One of my personal design goals early on was to make some good games that could be played *entirely* within the player's mind, no controller screen or components required. This game was an early success in that department, and I played it a lot. UNTIL... I don't know, it got to be too much of an attention suck after a while. I would be bored at work, try to think of a word, and then groan because while I wanted something to do, I wasn't actually in the mood to play this game. As such, I don't play it much these days, but I still look back on it fondly and I feel like it's a pretty good puzzle game, if you were looking for something like that.

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Get a die or stone or marble, or some other kind of small hard object. Hold it between the tip of your thumb and the tip of one of your other fingers. To Win, use those fingers and Crush it. Squish it into paste. Completely smash it into destruction. Oh, and be quick about it! That thing you're holding? It's Evidence! Oh, you can't pull it off? Hahaha... well, neither can I. Keep trying or I'm ruined!

I made this game for the zine "Reality is a Stim Toy," which I consider to be the best zine I've yet made--this game is one of my favorites from that package. I tend to play it when I'm feeling angry or agitated and like I need to hit things. It's a good way to let off steam without having to worry about breaking something. For me, honestly, it's a good anger management tool, and for that I'm glad I made it!

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Acquire a piece of paper, ideally a flimsy one, of whatever size and shape you'd like. Now, using only two fingers, Lightly grip one end of the paper by its bottom edge And hold it so that it’s standing up. Don't let it bend! It must remain totally straight. It must stay upright and not slump to either side. As long as it's doing so, you're a winner. Keep balancing it so it doesn’t fall, or try again. Too easy? Too hard? Then try again with a different sheet. And relax, I won't ask where you got that Paper! Spin any tale you want about where it came from. As long as it's still standing, I won't judge.

See this here? Read those rules. Read them again. This? Is the best game I've ever made. Nobody believes me when I tell them that, but it's the truth. I play this constantly, at work when I'm anxious, at home when I need something to do with my hands, I play it, a lot, and it helps me get through life. I think the actual activity is pleasant for the hands, but I'm *also* proud of the simple roleplaying element I incorporated into this--sometimes I like to imagine myself talking to Lizzie and spinning some wild tale of fancy about how I got the paper, what heist or misdeed I did to acquire it. I remember when I was testing this, I would sometimes play it with a dollar bill, as sort of a way to add a sort of, I dunno, financial element to the proceedings, cause this series is supposed to be about pickpocketing. It's good! It's my faaaavorite! (I actually think it plays best with regular printer paper)

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When walking, every time one of your feet is the first to step over a crack, give that foot a point. Pick one foot to be your favorite. If your favorite foot is getting more points, that means the good guys are winning.

This is a "game" I came up with as a teenager, and played into adulthood. I've been playing it a lot more frequently, actually, due to moving to within walking distance of my workplace (hence, more opportunities to go outside and play it). I was thinking kind of specifically of Transformers when I made this (so like, the metaphor here is that your favorite foot would be the equivalent of the Autobots), and it does actually, to me, bring up old memories of watching terrible cartoons on TV in the 90s. Well, that's how *I* feel about it, anyway!

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Pick a blade of grass off the ground. And roll it into a ball. And roll it back and forth between your fingers. And daydream. Now you're a winner.

For a brief period in 2022, I played this game several times a day while taking my breaks from work outside. There was a little grassy area and I used to sit down in it and play this game. It relaxed me. I haven't played it in a while, but that's okay. All of us need to play this, it's LITERALLY a game about touching grass!

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Hold one end of a long pencil between your index and middle fingers. Nothing besides those fingers may touch it. Using only finger dexterity and gravity, maneuver your fingers to the other end of the pencil. It may not fall from your hand. Succeed for one point. Go back and forth between ends for infinite points. If it falls, you lose all your points. Oh well.

I believe this game was inspired by football? Very vaguely though. When I first designed this, I was thrilled. I thought I had made a perfect game. Well, this is NOT a perfect game--the fact that failure means you drop the main component means you have to pick it up again if you want to retry, and that's annoying! By the time I'd realized that, though, I'd already added it to the list of my favorite things I've made, and my policy is that once something I've made ends up there, I am not allowed to remove it. MENSA laws. Oh well!

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Wash your hands! Every time you do so, you may give yourself 1 EXP and 1 Buff. Every time you reach Times 10 EXP, all subsequent Buffs gained are worth one additional number. In other words, your Buff gained per hand wash is equal to your total EXP divided by ten. Raise your stats forever! But... if your hands are getting dry, itchy, or flaky, then you died! Please stop playing this game. That sais, if you know how I make my living, then you know why I need to motivate myself to play this game as much as possible LOL.

