Notes on Play

I want to be generous, not chintzy with the coolest parts of my game. But that does not mean I should be generous with all the parts of my game. Brian Moriarty's talk linked here. 

I learned a lot by calling some people up on the phone. Most notably: physics matters.

Canticle came to life, and to my exact specifications. But my exact specifications were wrong. Fixing it led to an explosion of great ideas.

Mark Brown made a great video about finding great ideas. And it made me wonder: where did my best ideas come from, and how do I set myself up to have more?

Brian Bornmeuller's talk at NYU Game Center helped me finally articulate a question I've been wrestling with: what is Catacombian Games, exactly? In this episode I map out the five layers of the board game industry — design, publishing, manufacturing, distribution, and retail — and share how I'm approaching 2026 like a product manager: setting clear experiments, defining success criteria, and actually measuring results. 

A framework for deciding what needs to change next in a game prototype that I developed with my friend Walter Somerville. I used this recently to make some huge improvements to Canticle.

Games feel immersive and grounded when they are familiar and legible -- even from a distance. 

How do you give the emperor a sense of epiphany? How do you give the board a feeling of organic ideas-based growth? I picked the experience first, and designed around that.

This is a game that takes place in the past and the present. And I've never been so excited to work on something. Many more updates to follow on future episodes.

2025 was a creative explosion for me. Now it's time to focus up, and pick which prototype I will try to take to the finish line.

I tried (and failed) to make a basketball board game. I came up with some ideas that I loved, but ultimately decided to set it aside. 

Try to lose. It's a faster and more effective way to learn.

Sometimes players show you exactly what they want to do. You can either fight them, or learn from them.

Games don't need written narrative to be great games. The best stories in games are the ones that organically emerge from the gameplay itself.

Most games simulate some real world scenario. So how do you decide which parts of the real world to represent in game mechanisms? This is where the real artistry of game design comes to light.

Between each iteration of my game, I'll have dozens of ideas. But which do I actually implement? I find it extremely helpful to break my ideas down into problem statements, and then focus on just solving the most important problems. Here are some examples of how this works for me. [link to play game] [link to original conference talk]

I've got a great game with great reviews. So how the heck do I get it onto shelves? Here's everything I've tried.

Play the new prototype with us by joining our discord! I built a game that feels like a board game, but is secretly a social game that requires collaboration, deception, and communication.

How do you communicate complex rules to players? It's worth thinking about what kind of complexity you're communicating, how you communicate it, and when you communicate it. This episode has a couple examples of how designers solve this problem.

LLMs excel at churning out sugar free vanilla paste. That's great when you're writing code. And it's awful when you're doing creative work.

A game is only a game if it is playable. It is so hard for me to resist the temptation to retreat to the "mind palace" where my game devolves from a playable, testable, living thing into a mere thought experiment. Here's how I avoid that temptation. Also, here is the link to my video of rapidly prototyping in Figma. 

My white whale (one of them, at least) is to let players decide how they want to win, and even decide whether it's a cooperative or competitive game. I haven't cracked it yet. But I got a lot closer last week.

There are two voices in your head. You don't know which is correct, but you do know that one is more useful. 

Everything I learned at my first game conference. Buy Colossi now.

You can play "Hot Takes" in The Social Game right now!

When you love something, but it's confusing as heck.

Links: The Social Game, my work podcast where we talked about this, and Videos of the event.

Test test.