I’d love to connect!
Circuit breaker: cooperative pick and pass drafting in a surveillance state
Area 41: majority control in a failing monster containment facility
Wanderwood: quick solo adventure with only 52 cards
Mice of Minh: multivictor worker placement and recall, mice survive the seasons
Freaky Tales is the best movie I've watched in ages. So fresh and fun and rare to see a film full of such genuine joy
Can’t wait!! Maybe chromatiphors is a program you host on a breaker that lets you pay credits to change the type of ice you are encountering once per turn? Or maybe it let’s you avoid tags because that would be very octopus 🐙
All packed for Unpub! I’ve got games about:
- a failing monster containment facility
- rescuing your animal family from hunters
- surviving as a colony of field mice
- hacking a surveillance state
Can’t wait to play everyone’s games!
making a presentation
Gonna stop using the word "balance" and start using the word "tuning." Whenever I talk about "balance", I get pulled into conversations about "overbalancing" and how "balance isn't that important actually"--which feel like non-sequitors to me. But I think I've just been using the wrong word.
the time spent on the windowsill was just a brief speck on my life's timeline, but even so, it was a moment so shining and brilliant that I remember it clearly even millenia later buried in the ruins of their civilization.
oh, to be loved, even for a heartbeat
Rising tide is such a good design 🤯
I have this one on my office door. It rules.
Every number is so good though, what elevates 6 to a favorite?
Save as many as possible - if you die you die a hero making a difference to the survivors!
hey look a new Mountain Goats song
I'm designing a card game with special powers right now, and I'm trying a self imposed restriction of no more than 12 words per card... It's common wisdom that less text is good, but I'm finding the adoption of a specific limit to be extra useful in staying on track.
Bad games are the best games because they create game designers. If 5e were perfect, there would be only one game. Instead, 5e sucks so there are 10,000 tiny indie games that suck less and that’s beautiful
I think difficulty systems are at their best when they reward skilled players with a richer, deeper experience of the game, and challenge their ability to explore the edges of its decision space.
Alternatively, Wildfrost nails difficulty. You can choose which challenge bells to activate before a run, with each one adding a challenging twist to the rules. Not only does this give you agency over your experience, it expands variety at higher difficulty levels instead of collapsing it.
FTL, another personal favorite, suffers from the same problem. Less money means fewer opportunities to customize your ship, decreasing variety at higher difficulties.
I love Balatro, but it hits a pet peeve of mine in difficulty design. The first stake decreases your overall earnings, meaning you have fewer resources to play with. It raises difficulty, but at the expense of what makes Balatro fun: crafting a unique deck.
The actual rules I write are pretty informal - I’m not writing for anyone else to understand them. I’m just trying to record the steps and flow of play to clarify the game’s shape in my head
I do the exact same thing! It helps me find overly complicated rules. When something that seems simple requires 4+ steps on paper, it’s a sign for me to make changes.
Bird heaven is neither above nor underground; it's underwater, inside that twinkling mirror, that discontinuous, lake-faceted jewel
Skull has so many great moments. Bidding the highest amount, and flipping a flower on every tile is an all timer
Guess I have no choice now! Favorite basic pokemon for my #starting6
A cup (mug specifically). I was just thinking about my favorite inanimate objects so mugs were def top of mind
So well deserved!
been playing some good board games lately and thinking about how board games vs. ttrpgs are, in their use of metaphor, very similar to poetry vs. prose
We make it all together or not at all 💛 truer words have never been spoken
hundreds of people contributed to qud meaningfully over the years and it wouldnt be the same without any of them.
our societ worships the auture but the truth is we make it together or not at all
Escalator B on the second floor of the Philadelphia Convention Center, going up to the terrace. A banner indicates it's where attendees can find First Look, Unpub, and Freeplay
If you're at #PAXU and looking for THE freshest games, skip the floor and ascend to the terrace for Unpub. There you can shape the future of tabletop games!
We're all the way on the west (Broad St) side of the hall; keep going up til you can go no higher.
#PAXUnplugged @unpub.bsky.social
Thanks so much! Its so great to watch players inhabit the theme 🐸 hope to see you in the unpub room!
