I don’t usually remember my dreams. And when I do, they’re stressful. A few weeks ago, I was exploring a dark and dangerous cave in my dreams. The cave floor was jagged, dirty, and oddly tenuous. It felt fragile in a way you don’t expect rock to be. Something was off with this cave. When…

👋 Welcome to the many new subscribers who signed up for Equip Story via the ALL-CARDS Kickstarter! This is where I write about my creative process and thoughts about game development, like how I playtested a game with my family in the bathroom and how a Japanese elevator music singer convinced me to defend my…

There was another game jam week at my studio, Doborog! These regular game jams are my favorite job perk. Our studio game jams are whatever we make of it. The five days are self-directed. We can build a game, work on a side quest for an existing Doborog project, or learn a new development skill,…

My studio Doborog had another game jam! This time, I designed a puzzle game called Space Station Self-Destruct Simulator. The final exam for your Space Station Engineering class requires you to build an evacuation procedure for the residents of a virtual station. Put safety protocols in the right order to save as many lives as…

All 100 interactive fiction games from my Adventure Snack newsletter have a beautiful new home! The all-new Adventure Snack website collects every game in an easy-to-browse and search site. A big thank you to Mario Vellandi for lending your awesome web design skills to this project. (Mario was an OG Adventure Snack player. He reached…

Years ago, I was first transitioning into game development full time, I had lunch with my friend and collaborator Spencer. Spencer runs an indie studio, YYT Games. Naturally, the conversation turned to game ideas. I can’t help myself. I like to bounce ideas off people, which is why my nickname is Bounce House*. I have…

I’ve been trying to fine tune my creative process for maximum fun and enjoyment. In fact, this newsletter is about how to make game development as fun as playing games. It’s right there in the tagline! I’ve found a big part in making art more fun is to put process over product. What good is…

When I asked Nicole Amato, formerly the Games Outreach Lead at Kickstarter, whether creating a Kickstarter campaign could be fun, she told me about her late husband. The two of them ran a game publishing house together. He was an artist who enjoyed the challenge of designing enticing graphics to showcase their games in the…

🃏 My Kickstarter for ALL-CARDS, the trading card storytelling game, ends today. I’m excited (and relieved) to say we blew past the initial goal! ALL-CARDS is over 155% funded and still going! 🙏 Thank you for backing and getting the word out. It means a lot to me. I’ll talk about this more in a…

🃏 This is the last week to back my Kickstarter for ALL-CARDS, the trading card storytelling game. I’m getting the word out! My friend Grant Pardee, the very first backer of the campaign (💖), invited me onto his show Sonic Weekly, where we discussed how ALL-CARDS can gamify writing Sonic fan fiction. Then I ventured…

🃏 It’s been one week since you looked at me I launched the Kickstarter for ALL-CARDS, the trading card storytelling game. The response has been super positive! There are 80 backers supporting ALL-CARDS from all around the world, excited comments on the Kickstarter page, many folks sharing the game on Bluesky, and ALL-CARDS was featured…

Today’s newsletter is Show and Tell, but I brought three things instead of one! That has to get me extra credit with Mrs. Frankfurter. After my last math test, I need it. Ho boy… Today I officially begin my “Zine Quest,” after nearly a decade away from crowdfunding. Join me on my journey! I just…

📰 News: I’m officially part of this year’s Zine Quest on Kickstarter! Next Friday, I’m launching a campaign for a new and very improved version of ALL-CARDS, a strategic storytelling game you play with trading cards you already own. I’ll be writing about my experience plussing up the game and running a Kickstarter throughout February.…

The Ghostbusters hold their ghosts into a Containment Unit. I, too, needed a container for my hologram ghost. Lucky for me, mine didn’t raise the ire of the EPA. The Unity project was in good shape. Video of myself as a ghost played as expected. My voice commands were being read properly by the game.…

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to program well, but my experience in Unity is helping me think more like a programmer. The hallmark of good programming is efficiency. It’s one thing to write a program that works, but it’s better to write a program that works and uses minimal system resources, thanks…

When I tell people I’m working on a voice-controlled hologram ghost, the most common response I get is a bewildered, “Cool!” I admit, it’s a pretty esoteric project, even by my standards. So why has this hologram ghost idea haunted me for many years? Is it a childhood thing? You better believe it’s a childhood…

I have been haunted by the ghost of a game idea for four years. In Big Magic, one of my favorite books, author Elizabeth Gilbert describes creative ideas as ghosts that inhabit us temporarily. We can choose to act and bring those ghosts to life as movies, games, or Skibidi Toilets. Or we can ignore…

Last month, Amanda and I hosted an award ceremony broadcast around the world! My first sentence was carefully crafted to make the event sound more glamorous than it actually was. What an intriguing hook, am I right? Well, that said, we did have a great time hosting a non-black tie affair. But first, a quick…

I didn’t think the third season of my podcast Worst Movies Ever Played would ever come out. Like the protagonist in the second act low point, I’d lost all hope. I worried WMEP S3 would be yet another project in my graveyard hard drive of lost creative endeavors. Well, I’m happy to admit I was…

🎥 Motion Picture is ready for you to puzzle out! Let me roll out the red carpet for you… Motion Picture [Mac | Windows] I wrote some snappy copy for the release… Motion Picture brings the classic jigsaw puzzle to life with a video to solve instead of a static picture. In this short puzzle…

🎥 Next week I’m going to publish Motion Picture, my new video puzzle game! Would you like to see your name in the end credits roll? Donate any amount to Equip Story, single or recurring payment, and you’ll be listed as a Supporter. Everyone who supports my indie games and this newsletter has my deepest…

The game I was building allowed players to stack pieces. But this game wasn’t Jenga, so this challenge was blocking me from completing the project! I had to get Unity to understand that when two puzzle pieces collide, it should move the newly offending piece back to where it was previously. As a designer, I…

The game I’m currently working on, Motion Picture, is like a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces play bits of live video, rotated and inverted. The main mechanics of the game I needed to implement, which I’m simplifying here (a lot of these have a number of boring sub-tasks), were as follows: 1. Divide a video…

Most games are designed for thousands or millions of players. I decided to make my next game for a target player base of four humans: my wife, our friends Frank and Becky, and Becky’s sister Carol Ann. I thought the game would take a month or two to develop, even around the busyness of a…

I was a creative director at my studio for a week! We had another awesome game jam week at Doborog. Last time, we all made projects by ourselves. I designed an FMV game about aliens preparing their own for an Earth invasion vis-à-vis silly stock videos. At the beginning of our game jam weeks, we…

I made a new card game for you to play! This is ALL-CARDS, a competitive storytelling deckbuilder for two players where you can use any cards you want. There are no official cards, no booster packs, no starter sets. ALL-CARDS is compatible with all trading cards, sports cards, tarot cards, even postcards, as long as…

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about my current slate of side projects. That’s because it’s a mess! I have three ongoing projects in various stages of completion, which is not great. Ever since I went full-time at Doborog, my current studio, I’ve been hoping to keep my slate to: (1) job and (1)…