Hi Bluesky! Polaris Game Design Retreat is an annual event where game designers tackle tough problems together, then write reports on their discoveries. If you're looking for our reports, start here: polarisgamedesign.com/reports/

I really want to write something about how some people have just developed really unhealthy relationships with videogames. Like the gaming equivalent of people who drink Baijiu or buy those Challenge Hot Chips just so they can be part of the social zeitgeist even if it just causes them misery.

The Roguelike Celebration Preview Event is this Sunday at 3PM PST, with special guests: UFO50's @perryjon.bsky.social talking game design @ezra-szanton.itch.io talking synergy in deckbuilders @apepers.bsky.social talking design for suspense And come explore our MUD's dazzling, delightful circus!

One day I’ll be emotionally stable enough to rewatch Halt and Catch Fire

This is my first time moving after actually acquiring real furniture and hefty quantities of Stuff I Like and not just Stuff I Thrifted. I have a new appreciation for why people would move into a haunted house and just take their chances. Bleeding walls could not convince me to do this all twice.

Picking up crucial moving supplies. Did the math of 3 canned coffees per day and said yeah that sounds right.

Even the smallest bits of this game were so good and evocative.

the thing about "just make it exist, make it good later" is that unfortunately three key challenges in game development are 1. deciding what should exist 2. deciding when to make things good 3. deciding what 'good' means

when you're new to making games, it's easy to think it's about making art and making the right decisions and having the best taste. but actually making games is about dancing really good when the old west bandit shoots bullets at your toes

I’d make the case that Caves of Qud is one of the standout works of SF in the 21st century thus far. It’s taken over a decade; it’s sprawling; it has its own idiosyncratic but consistent epistemologies that are only learnable by fucking around. So to see it recognized by the field is so validating.

YES!!! Oh my goodness I am SO happy for this, biggest congrats to @unormal.bsky.social and @jfg.land and @ectafoole.bsky.social and everyone else on the team, you’re wonderful people and deserve all the accolades for your work 🥳🥳🥳

Reminder that the best conference for understanding generative systems, and how people play them, is full of kind people, online and you can go to it.

I’ll also be lucky enough to get to have a chat with the talented Jon Perry - if folks have questions they’d like to see come up, let me know! Or come by and suggest some topics live!

If you liked the sound of my GDC talk on system suspense but didn’t want to pay the exorbitant price for attending GDC or paying for Vault access - I’m doing a cheeky re-run on Sept 7th! That recording will end up on YouTube, but if you drop live you can ask some questions and it’ll be a fun time :)

Went to Baltimore on wplace out of curiosity

Honestly extremely rad for @cavesofqud.com to be getting the switch port ready right as I will be starting long daily commutes on public transit, thank you for doing this specifically for me

lotta people about to be bludgeoned to death by baboons

My favourite DF story is an exercise in reading the most possible into a playthrough. It's called Matul Remrit, written by @bravemule.bsky.social, plus a handful of other contributors (for the multimedia elements!). You can read it here: lparchive.org/Dwarf-Fortre...

Stacey has what is to me the definitive analysis of all this discourse on games and art:

The pianola museum in Amsterdam where I got to hear a concert of music unplayable with human hands. Or the KattenKabinet, also Amsterdam, an historic building stuffed with cat-themed art ranging from Picasso, Rembrandt, cat mummies, statues of cats fucking, and costumes from hit musical Cats.

Today I executed shallow frying tempura in a cast iron with great finesse and no splatter… then submerged my entire hand in recently-boiling water while making the soba 🥲

I saw an early build of this like two years ago and was immediately charmed; really recommend wishlisting if you’re a fan of city builders, simulation, or thinky games

I wish I knew where on the spectrum of: "ppl feel helpless and are taking it out on anyone within reach, usually the people with the least power" to "ppl have become so customer-brained that they treat anyone/anything that seems "bigger" than them as the enemy" that this hostility comes from.

The backstory here is that the Squamish people of what is now Vancouver were illegally dispossessed of this land a century ago. They sued, got their land back, and are using their sovereignty to ignore local zoning rules and build 6,000 new homes over the objections of nearby wealthy NIMBYs.

