In the episode, Mark, Ellen, and Stephen talk local events, including (don’t worry everyone’s fine) a fire in the clubhouse’s building, construction, and the games they are playing, so if you are just here for the topics, go ahead and sk
Your nice hosts welcome famed designer Ron Gilbert (Monkey Island, Thimbleweed Park) into the clubhouse to discuss the virtues of inexperience, friction for its own sake, how it's all about story, and it's puzzles all the way down.
This week, your nice hosts talk about code that isn't yours and ask about the natural conclusion of the narrative. Mark is handy, Ellen kinda wants to add a note, and Stephen is grounded.
We invite Joanna May into the clubhouse to discuss serialization. We get ever so slightly closer to discovering what serialization even is with Joanna's help!
In this episode Lydia is back to discuss join the clubhouse in both a discussion of her first job, and making a game about set job. But, because the club can't choose, it is also about Ellen's job at her parents' pet store.
All of your hosts are together in the Clubhouse for a special interview! Lydia Symchych is an impact game designer who has been working with Ellen over the last year.
Your nice hosts chew over a concept Stephen brings into the clubhouse: a series of "game jams" where participants iterate on one specific idea in each session.
Releasing 2019's "Baba is You" after more than a decade of making puzzle games was a milestone for this week's guest, but it was also just the beginning of his design journey.
In this episode Ellen usurps the normal process for a nice game jam prompt to explore her own idea on tabletop mechanics. Who would have thought the scoring system for this game would be 'Points for the Future War'?
"Tutorials shouldn’t feel like tutorials!" Like most aspects of game design, it's an easy concept to summarize but a difficult one to pull off.
This week, your nice hosts talk a little bit about our civic duty before getting into two very on-brand topics. Make a plan to vote on (or before!) November 5th.
We welcome Timothy Staton-Davis into the clubhouse to talk both the broad strokes and the nitty-gritty of combat design.
This week, Ellen kicks things off with a chat about how games tell players, “This might be tough!” and how to make that fun and fair. Stephen and Mark jump in with their takes on what makes difficulty settings shine.