I've been wanting to use Ren-C as the engine behind a graphical game.
The idea would be that the things you're placing on the screen represent items in the evaluator, and it would be simplified and iconographic.
What I'm visualizing usually is something where array Elements are little circular Cells, and there are concentric shells around the Elements that represent layers of quoting. Then, quasiforms and antiforms would be some alternate styling of these shells. FENCE! and ELEMENT! and BLOCK! would be stylized but keep their delimiters... same with TUPLE! and CHAIN! and PATH!.
I don't know if there'd be any TEXT! strings... for simplification, everything would probably be a list. So instead of "ABC" in the game you'd always be working with something like [A B C] or [@A @B @C]. Though RUNE! may be needed for things like _ and #. I haven't gotten that far.
Visually I Am Envisioning Something Like Opus Magnum
The gameplay would be different, because I don't envision a separate "space" for where the "Code" is from the "Data". But the vibe of the workspace I'm thinking would be inspired like it:
Experience Would Be More Like Baba Is You
In the game, you'd be putting your words and data all in the same space, so it would be more like Baba is You.
Another Inspiration Would Be Patrick's ParaBox
This is another instance of something which has the feeling I'm looking for. But the Patrick's Parabox guy had to come up with all the engine logic to resolve paradoxes and make sense of the behavior (as did the Baba is You guy). What I'm talking about is just using the evaluator as it is... but grafting it into a GUI:
I Really Need A Demo Of What I'm Thinking
Part of me feels like there has to be an indie game dev out there who would love to be the one who gets to give antiforms and quasiforms their big break to a gaming audience.
So even if I made something with bad graphics... if I could show a few tutorial levels, and then maybe a couple of "good" levels (exposing people to PARSE mechanics and needing to use them to solve something)... I might be able to turn the whole UI and game design part over to someone else.
This is part of why I think getting people involved in the gaming spirit of Rebmu would be a win... to show the fun of it, and then try and figure out how to put that fun into a non-textual format
Although... Some Text-Programming Games Do Succeed...
TIS-100 from Zachtronics had an unusual amount of success and positive reviews. Make of that what you will:
The Fact That The Engine Runs Anywhere Is Good
Running in the browser means people who work in HTML5/etc. could call into it, and I've got the JavaScript bridge already made.
But it could be integrated into basically any game dev framework anyone uses, as it builds as ANSI C99.
I should brush up the C++ interface, that made it a little more convenient to use. With AI's help, I bet I could get a C# interface off the ground as well (I delved a little into that).