Acrophobia (game)
Acrophobia, commonly referred to as Acro for short and also known as Acromania, is a multi-round, multi-player on-line IRC game where contestants vie to create the most cleverly popular definitions for randomly generated acronyms. The game has nothing to do with acrophobia, the fear of heights. Players enter an IRC chat room hosted by an Acrophobia robot, or bot and then compete over a series of rounds to make the best acronym. After a set amount of time expires from each round, each player then votes anonymously via the bot on which definition they thought was the most creative and points are awarded to the most popular one definition. Typically, nonsense definitions will score low and the most humorous sounding definition which effectively makes a sentence from the initials will win. The game was originally created by Anthony Shubert in the mid 1990s and has since been been ported by a number of different developers.
Gameplay
Players join in a chat-room like setting to submit various meanings for different random acronymns that come onto the screen. After a limited amount of time, all the players vote on their favorite response. The player with the most votes wins the round, but other players can receive points too for fastest response time (as long as they've received at least one vote during the round) or if they've voted for the winning answer. After one player reaches 30 points, the two top players join together in a fast-paced face off round, where the two fill out 3 acrophobia acronym meanings, one 3 letters long, one 4 letters long and one 5 letters long. All the players vote between the two responses for each of these face off round answers and whoever receives the most votes wins the game. And then it starts all over again. Acrophobia is a web based version of the board game, "Acronymble," which came on the market in 1991 and is produced by Acronymwits Inc. Acronymble works exactly like Acrophobia, but with the added twist of sometimes giving players all same letters to work with (eg: 6 G's) and at other times allowing players to use their own words (eg: using a 5 letter word that begins with "P") as the basis for their acronym.
Example round
This is an example of a typical round of Acrophobia on IRC and the selection the players would have to vote upon. In this particular case it was a tie between entries 2 and 6. [10:47] = Starting round=
[10:47] Your acro for round 6/8: gpmmp
[10:47] Send your entries to me VIA MESSAGE, you have 100 seconds
[10:48] -acrobup- Entry accepted
[10:49] Entry 1: Go pack my muffin, please.
[10:49] Entry 2: Graphic pornography makes me perspire!
[10:49] Entry 3: green pipecleaners make many projects
[10:49] Entry 4: great, ponch's motorcycle. must purchase!
[10:49] Entry 5: gay pimps micro manage proles
[10:49] Entry 6: grandmas panties: messy, meaty, pink
[10:49] = Voting Time!!!!=
[10:49] Send your vote (number) to me VIA MESSAGE, you have 70 seconds
External links Wired article about Acrophobia Acrophobia FAQ Acro Bot 0.9.3 AcroChallenge - Free and friendly web-based Acrophobia game, with downloadable client.
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