Codenames lures you in as a family friendly party game, but it is deep, sophisticated, and difficult. 

Frank Lantz's book The Beauty of Games blew my mind. And so I made a little book report. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLW8ZvKjmko

I had a big combat system that I didn't feel good about. I finally ripped it out, and it left a vacuum that inspired my best idea yet. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfgcoyz9HFY

Gen Con was an awesome experience. I got third place in a Cat in the Box tournament. Tabletop gaming is the opposite of doom scrolling.

I'm building something that doesn't have an obvious precedent, and it's been very tedious to figure out the right shape.

You can have one action in 3 different form factors, and you've got 3 essentially different games. It's worth iterating a lot to find the one that unlocks the biggest design space.

I want to be generous, not chintzy with the coolest parts of my game. But that does not mean I should be generous with all the parts of my game. Brian Moriarty's talk linked here. 

I learned a lot by calling some people up on the phone. Most notably: physics matters.