Nice Games Club - a gamedev podcast!

Ellen is in the clubhouse for another week while returning guest Sam Baeseman fills in for Lydia in an episode that's a bit punchy, mostly empathetic, and a little bit educational thankfully.

It’s spooky month, so before diving into the game jam the clubhouse talks about a couple scary things. Dinosaurs (briefly) and breast cancer awareness month. Lydia shares her experience with the screening process. Editor Dale, has some things to add. Fun fact, Dale was driven to her first mammogram by Stephen and (not her husband Mark). Not-fun-fact, her sister-in-law detected her breast cancer, only because her adopted mother was diagnosed. They are both fine, but cancer is the opposite of fun. Then they talk about mummies and card games mechanics as they make their game. That is fun.

Custom Cards

Mummy Indicators

The deck consists of the following cards:

Egret

Jock

Nerd

Housecat

Each player starts with a Jock card, a Nerd card, and one other random card.

The playing space is a 6x6 grid

Each turn, each card has one action: 

We welcome returning host Ellen Burns-Johnson back into the clubhouse today for a Nice Games Jam! Lydia provides the other three veteran podcasters with a prompt and helps shape this paper prototype.

• The last time Ellen returned to the show was for the Serious Play Conference in 2025Serious Play Conference 2025

• Prototype Images

• Templated Library of shapes:
  • Squares
    • 3x3 square
    • 2x2 square
    • 1x1 square
  • Equilateral Triangles
    • 4 wide base equilateral triangle
    • 2 wide base equilateral triangle
    • 1 wide base equilateral triangle
  • Right Triangles
    • 3x3 right triangle
    • 2x2 right triangle
    • 1x1 right triangle
  • Parallelagrams 
    • 3x2 classic parallelagram
    • 2x3 classic parallelagram
    • Lydia-assisted rhombus

1. Start with 5 random shapes 
2. Randomly pick a criteria
3. Must use at least 2 new pieces in your shape
4. Mid-round you can trade up your shapes so long as they are of equal areas (eg. two 1x1 right triangles can be traded for a 1x1 square)
5. Whoever finishes their shape first they get the card and their shape is “stuck” on the board
6. Whose who did not get it can wipe their most-recent shape additions from their board
7. At end of round get 2 new pieces each person, draw a new criteria

• Criteria:
  • Convex (eg. a classic pentagon is a convex polygon)
  • Concave (eg. a star is a concave polygon)
  • Exactly 8 sides
  • <5 sides
  • >10 sides

Bernie Mattson enters the Clubhouse to talk about researching inspiration as part of the game development process and along the way the Nice Hosts learn a whole lot about Dada. Do you like show notes? Well, Nice Listener, is this the episode for you!

Doo-Daa

Dada, a starting point

In this episode, Mark has some general notes on Europe, and walks though how he assembled the pitch deck that he brought with him to Gamescom. Meanwhile, Lydia wonders what it would be like to share responsibility on a schedule, and Stephen's clock is 10 minutes fast so we're not going to be as late to the screening of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock as he thinks.

• Mark on a bike in Dublin.
• Mark on a bike in Amsterdam.
• Mark on a bike in Cologne.
• Mark on a bike in Zurich.
• Mark on a bike in Paris.
• Mark feeding the birds underneath the Eiffel Tower.

Slides in Mark's pitch deck:

• Title (with links to contact, build, video, etc)
• Table of Contents
• Fact Sheet
• Concept summary
• Team
• Embedded video
• Slides covering each main topic from summary slide
• 1-3 slides after each topic slide
• Concept conclusion
• Inspiration sources
• Timeline
• Budget
• Why support this team?
• What we want from a publisher
• Title (again)

Mark returns with gifts from Europe! Then Lydia teaches her nice boys how to make a puzzle room: the ins and outs, the dos and don'ts, it’s an escape room special!

• The Sega coin that Mark stood in multiple very long lines to get.
• Junction Jam (Midwest US 2026) - itch.io
• Saprolige - LydiaSymchych, HeadlessKhan, Ally, Ice Husky, Martin_Gazelle, itch.io

Your nice hosts discuss a previously talked about topic, and also engage in something completely new (though both are an excuse to discuss work issues in reality), with a brief divergence to mention a Star Trek anniversary. 

In this episode, your nice hosts welcome Heather Flowers into the clubhouse to talk about math and probability, while Heather insists they should be on Evil Games Club instead. The group reflects on art and the interpretation of art.

Heather Flowers Games

Other mentions

Two of your nice hosts are prepping to go to Junction Jam (which already happened, you'll hear about it soon!), but before then the discussion goes over the why players can and should be invested in your game, and how to push back against crunch in the workplace.

• Junction Jam - Global Game Jam

From a floral prompt, a daring caper blossoms. This week your Nice Hosts answer the question: How many flowers to you have to eat to pull off a heist?

• Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure - Board Game Geek
• Clue: The Great Museum Caper - Board Game Geek
• The game board for Clue: The Great Museum Caper
• Our spreadsheet of Flowers, Powers, and Barriers.

Game board

Thief meeples

Barrier cards

Flower tokens

Flower combination legend

Flower box containers

Ability tracker

"a one-to-one scale replica of a particularly rare flower completely made of precious metals and gems"

Lay out the board

Place the "one-to-one scale replica of a particularly rare flower completely made of precious metals and gems" in the center chamber

Distribute flower tokens

• Shuffle flower tokens in a bag
• Add flower tokens to flower boxes without looking at them 
• Place the boxes on the marked spaces on the board
• Distribute the remaining flower tokens around the flower patches marked on the board

Place barriers

• Shuffle barrier cards
• For each marked space on the board, draw a barrier card and place it on the space

Player setup

• Choose a thief meeple
• Take a flower combination legend
• Take an ability tracker

• Players are thieves after the same jeweled flower in the center of the board 

• Players must gather different flowers to give them the ability to get through the board/maze
• Goal is to get through to the center of the maze-like building first

• Combinations of flowers give you new abilities (either mundane or super-powered)
• Players may only have 3 active abilities at a time (if you get a new one, the first one gets pushed out)
• Could be places or a power that allows you to remove all of your powers

• Barriers can be gotten through by various means (2 or 3, minimum 1)

• Some places have flower boxes, and they’d give you a random flower
• More of the flower boxes in the center of the board

• Players create new barriers for the winning one to keep them from being able to get out