I designed this in 2023 and enjoyed several straight months of playing it frequently and amusing myself by doing constant math in my head. Then I stopped, but I retain all the happy memories. These days, I frequently play the IDLE GAME VERSION, which you can check out here. The Idle game version automatically distributes EXP and BUFF at a rate of one per second, and I enjoy setting it to run in the background on my computer while I do other things.

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Take any object. Literally Any object! Could be a wallet, a pocket, some change etcetera. But pick something, and hold you hand as close to the object as you can, Without touching it. If you can feel it, you lose! The closer your hand gets, the better you win. See? You and I aren't touching Anything! Haven't put our hands on nothing that's not ours. No one can call Me a thief. Right?!

Around the time I made Reality is a Stim Toy, I got to wondering what a quote unquote "Perfect" game in the style of these lyric games would look like. So, I sat down and made a list of all of the qualities I think would be cool in a lyric game/stim toy/analog game in the style of these pages, and then after having made my list, I "designed" this "game" as something that would meet every single one of my criteria. By my own standards, it is objectively perfect! It's okay, I guess.

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Roby, Lizzie, and Eliza, are on a couch together, looking through a photo album. Roby says, You've known Eliza for even longer than I have! How did you two meet? Lizzie responds, I remember it like it was yesterday... I was pickpocketing her, and you can too! Each turn, imagine you pick her pocket, and in doing so gain 1 point. Then, imagine Eliza yelling, What Are You Doing? Each turn, you must repeat the process of stealing from her and getting asked, What Are You Doing? with each ask requiring a more intricate explanation! If you contradict yourself, admit to thievery, or can't think of anything to say, she'll catch you and the game is over! Steal at least 9 points or more before that happens! Anyway after she caught me we had a laugh and started living together. Eliza asks, What Are You Doing? Lizzie says, telling my wife how we met, try to keep up.

My entire artistic career has been a string of increasingly elaborate attempts to recreate what I liked about the Playstation 2 Sly Cooper games, and this one gets pretty close! This is also another game intended to be played entirely within the player's mind, and this is probably the best thing I made in that style. I like it! I play it a lot lol. I set up a simple chatbot version of this game here, if you're interested. It's nice if it's important for you to keep score, although you'll have to act as your own referee.

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Other Things I made that I think are neat:

Lizzie Smithson was originally intended as a series of card games! And the best one I ever made was One Armed Robbery, an endless Solitaire game designed to be played sans-table! (Believe it or not, I made this before table-free games were everywhere, though I failed to get it out the door in time to attract attention for the idea). The "official" version of the game is largely unplayable, because I can't afford to print the cards, but you can play a stripped down version with regular playing cards using the instructions here! The main thing you miss from this version is details on each card explaining some of the less intuitive mechanics, and the artwork, which is designed to tell a procedurally generated story as you flip through the cards (You can recreate that experience via the official Webcomic version here!

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LINK

The other card game I'm really proud to have made is Rambling Roommates, a 54 card deck consisting of roughly 54 games, each designed to be played with just one card. The idea is that the backside would have instructions for one of the games, and the front side would have some sort of illustration, and there'd be a developing narrative as you peeked through the deck. Technically speaking, this is the most ambitious thing I've made--I started work on it in 2019, and finished it in early 2025. That's a long time for me, but I've heard of some card games that have been in development longer than a decade! Wow! I actually currently consider the actual story here to be noncanon--this was the game that introduced Roby and Eliza to the cast, but my idea of them was very underbaked at this point, and neither of them is at all the same character that appears in my webcomic. I had to learn from my mistakes!

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LINK

I've been trying to make videogames for a few years now, but my videogame design skills are a bit underdone. Pickpocket TV is the best one I've made so far, and one of my favorite things I've made in general. It is, essentially, a sports spectatorship game where you bet in game currency on which character, Lizzie or Susan, will more successfully and more frequently pick the other's pocket. You can treat it like a numbers go up game and bet money and switch the target of your bets to try and become as rich as possible, OR you can do what I do when I play this game, and bet just 1 Money and then leave the tab running throughout the day and check on it once in a while to see who's winning. It's like real sports! Anyway, I really like this game.

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Anyway, that's all the good stuff I made!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks for reading!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If you didn't like any of those games, here's one more for you! Shove It Up Your Ugly Ass! Literally the exact opposite of the uh game design philophy as a whole, as a matter of fact.