Introducing students to Capture Go

I am enjoying teaching introduction to game design after my years-long hiatus. The class is very eager, the sort that I rarely have to wait for comments and instead have to urge to move on.

On Thursday, we discussed core mechanics. It's something we had talked about earlier in the semester as well, but now we returned to it so we could talk about primary systems, secondary systems, and so on—and how crucial it is for small teams to remove anything beyond secondary systems. One interesting aspect from the discussion was the question of what is "core" in Skyrim: is it combat? discussion? walking about? This allowed us to discuss a designer's perspective on elegance, how it is not the same as goodness of design, but that there are good reasons to strive for it.

I followed this by teaching them to play Capture Go. I don't often cover this in my class, but I was inspired to put it into Thursday's discussion of core mechanisms given that Go is practically all core. There's just not much else to it, which is part of why it's such a fascinating object of study.

I introduced the game, and we got into pairs to play. There was an odd number in attendance, so I got to join a student for a few rounds, which was a treat. She was having some trouble seeing the patterns, so I started pointing out when I was about to win, and this led to our having better games. Also, however, she also set up her own goals, such as covering the star points; this was more important to her than winning the match.

After playing for only about seven minutes, I polled the room to see if anyone had thoughts to share. Everyone seemed to have fun, and I didn't get the sense that anyone was confused by the rules. One student pointed out how there was a strategic element to hitting the edge of the board in such a way that they could entrap the opponent. What really struck me was a discussion from another pair, where they immediately recognized that there was "aggressive" and "defensive" play. They described how, at first, one of them was defensive to the others' aggression, but that aggression seemed to win out, so then they both played aggressively. It doesn't matter to me which is more strategic; what I want to point out is that they recognized that in this simple stone-placing game, there was something deeper than simply marking spaces: there was strategy, there was a feeling, there were patterns, even if they only scratched the surface.

This neatly tied up our discussion of cores and elegance, and I have marked my teaching notes to remind myself to use this combination again.

Shove Off! at Global Game Jam 2026

This past weekend, I participated in Global Game Jam at Ball State University. This was the first time in many years that I was not hosting the event, and it was a nice change to simply jam and not have to worry about logistics.

My team created Shove Off!, a local-multiplayer arcade game. The source and binaries are also available on GitHub. The game is for four players with game controllers.

Title Screen

My son and I started kicking around ideas right after the theme announcement. We briefly discussed making a survivors-like where the powers come from masks, but we tossed it as requiring too much balancing. We pivoted to using masks of world cultures to provide power-ups in a platformer brawler game. This idea played well into our observation that local multiplayer games can generate a lot of fun even if they are rough around the edges. Choosing this to go forward, we then decided on pushing as the core player interaction would be such that masks modify it. (Incidentally, I have played Smash Bros. exactly once, and my son has not played it at all.) Our whiteboard designs revealed an opportunity for two kinds of attacks: a horizontal push from the ground and a diagonal push from the air. The simple level layout we sketched provided all we needed for a playground.

We tried to get the core gameplay working Friday night, but we could not get all the pieces together. Crucially, we did figure out the sizes and shapes that everything would need to be. We also recruited a musician who agreed to write a retro-style, high-energy song together with sfxr-style sound effects for us.

Saturday morning, we got the core gameplay and representative placeholder art in place; that is, we replaced the Godot icon with stick figures. We enjoyed the core gameplay even without powerups. Knowing we were a small team with limited time, we decided to try to build a complete game using only the core gameplay. If it was good, it could be what we shipped, and if we had time, we could add powerups. During the day, the theme became less generic and focused more on lucha libre. Masked wrestlers pushing each other off of platforms seemed the right way to go. Once the musician's main theme landed, it changed everything: the song was perfect for the madcap gameplay and bold visuals we had brought together.

My youngest son was the only one with nothing scheduled Saturday afternoon, so I invited him to come hang out at the jam. I set him on some research tasks, including finding fonts and figuring out a palette for the characters. He started by simply poking around Google Fonts, but then I taught him about the value of using image search for reference images. We brought up images of luchador posters, which changed his whole approach. It was a good learning opportunity, and I'm glad he came along, even if he had to spend some time awaiting assignments.