Putting 2 tablespoons of dill into my mushroom soup instead of 2 teaspoons and inventing a new meal I call Swamp Water

Pentiment is a great game because you start as a silly little guy making funny decision but before you know it all of them come home to roost and shit is miserable.

Wild animals that at least briefly lived in my home growing up include: least weasel, raven, mountain chickadee, Wilson’s snipe. My early childhood was in a literal log cabin and we constantly had flying squirrels and starlings getting stuck in the basement drop ceiling.

Alexei is right, we NEED someone to do an Uma Musume talk on the roguelike elements of horse girl coaching for the event @roguelike.club in October It cannot be me because I WILL spend way too much time & gacha bucks in the name of research, but I CAN consult & be your Trainer-san for this, lmao

Our tickets are $30, or pay what you can. We’re volunteer-run. We don’t have corporate-sponsored talks. And yet, unlike GDC, if you speak at Roguelike Celebration, you’ll get paid! No travel costs! We pay for streaming hardware if you need it! Human transcribed captions, uploaded with no paywall!

Just remembered I had this in my folder

The world is hard but it never stops bringing me so much joy and relaxation to just stomp around and take some pictures of bugs.

I've been thinking about an under-utilized design space I wish there were more examples of: Deckbuilders where you add *sets* of cards to your deck, rather than adding em one by one. So I wrote too much about it: blog.literallyaking.com/2025/06/12/d...

I’ve never forgotten this picture from 2016 and how it completely reshaped my understanding of how the media covers protests.

If you work for a big company, especially one that would like to gain visibility (and goodwill) with a very smart community of technologists, designers and creative coders, this is a very easy win for your marketing department: an established event, a pretty small ask and direct impact.

blaseball

A side effect of being one half of a roguelike power couple is thinking my phone audio has some weird echo going on before realizing no - @procgenkawa.bsky.social and I are just listening to two different episodes of Eggplant in adjacent rooms 🤣

Gotta admit I teared up at my GDC talk feedback, in a happy way. To be heard and inspire people in the midst of very difficult personal circumstances means so much ❤️ And to all the people who now also can’t stop noticing system suspense - sorry not sorry :p

we say this every year but: the best talks at RLC are not about roguelikes. pitch a talk about something interesting to do with procedural generation, systems design, exploration and bring some weird energy to the best online conference you'll ever attend.

sometimes procgen creates delight due to juxtaposition between fairly innocuous output and noncontrollable external context (in this case, timing)

WE ARE FROM CHICAGO - the Vatican

I wish Blaseball was still here so I could watch the Firefighters react to Chicago Pope

Last year, James Cartlidge was on a panel with Marc Dolgin and Christine Tomlinson on "The Rise of the Roguelite" talking about their upcoming book and it is now OUT: www.routledge.com/The-Rise-of-... Thank you for the shout-out in the book, James; just ordered. It was a pleasure to have you all!

Did you know that Clair Obscur's story was hugely inspired by a French novel? I talked about it on @roguelike.club explaining how everything in that book, from the world building to the page layout, was reminiscent of a roguelike. I also mention how untranslatable it is. youtu.be/6ik6jB2YhZg?...

I limped to the polls even with a potentially torn tendon, and even in a riding that is historically conservative. If you can vote in Canada and haven’t done so yet, do all you can to make it happen!

hey is anyone using those 2 textbooks I co-edited for their university classes in any capacity? (Procedural Generation in Game Design, Procedural Storytelling in Game Design)

Ahhh Cold West - my first game and the exact kind of game I’d gotten into the field to make, a dream project. I’m still gutted by the way it ended and how much amazing work will never see the light of day. My Mum wrote fanfic about one of the companions just from what came out of the concept phase!

Oh hey, that’s been me! 🙃

For what it's worth, Caves of Qud is a game with multiple trans developers on the team and multiple trans characters in the game. The game is crawling with neopronouns and celebrates radical bodily autonomy. We have already been targeted by reactionaries and we thrived anyway.

What a headline. What a headline