Free-range thoughts about design, writing, and play
When Stonemaier Games announced Apiary, its new worker placement game about futuristic bees in space, I was all over it. I loved the theme, the highly paintable queen bee miniature, and the prospect of a flexible worker placement system. I’ve had a couple of chances to play the game since it arrived, and Apiary delivers…
I’ve been spending a lot of time with Stationfall, the “party game for hardcore gamers” in which you play several members of a wacky cast of misfits running around a crashing space station. Honestly, this game pretty much had me at “hello”. The rules get a little complicated, but bear with me as I summarize….
This summer, I finally read Michael Ward’s 2008 book Planet Narnia, and it blew my mind. It completely changed my understanding of C.S. Lewis, but what I never expected is that it would also provide useful new tools for making games.
Intrepid had me when the cover said “hello”. My first thought was, “a Gravity board game?” followed very closely by “IT MUST BE MINE!” Once I played the game, though, I found a lot more happening than a space station in peril.
So, it’s been a few months. Anything interesting happening in the world? I’ve been busy with some things, and one of them is marveling at Slay the Spire. Trading card games and deck builders are a big part of my gaming history. I played and sold them in the 1990s, drifted away from them in…
I’ve been reading some excellent books from the University of Minnesota Press lately, including Shira Chess’s Ready Player Two. But the standout for me has been Christopher Paul’s The Toxic Meritocracy of Video Games. How can you not love a book that makes you question your entire skill set?
The app version of Evolution is out from North Star Games, and I should be delighted. It’s a strong adaptation of my second favorite game — so what went wrong?
Battle royale games have shown an outrageous ability to draw in players over the last year, and I’ve been keeping a close eye on them. I’m not much for shooters, though, so Nintendo’s Tetris 99 is my first direct exposure to the mode. It’s a hell of an experience.
One of my favorite Finnish phrases is sopii kuin nyrkki silmään: “fits like a fist to the eye”. It’s a pungent way to say that something “fits well”, and it’s an apt description for how the recent mobile version of Lemmings handles energy.
Last week I took a day trip to Helsinki for a “Monetization in Games” seminar at the Aalto Design Factory. The focus was on how to do monetization “effectively and ethically”, and I’m a fan of at least one of those.