Video Games

Pokremental is the incremental sequal to Poketris

Poketris is a fun new take on Poker Solitaire

My partner doesn’t play any video games, so explaining them can sometimes be difficult. The genre “Crafting Survival” doesn’t mean much to someone who doesn’t game, even though just about every parent knows what Minecraft is. So I started saying that I’m playing a “tree chopping” game—because you chop trees and build stuff. I’ve played a lot of tree choppers, and honestly, the amount of effort put into making the tree chopping feel satisfying is really important to the game. On the low end of the spectrum for satisfying tree chopping is Timberborn, a game about beavers chopping trees and building a city. The beavers aren’t chopping or even gnawing the trees. They just kind of stand there until the wood is collected. ...

I subscribe to the notion that everyone has ideas, but it’s the execution that is difficult. Well, sometimes the ideas are difficult too.

I’ve been talking about my struggles with board game design. I really like the appeal of the board game design space. Its dependence on physical objects constrains the space in a meaningful way. I would think this might make it easier to design something interesting, as the scope is typically limited by what individual people can or are willing to deal with in order to play a physical game. There may be some truth to that idea; however, it certainly hasn’t helped me. I am always impressed at game designers who are able to abstract really concrete ideas, like flying a spaceship or cooking food, into the movement of cards or small components around a table ...

Cursor Incremental is a game about chopping trees and breaking rocks.