Hot Streak won 2 Golden Geeks today! ✨Light Game of the Year ✨Best Party Game Continuously amazed at how much people are appreciating this game! 🤯 boardgamegeek.com/thread/37069...

🍒 Let's go! 🍒 The hard work, skill, and creativity on display for last year's Cherry Rush was off the charts - we were absolutely blown away. So excited for number 2!

Agree with this, and there are some interesting choices to be made about what to purposefully leave out of your balance formulas, so that players still have room to get an edge. I often evaluate cards in a vacuum & do not model synergies for exactly this reason.

The MADHOUSE Story Update drops this month — Act 1 reaches its explosive conclusion. Price goes up from $4.99 to $9.99 with this update, so now's the time to get in if you haven't already. 🩸 #indiegame #pixelart #horrorgame #indiedev #gamedev

The wait is almost over, hackers! 👾 868-BACK is releasing May 28th! Play the free demo on Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/3304110/...

A lot of effort in multiplayer board game design goes into making sure everyone feels they have a chance to win for as long as possible. But this isn't necessary if we persuade players to care about their ranking. So many players have internalized "1st place or nothing" but it need not be that way.

Finally, some good news: workers at Hachette are unionizing, and you can sign an open letter of support. This is the way! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

The Magic: The Gathering Arena team is unionizing. Good! They deserve the have job protections and proper workload management, especially with Hasbro pushing Magic to every extreme. You can follow @uwotc-official.bsky.social for more info and to support their effort.

We were so lucky to have @perryjon.bsky.social back on the @decisionspace.bsky.social pod to discuss his hot take tweets about depth, skill, and luck! What do you think makes a game deep? Do people too often conflate depth with complexity? podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...

Really proud of this deluxe edition! A ton of work went into getting everything right. @fangamer.com is fanatastic to work with.

Teaser for my new card game with @scorpionmasque.bsky.social, @wellmaus.bsky.social, and Christian Kudahl. (This is the one where every card is procedurally generated!) youtube.com/watch?v=4uD4...

One of the biggest labor battles in the US is happening right now in Los Angeles, at USC, where our faculty-union campaign with majority support is being met by nasty, corporate-grade administrative resistance, and national press won't cover it.

For UFO 50 players on Nintendo Switch, the latest update (v1.9), which adds Japanese, also includes a number of fixes and optimizations for existing players. The notes for Steam Patch v1.8.35 also cover the majority of these improvements on Switch: store.steampowered.com/news/app/114...

UFO 50 hits Japan today! This was a pretty huge undertaking given there were several dozen games to localize but the team did an amazing job and the Japanese version looks awesome. Big 💙 to @mossmouth.bsky.social and @perryjon.bsky.social and everyone who worked to make the JP release a reality!

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What's a game you absolutely love but rarely want to play?

I've heard this opinion about balancing that, well you can't use formulas in a sufficiently complex game, because it gets too unwieldy... and yet I do this all the time & it works fine. My formulas are surely full of inaccuracies & stuff they leave out, but they still seem to get "close enough."

Pretty happy with my third place finish in the Spots Grand Slam World Cup (out of 172 participants). Is it weird to play your own games this much after release? 😅

Tyriq's new game is out!

I'm the kind of sicko that actually looks forward to cutting and sleeving 120+ cards.

The Remake of the End of the Greatest RPG of All Time is out in May!!!! Check out blog www.kickstarter.com/projects/206...

At GDC this year, I'll be one of several people giving a microtalk at this session: schedule.gdconf.com/session/game... The larger topic is "Games about Games" but my talk will be about game collections in particular.

Play Forever #UFO50

I'll be showing off Hot Streak at this GDC event, Wednesday morning!

Richard Garfield's been explaining how luck & skill are not opposites for well over a decade, but I still encounter designers & players who haven't internalized this lesson. I suspect it's the number one reason people tend to underrate the amount of strategy in lighter games.

I'm working on a procedurally generated physical card game that I'll probably start posting more about. Unfortunately, things have reached a point where I have to make clear that "procedurally generated" does NOT mean "uses modern AI". Just old school programming techniques & lots of human effort.

