As I say in my Bio, of all my interests, game design has been the greatest struggle for me. Still, I have made attempts and those that are most successful are more game-as-structure rather than narrative or multimedia experiences. I envy and at one time aspired to be one of those honed, one-man-bands such as Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone AKA ConcernedApe or Animal Well creator Billy Basso.
Physical games
As someone very much immersed in coding and computer games, physical games offer a kind of alternate universe for games, an antiquated style that can become a break from screens and trans-media semi-immersive experiences.
Board games
Owners and Workers
The game of both sides of a Fordist capitalist dream! Now in its third major draft, this game has been a lot of fun to play with friends and family. I’m still working it out but the v3.0 draft rules are available here.
Yes they are handwritten for now. You will need a set of poker chips, some 6 sided dice (d6s) and some money tokens (anything will do).
The innovation of this game is that you do in fact play both sides:
- The owner the factory at your placemat
- The workers in the factory to their left
Card games
Scaffold
Scaffold is a card game for two players, which can be played with a single deck of card in competitive mode. In cooperative mode you’ll need to be able to track turns with either 16 counters or pen and paper.
I had a lot of fun creating this at the Global Game Jam 2020 with the help and suggestions of local Galway game jammers.
More at the Scaffold Github archive. Note that I received a Arctic Code Vault Contributor badge for this and this game will therefore be in cold storage for over 1000 years! 🥶
Machine of Magical Making
A children’s card game I developed as a Christmas gift for my then 4 year old daughter. It is a simple association and memory card game for young kids (plus an adult when with very young kids), with some light puzzle mechanics.
It is quite cute! Again, made with the generous collaboration of members of the Galway Game Jam community.
More at the Machine of Magical Making Github archive.
Computer games
I have not finished the creation of any computer games so here lies the half-living and grimy experiments from the lab.
BNDRSNTCH
An attempting to finish the Spectrum ZX game Stefan also tried and failed to make in Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. I chose to write it in Commodore 64 assembly since the C64 was my first computer and I’d always wanted to learn how to write in the esoteric art of ASM. I had learned some x64 assembler in my teens, using the generous documentation embedded in the QuickC and QuickBASIC DOS compilers (these were the days unlimited internet access), delivered in copious amounts of 3½ inch floppy disks (although, as you might recall, this last generation of removable media was not in fact ‘floppy’).
The full source code and a build you can play in a C64 emulator can be found at the BNDRSNTCH Github archive
I wrote a series of five articles during the time I was obsessed with the Black Mirror interactive film, the first interactive film I believe in the era of streaming. See Bandersnatch deep-dive blog.
One of the particular pleasures of writing in low-level code for an ancient microprocessor is the lengths you have to go to under severe resource constraints. I solved a few problems in novel ways, these are all detailed in the source.