Games: The Emacs Carnival Post For September 2026

I don't play games within Emacs. Instead I enjoy learning about the many functions and modes it has. I even derived a Tip of the Day that displays help on a randomly-chosen function. I invoke it at startup; there's a non-zero probability that I'll spend 15 minutes or so exploring the function it provides.

I get the impression that I'm not the only one who enjoys Emacs this way. When I read others' postings, I see references to "customize," "configure," "init file," "rabbit hole." I'm pretty sure I also came across a few posts that contained this: "my ex-spouse made me chose between him/her and Emacs." Often, reading these posts is enjoyable in itself.

I enjoy writing and blogging, too. I started my first journal when I was 13 years old. My answer to "What book would you choose if stranded on an uninhabited island?¹" would be "a blank notebook that comes with a pencil." I also enjoy interacting with the Emacs community. It's as if this "Ray on Emacs" blog provides entertainment squared. This can be expressed mathematically as E2, where E is entertainment and 2 is two.

While researching this topic, I was surprised at how many games we can choose from, even in plain vanilla. Naive folks might scoff at programmers who write games for Emacs. But they don't understand that games demonstrate Emacs' capabilities. I suspect the underlying motivation is that writing games for Emacs is fun. It's a challenge that leads to accomplishment.²

I'm looking forward to reading submissions to Emacs Carnival September 2026 and trying some games. participate is Humor not to necessary.³

¹ aka "Desert Island" see Uninhabited island on Wikipedia

² Folks in the MS-DOS USENETs would joke about writing Batch Files that could do calculus. At least I think it was a joke.

³ "Humor is not necessary to participate" (as evidenced by this post).