Blue Cup Tools Podcast

This week, we drink tea like classy people (although Ben's has a couple of extra unwanted ingredients) and discuss the wonder that is Vegemite. Also, we talk about how practicing things like writing, art, coding, etc in real life can help hone your skills for game design.

We get personal, and bare our souls (and other parts) as we discuss a question sent in by a listener. Writing about personal things in your games, and how much is too much. Is there even "too much?"

Special guest Dane Krams joins us to talk about art! Techniques, developing style, pushing yourself and working outside your comfort zone. Art nerdery ahoy!

This week we talk about puzzle variety: going beyond the usual adventure game tropes of dialogue and inventory puzzles. Also, the usual David Cage bashing and talking about how you shouldn't write characters.

We're joined once again by Dave Gilbert (and briefly by wife Janet) to discuss the benefits of player feedback, beta testing, post-release comments, and how to best provide and accept constructive criticism.

Dave Gilbert joins us for our first podcast of 2014 to discuss game design, writing, as well as what it's like to reach the end of a series. As usual, off topic rants abound.

Ho ho ho! We return from a Christmas break to discuss working with others in teams, and also briefly touch on the idea of the palate-cleansing "game sorbet." Also, way more information than you ever needed to know about our friendship!

Breaking down adventure game stories to the basic archetypes, and the challenges of making games that are not detective mysteries or save the world/girl stories.

We discover just how different we are as gamers, then talk about our entire adventure game creation process. Also, why it's an advantage to be a jack-of-all-trades.

This week we play a special drinking game on the podcast, as well as talk more about the importance of building worlds through background dialogue, documents, etc.