Nice Games Club - a gamedev podcast!

There are now episodes of Nice Games Club for each new day of the year! When you get to the last day of that year, you'll hear about Audio Middleware and Psychic Distance from us in the clubhouse.

• About the Fair - Minnesota State Fair

In this episode the boys are back in Minneapolis, but they are still thinking about their time with Ellen in Duluth, or Roboluth ;) s

So they are using this episode to talk about instructions, again, but this time though the lens of the different types of "user personas" who will be reading it.

What is Roboston?

Rulebook is

Define your Players

Things to add to the FAQs

1. Roboston new players

2. Roboston experienced players

3. Inexperienced tabletop game players

4. Experienced tabletop game players

Once again from hilly Duluth, Minnesota! On Day 2 of a game design weekend retreat, your nice hosts tackled rules—writing rules, rewriting rules, and playtesting them. It was a long day, culminating with a family playtest of Roboston, featuring a newly written rulebook. How did it go? Well, there's more work to be done, but we learned a lot. Your hosts discuss this and more in today's episode, recorded on Day 3 of Mark's and Stephen's trip to Duluth. 

• Minnesotan Phrases - Wanderlust In Real Life
• Dante is the adorable troublemaker who barked MULTIPLE TIMES during the recording session.

It's a nice sleepover as this (and next) week's episode is recorded from Ellen's basement in Duluth. Mark has an angle, Ellen shares her topic, and Stephen manages.

• The view from the rotating resturant that Mark took Stephen to - Ragnar Eythorsson, YouTube
• Karen Puzzles - Karen Kavett, YouTube
• • 178 (TNG) + 176 (DS9) + 7 (TOS movies, including "Generations" because Kirk was in it) = 361 episodes
  • Nice Games Club = 362 episodes

• One Piece aired it's 362nd episode 16 years ago. As of press time, it's up to 1116.

• Our next target is My Three Sons, which has 380 episodes. We will reach that milestone at the end of 2024.

It’s hot in the clubhouse and hot in Ellen’s greenhouse this week, so your hosts are eager to crunch through some discussion. Ellen introduces the concept of the MDA framework, and the differences between Theming and Aesthetics, and Stephen comes to a major conclusion about parrying.

We invite music producer and sound designer Dave McKee into the clubhouse to talk about accessibility in games this week.

• Visual impairment accessibility musts:
  • High Contrast
    • User-set color schemes
  • Big Icons! (more important even than large text, which is also important)
  • Leverage Haptics (HD Rumble) paired with visual cues
  • Toning the music down (Dave recommends, regretfully)
  • Accessibility options should come up at a game’s first-launch

Additional Resources not talked about on the show

We face complexity head-on this episode with two topics that will get your neurons firing. Mark walks through considerations involved with publishing a game to multiple platforms. It's not easy, but it's a lot easier if you plan for it from the start! If you've listened to recent episodes, you'll know that Stephen has been obsessed with the tabletop game Spirit Island. Today, he shares some of the work he's done in creating a new, customized spirit for the game. Also, Mark experiences glitches, and the hosts plan a visit.

• Twin Cities Playtest from IGDA-TC - Eventbrite

We talked about porting games in Episode 175.

"Pillar of the community" and creator of Chipmunk2D Scott Lembcke visits the clubhouse to talk velocity, constraints, and rigidbodies. Ellen gets the music in her head, Stephen didn’t learn the opposite lesson, and Mark makes a pretty good joke about friction.

I'm pretty sure this was the song stuck in Ellen's head.

In this episode, Stephen gets excited about Summer Games Done Quick, reveals some Doctor Who spoilers, and then is shocked that Flappy Dragon has more dragons. Ellen ponders rituals, and why she comes back to some games and not others. And finally, Mark wonders if it is okay to get lost in a super-fun mini-game.

In the first Nice Games Jam in a few months (and we made it a long one!), your nice hosts explore the history of bicycles to develop a racing board game.

• Our last Nice Games Club episode:Eddies
• Two Wheels Good - Jody Rosen
• Safety Bicycle - Wikipedia

Map book

4-sided dice

Meeple to represent racers

• Choose a map to race on in the map book (only one made right now)
• Choose a starting point and an ending point on the map
• Draw a conditions card from the conditions deck (not made yet! We just used rain, where you have to make a Stability check each time you make a turn)

• Same area through time
• You choose your rider and bike (each with different stats) based on how the map looks
• You spend your resources to get new bikes or upgrade a bike
• We started with penny farthings (bad stats), you can buy better ones later.
• At the start of the race you draw a “condition”, affects the course to make more stability checks
• You also randomly get a start and end place (we just set it as corner to corner for testing)
• Types of stats:

• Speed: how far you can go
• Weight: how heavy your bike is, how hard uphill is and how fast downhill is
• Capacity: how much you can hold on your bike
• Stability: how easy it is to get past stability checks
• Durability: how much failing a stability check affects you