In this week's episode we have a conversation with Fabian Fisher. Fabian is a game designer and developer here in Germany, and he's worked on quite a few games. Some highlights are Crimson Company, Hyperdome, and his most recent game Rack and Slay, which is a roguelike billiards game. Fabian has also done a ton of writing. I recommend you check out his, his website, Ludokultur.de. I'm really excited to bring you this episode with Fabian because I think that he's a really interesting person and he's also really kind of a pillar of community for game design.

Fischer Game Design

Ludokultur

Keith Burgun Games

Rack and Slay

Prosperous Universe

Crimson Company

The Bazaar

Mosa Lina

This week's episode is a continuation of our conversation with Dan DiIorio of Luck Be A Landlord and Maze Mice, and Brian Long, dev and designer of Ballionaire. Our conversation kicks off from my, at this point, repeated take about roguelike deck builders and board games, and leads us somewhere in the zone of the vibe-y-ness of PUBG.

• Luck Be A Landlord on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/14...
• Ballionaire on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/26...
• Dan's Blog: https://blog.trampolinetales.com/
• Brian on Moby Games: https://www.mobygames.com/person/2910...

This week we have a really interesting conversation for you. It's a three-way conversation with myself, Brian Long, the developer and designer of Ballionaire, and Dan DiIorio, the designer and developer of Luck Be A Landlord and Maze Mice.

There's an interesting backstory here. Brian is someone that I've known for a long time and someone that I've talked to quite a bit about games and game design. And I knew from our conversations that he was a pretty big fan of Luck Be A Landlord. So I thought this might be a great opportunity to get the two of these smart developers in a room together for a conversation.

So that's what we did. The next two episodes are my conversation with Dan and Brian. I try to get out of the way as much as possible and let the conversation flow between the two developers. We talk a lot about the design of Luck Be A Landlord and Ballionaire in this episode, and I hope you enjoy.

• Luck Be A Landlord on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1404850/Luck_be_a_Landlord/
• Ballionaire on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2667120/Ballionaire/
• Dan's Blog: https://blog.trampolinetales.com/
• Brian on Moby Games: https://www.mobygames.com/person/29101/brian-long/
• Indie Game the Movie: https://store.steampowered.com/app/207080/Indie_Game_The_Movie/

Transcript here: https://my.playful.work/probably-designed-luck-be-a-ballionaire/

For this week's episode we drifted a bit from the show's MacGuffin and had a slightly different conversation. I spoke with Julian Schumacher, the developer of The Quizard's Domain who goes by Calm Pewter Games. The topic of our conversation was multiplayer–designing and developing multiplayer experiences for player interaction and how player interactivity influences design.

You can find more from Julian/Calm Pewter out in the wild:

• The Quizard's Domain on Steam: The Quizard's Domain
• Calm Pewter Games
• Calm Pewter Discord: https://discord.com/invite/QHbbDuUCa7
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/calmpewter.games
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CalmPewterGames
• Not Julian, but a huge influence: Sakurai's Game Dev Wisdom on YouTube

Next week we'll be back to our conversations about randomness and chance. We have the first episode of a two-part conversation with Dan DiIorio (Luck Be A Landlord, Maze Mice) and Brian Long (Ballionaire). But for today, enjoy this conversation about people.

This epside is the second of an epic two part conversation with Eddie Cai and Kev Chang. Eddie is the lead designer at Pengonauts who released Star⭐Vaders earlier this year. Kev is the director of Box Dragon Studios in Sweden. Their game, As We Descend, went into Early Access at the end of May.

You can find both games on Steam.

A transcript of the episode is here: https://my.playful.work/probably-designed-eddie-cai-and-kev-chang-part-2/

Pengonauts: https://pengonauts.com/

Star⭐️Vaders: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2097570/StarVaders/

Box Dragon: https://www.boxdragon.se/

As We Descend: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1769830/As_We_Descend/

This epside is the first of a two part conversation with Eddie Cai and Kev Chang. Eddie is the lead designer at Pengonauts who released Star⭐Vaders earlier this year. Kev is the director of Box Dragon Studios in Sweden. Their game, As We Descend, went into Early Access at the end of May.

You can find both games on Steam.

A transcript of the episode is here: https://my.playful.work/probably-designed-eddie-cai-and-kev-chang/

Pengonauts: https://pengonauts.com/

Star⭐️Vaders: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2097570/StarVaders/

Box Dragon: https://www.boxdragon.se/

As We Descend: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1769830/As_We_Descend/

Links from the episode:

• Ezra's Itch Page - https://ezra-szanton.itch.io/
• Mr Magpie's Harmless Card Game - https://giantlight.itch.io/mr-magpies-harmless-card-game
• Fergus Ferguson's portfolio - https://fergusdraws.com/
• Rebel Jester Studios - https://www.rebeljesterstudios.com/
• Petricore - https://petricoregames.com/
• Input / Output Randomness Article - https://ezraszanton.substack.com/p/output-randomness-game-designers
• Isaac Shalev's Article - https://www.kindfortress.com/2018/10/03/design-patterns-random-loops/
• UFO 50 (with Party House and Devilition inside) - https://store.steampowered.com/app/1147860/UFO_50/
• Dorfromantik (Digital and Physical) - https://www.toukana.com/dorfromantik