Nice Games Club - a gamedev podcast!

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.

• Playdate Update - Fall 2024 - Panic, YouTube
• Noble Engine - Noble Robot
• IGDATC Events - igdatc

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. Arvi "Hempuli" Teikari talks to your nice hosts about the balance between giving players freedom and constraining their expression, the pacing and sequencing of individual puzzles, what happens when a "cool" design annoys players, and more.

• Arvi's cats make a spirited apperance in the back half of the episode. Here they are basking in the Finnish sun.

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'?

• Stephen's One-Minute Movie - Stephen McGregor's Group, YouTube

• Discussion during development

• Subbuteo
• Soapboxderby.org
• Bullet Bill Soapbox Derby Car - Lou Whitmire, Mansfield News Joural

Board - 5x5 grid where tiles can be placed

5 racer sleds

Racer weights

Tiles with different friction coefficients (terrain tiles)

Mission from HQ Cards

Special Objective Cards

1) Racer sleds and racer weights are randomly distributed to the racetrack row. 2) Each racer sled gets the name of a racer. Each racer name should be silly, like Jenny Too-fast or Billy Tumble.

Players are given each a set amount of time-travel credits.

On their turn, each player uses a time-travel credit to either replace or swap terrain tiles.

When each all players have spent their time travel credits, the race is on! All racer sleds are released from their starting box, and the results of the race are observed. 

Each completed mission results in the number of 'Points for the Future' on the mission from HQ card awarded to that player. The number of points is based on the difficulty of the mission.

After the weekend derby is complete (15 rounds), the player with the most point for the future war is declared the winner, but not for 20-30 years.

"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. Luke Spierewka and the team at Afterburn Games have mastered it, using their charming approach in successful titles like Golf Peaks and Railbound. Come learn the arcane secrets of the puzzle game tutorial! Also featuring some great room sound.

• Afterburn Games (studio)

Luke is a game designer, programmer, and jack of all trades. He makes games, organizes events, gives talks (and interviews) and does "lots of other stuff." He's worked on many titles, including Railbound, Golf Peaks, Gwent, and SUPERHOT. Learn more about Luke at http://spierek.net/

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. Information at https://vote.org/

• Everything You Need to Vote - Vote.org
• What States Allow Same Day Voter Registration and When? - Rock the Vote
• The Only Patriotic Choice for President - The New York Times
• These are the Republicans endorsing Harris over Trump - Niha Masih, The Washington Post
• Donald Trump Is Unfit to Lead - The New York Times
• Donald Trump’s First Term Is a Warning - New York Times Opinion, The New York Times

We welcome Timothy Staton-Davis into the clubhouse to talk both the broad strokes and the nitty-gritty of combat design.

• Melanated Game Kitchen - itch.io

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. Then, Mark thinks about the practice taking familiar game mechanics and twisting them into something fresh. Think pacifist runs or limited equipment modes. Why limit yourself to one way to play when you can remix the whole game? As always, there are some goofs in here, too.

• Unity 6 Preview is now available - Nancy Larue, Unity
• Unity is canceling the Runtime Fee - Matt Bromberg, Unity
• Unite Conference - Unity
• Hasbro Game Night (for Switch)
• We Were Here Series - Total Mayhem Games, Steam
• Loopy: a tool for thinking in systems - Nicky Case
• Machinations: Create digital twins for your systems, processes or economies

This week, learn about what Ellen was like as a student. Stephen wonders if he’s made a huge mistake, Ellen does some work research, and Mark insists that there is no such thing as magic.

• Stephen started a new class: Film making

Entering the clubhouse this week is our the third Owl (employee of Owlchemy Labs) and first Peabody Award winner (as lead developer for We Are OFK), to talk about the "dos," "don'ts," and "good enoughs" of optimization.

• Cleveland video game designer Jarryd Huntley wins Peabody Award for ‘We Are OFK’ - Joey Morona, cleveland.com
• We are OFK - Peabody Awards
• Cleveland Game Developers - Linktree

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