Got some playtesting of Mirror Agents during a local Con a while back. And gearing up to bring it to PAXU to start showing off to the media and demo it. It always feels amazing to see a game evolve from a random idea to a beautiful, finished product.

Just a few weeks till I hit the road and head to PAX Unplugged with my company @absurdistprod.bsky.social. Looking forward to showing off the prototype of Mirror Agents, along with demos of our games.

Got some board gaming in with the fiancee this weekend. What did you play this weekend?

Had this little gremlin watching me the whole time I was playing last night. Well, other then when she was trying to sit in the game box or swat at the titles.

Spent some time last night learning Diatoms by @ludoliminal.bsky.social. Played through the first couple of commissions in the solo mode. It's a really fun puzzly little game, and I look forward to getting it to the table with friends.

Really love how this one came out. Really gets that sort of 30s/40s fatale vibe. And love how our Illustrator Aster put a sort of spotlight on her and gave the gown a shimmer.

Stumbled on this article yesterday, and love getting a glimpse into what different publishers are looking for in the games they design and publish. entrogames.substack.com/p/how-do-pub...

I have a new design buddy. She's really good at moving meeples around the board, but not so much at making strategic decisions. Meet Chaka Khan!

Just found out about #solosept and I happened to have co-designed and written a couple of solo horror #ttrpgs. You can find Transformation and Seven Murders Til Midnight from my company, @absurdistprod.bsky.social

We are working on assembling the first full art prototype of Mirror Agents for playtesting. Have to make sure the UX all works as expected and going to start formally blind testing the rules to make sure they are truely ready to go. The game is looking gorgeous.

We've been getting more of the Graphic Design and some of the art in for Mirror Agents. It's all still WIP, but it's looking so good. Loving the Art Deco-inspired direction we've gone in.

I was asked to do a workshop on narrative writing/creation in games for a local bookstore. I've written the story and dialogue for a few video games, and written two solo Journaling RPGs. So, I'm not inexperienced in the area, but it still feels weird to be asked to act like an expert.

Along with designing games, and co-running @absurdistprod.bsky.social. I also help run a local board game design group here in OKC. Scheduling playtesting events at shops around the city every month and doing my best to get other designers connected with playtesters.

An excellent early birthday gift from my fiancee. Been a little burnt our on creative endeavors lately do to all the chaos here in the US. So sitting down for a night a clicking bricks together was a nice was to relax. Also, its a fricken Sherlock Holmes book nook.

I sometimes forget that I had more hair then.

Big Props to Cole and Joe for the success of Molly House and for now releasing the PNP as CC 4.0.

This character is known as The Transporter, and playing this card is how you move your agent around the board. When your opponent plays, ii you know they've moved, but you have to keep an eye outfort what other card they play and how they impact the board to decipher where.

We've gotten the first card from Mirror Agents essentially done. Meet The Cleaner. An asset card that allows a player to clear all the Intel on a location and keep one.

With the craziness of tariffs, I've started shifting my design focus to card games. looking at old ideas and stripping them down to their most basic concepts and themes to see what I can do with them and a deck of cards. First up, a trick taking/group tableu builder I'm calling Chaos Garden.

Took the Board Game Designer Match quiz that's going around. I come from an educational background and like games with thematic and engaging games with smooth gameplay. I'm also a bit of a chaos goblin, so I think the matches are pretty accurate.

Art and graphic design for Mirror Agents, continues and every piece I see gets me more excited. None of these are final, but they are getting close. We are really leaning into an Art Deco meets Noir vibe and I love it.

Let's talk about art and prototypes. Two of these photos show the final art for Churrascaria, a game I published it in 2018, with the 2nd edition now delivering. The third image is of an early prototype I made.

Had some great playtests this weekend at TokenCon. While the design work on Mirror Agents is essentially complete, these tests still gave me data to adjust balance, clean up rules text, and allowed me to test a first play/quick game variant to help onboard players into the game.

Had a great playtest of Mirror Agents yesterday with this couple. Plenty of tension and shit-talking as they played.

To my mind, a rulebook is a technical document, so I tend to follow the standards for technical writing when creating one. This means staying in the active voice and using the third person as much as possible. Both make it clear who is doing what and why.

Since the Coming Soon page for Mirror Agents is live, let's discuss the game itself a bit. In Mirror Agents, each player has 3 Agent Meeples, a Guard Meeple, a Player Screen, a Player board, a set of 8 Asset Cards, a Secret Objective, and a Main Board covered in Intel between them.

Wanted to give a better look at that cover, because it really is gorgeous in all the details. We are going for an Art Deco/Noir vibe for the whole thing. I love what our artists have brought to the table so far.

So excited, the Coming Soon page for my game Mirror Agents is live. Give it a follow if you are interested in backing this game of hidden movement and noir spies. www.kickstarter.com/projects/941...

I'm not sure why my feed seems to be 99% cat pictures right now, but I am here for it. And maybe its just a sign my fiancee and I should finally go adopt a cat.

I come from an instructional Design background, where I use the ADDIE model for a lot of things. That's Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate. You start with an idea, and then after each step there is a phase of testing and revision.

Mirror Agents is a game I started working on in 2017, but it took until 2024 to gel because I spent far too much time wrapped up trying mechanics I just thought would be fun instead of looking for ones that really fed the theme and tension of being spies at the start of the Cold War.

I'm currently wrapping up the design and commisioning the art for my new game Mirror Agents. A 2-player hidden movement Spy game in which both players are playing both the hunter and the hunter. Moving agents secretly behind screens and guards openly on the board trying to catch each other.

I consider myself a theme-first designer. Every game I've designed or helped develop has always started from a theme, and then the mechanics and rules of gameplay have grown from that theme. When I've struggled with a design, it's always because I lost sight of the core theme.

Back in 2015 I had the idea that became Churrascaria. The first game we published as Absurdist Productions. It delivered in 2019, and we finally have a reprint arriving in the next month or so. A crazy game about fighting over food at a Brazillian steak house.

Hello all. I've been posting for a while under the official @absurdistprod.bsky.social account, but I thought I should set up a personal one as well. Expect most of my posts to be about my game designs. With the occasional deep dives into random history trivia.