Sometimes
Sometimes making art is as natural as breathing or sweating or speaking and you just need to figure out a way to bottle it. Sometimes making art is like trying to hold your mind in the shape of a mold…
Category Life in the Machine
Trust
Game design is a trust exercise. The player has to be able to trust that the game designer’s decisions make sense, that when they take an action within the system the resultant reaction will make sense and be predictable. “Predictable”…
Sokoban
A few nights ago I was wedged between my bed and the shelves I was trying to cram into my closet. I was soaked in sweat, and resting my head against the flimsy particle board backing of the shelves, which…
Problem Machine Patreon launched!
Well I’ve finally gone and done it. I finally made myself a Patreon. Largely this is because they were about to change their payment structure in an unfavorable way and I wanted to sneak in before that deadline, but this…
Unwritten
It’s been a little while since I posted. Once habits are broken they can be difficult to mend, but since circumstances always eventually substantiate to break them, learning how to reestablish a good habit becomes a necessary skill. Creativity isn’t…
Convergence Compulsion: The Satisfaction of a Job Well Done
Well, it’s been a busy month. That’s putting it somewhat mildly – the last week or so has been possibly the hardest I’ve ever worked on a project, putting in anywhere from 8-12 hours every day and culminating in one…
Puzzling Problems
Everything in a game is there for a reason – whether that reason is because it’s necessary for the player to progress, because of aesthetic appeal, or because of an oversight on the part of the developers, there’s some history…
Dissolve
Eh well the December project didn’t really go anywhere. I can at least put some screenshots of how far I got before I decided I’d kind of messed up: I spent a week or two planning this building layout, figuring…
Rendering
Over the last few years, I’ve been trying to get better at art – in the specific sense of visual art, that is – drawing and painting and, most frequently, digital art. I think I’ve succeeded at the goal of…
Making Good
An ugly trait of our society is that we tend to see people’s value primarily in terms of the goods they might produce. We even tend to see ourselves this way, to want to maximize our productivity, to be able…