I caught about half of it when it aired live, but I finally went back and rewatched the whole Mini & Max speedrun from Cherry Rush. Really cool stuff! www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvfP...

I think a lot board gamers underestimate the depth of light games and overestimate the depth of heavy games. More moving parts does not necessarily mean a game has more strategy. It often just means there's more noisiness obscuring the impact of your decisions.

Really nice article by @gengelstein.bsky.social on one of the most fundamental tools of game design. I'm constantly doing these kinds of EV calculations while designing, at both early and late stages of the process. gametek.substack.com/p/great-expe...

At GDC this year, I'll be one of several people giving a microtalk at this session: schedule.gdconf.com/session/game... The larger topic is "Games about Games" but my talk will be about game collections in particular.

Having a good time working on some things of my own over here, but also wouldn't mind taking on a couple of bite-sized BGM/SFX gigs this year. If you've got a cool project going and would like an off-beat soundscape feel free to reach out. 🏌️‍♀️

Been immersing myself in competitive Spots on BGA lately (currently holding 10th place in a longrunning tournament that began with 172 players). It's been great seeing how well the game holds up! Tbh, I think there's way more skill to it than many people give it credit for.

on the UFO 50 discord theres a bot command called /randomforme (random for me) thats a daily randomly picked UFO 50 game. i've been using it as a warmup and watercolor practice for some weeks now, so i'm gonna start a thread of em, starting with Day 1: my man, Jangi (Rakshasa)

Hi I'm on bluesky now! Last year was a hell of a year as my 2-year-old was diagnosed with cancer (!?!?!?) and spent much of it in the hospital. Thankfully it's in remission now. What a ride. Hoping to slowly get back into gamedev stuff this year!

A subcategory of spectatorship I'm particularly interested in is dramatic irony in games. Examples: -The hole cam in Poker -Being a moderator/dead person in Werewolf -Watching your teammate pick a card in Hanabi But I can't think of many other examples.

I increasingly spend time thinking about designing games for spectation as opposed to just active participation. On the extreme end, you have game shows, which are nearly 100% about spectation & interesting to me for that reason. But many types of games benefit from considering, What's fun to watch?

When writing card texts, is it fine to ignore the grammar rule regarding less/fewer and just write "less" because it's shorter, even if it's not technically correct? I gotta admit that grammar rule always seemed kinda pointless to me, anyway...

I prefer square grids to hex grids. It's easier for me to parse visually and I like having diagonality as a resource to play with.

a few thoughts youtu.be/lERS4kJIQR8

Here's a question for board game designers... What's a wonky rule that you wanted to cut, but in the end had to leave in because it just felt too important?

My favorite party games of 2025: Yubibo & JinxO

As so many of us are… I’m furious and scared and exhausted. It may feel pointless… but call your reps. CALL. you can email too but the call is more important. @5calls.org will get you the phone numbers AND and has an easy script on what to say. 5calls.org

Hot Streak ABSOLUTELY lives up to the hype

Took my time reading this, a few pages a day, but just finished. So good. Michael DeForge never disappoints.

OH MY GOD

Christmas deals!

The Party House guest pins in their natural habitat. Part of our official UFO 50 collection: www.fangamer.com/collections/...

🕹️ YOU ARE NOW ENTERING CORGISPACE 🕹️ CorgiSpace is a new collection of 8-bit games with short legs on purpose! This collection by Adam 'Atomic' Saltsman includes more than a dozen action, adventure, arcade, and puzzle games, and it's OUT NOW! Get it today on Steam and itch.io!

Incredibly happy to see Hot Streak mentioned on this list of board games! It's also a really well curated list, written up by some people in the community who really know their stuff. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

A surprise highlight of BGG Con was being a spectator at Monster Dash, a lifesize version of Hot Streak featuring classic movie monsters. The event was very well attended and raised around $2000 for local charity Cafe Momentum -- huge props to the organizers! (cafemomentum.org)