Starting the match

Many of the posters we reviewed featured a starburst background, and it looked to me like something I could do with a shader. I tried puzzling it out myself but did not make much progress. Shaders are interesting to me but I frequently get stymied by them. I ended up searching the Web and finding exactly what I was looking for. Sunday morning, I added my favorite subtle feature: at the end of the game, the background color changes to match the thematic color of the winner. One of the other jammers required shader cleverness in his game, and I told him how I'd love to lead a seminar on the Book of Shaders. He said he'd be interested, so I guess I only need nine more undergraduates who are intrigued by this intersection of art, math, and design.

I should mention that all of the visuals were done by my other son who was in attendance. He did a great job iterating on ideas and taking feedback, reworking the characters several times as we worked towards our goal. One of the best things we did in terms of the project architecture was to separate the body animations into their own scene so that he could work on those independently while I worked in nearby systems. We only had one merge conflict during the whole weekend, and it was quickly resolved.

By Sunday morning, we had already covered the "mask" theme with our luchadores, but we had time to build on the core gameplay. Our testing showed that players could get stuck in pushing matches, and so we pulled our favorite powerup from Friday night's listing: fireballs. Every few seconds, a stylized sun shows up in the middle of the screen, and the player to grab it gets three fireballs. These proved perfect for breaking up the gameplay.

We were all happy with how the game turned out, and it was popular during the post-jam party. I felt good about making a complete, playable, and enjoyable game. I have spent a lot of time the past several months in preproduction and exploring engineering practices, but I haven't shipped anything in a while. The jam was a great opportunity to go from nothing to something in 48 hours.

If you try out the game, I hope you'll let us know what you think.

"Artificial, Not Intelligent" essay published at The Raised Hand

My essay for The Raised Hand was published this morning:

https://theraisedhand.substack.com/p/artificial-not-intelligent-how-meeting

It is my invited response to their theme for the year, "What is the role of the human educator in the age of AI?"

An overheard comment about the importance of knowing

Earlier this semester in my game design class, I overheard a student say to another, "If you don't know much, you won't be able to think of something."

He's right, contrary to the philosophy that believes that students don't need to learn facts because they can look them up.

An Improvement in Brainstorming Game Ideas

I have used brainstorming exercises in my game design classes for many years. When I first started, the goal was to fill the board with ideas within one class period—and we did. But it wasn't that helpful. Brainstorming is recommended in Richard Lemarchand's Playful Production Process, and so I used it in my 2023 and 2024 game studio preproduction classes, following his helpful rules. These exercises can result in unexpected items, but it seems like every time, no matter my framing, the participants failed to grasp the point of the exercise: game ideation. Instead, what overwhelms the list is inspiration for theme, setting, or characters, but these are not game ideas.

I saw a different possibility when I watched Joe Baxter-Webb's video on ideation methods. The video recommends seven different approaches for ensuring that one is pursuing worthwhile game ideas. One of the approaches is to describe a game in terms of "Action Action Goal." An example he gives describes Into the Breach: destroy the kaiju and upgrade my mechs so that I can save the cities. It struck me that this simple formula might help my students stop listing things like "bacon" which everyone likes but which is not a game idea. 

I explained the structure and goals in class yesterday, and in twenty minutes, my small group of students came up with forty game ideas. The very first one was only a goal, but with a little prompting, it was revised into action-goal. The next was fully robust in its action-action-goal structure. A few of the entries were quick "Yes, and..." entries, where someone riffed off of another idea, but most were standalone ideas.

Forty is much less than previous teams have made, and that's a good thing. Everything on the list can be turned into a game, although many of the actions seem to describe narrative events rather than player actions. For example, one of the concepts was to "embarrass" someone else, but turning this into a player action would require some interpretation. 

Each student brought an original game idea to class, inspired by Baxter-Webb's video, and I hoped this would warm them up for the exercise. However, I am not sure that items on the list represent the games that the students actually want to make. I say this in part because, earlier in the week, I had them do a short analysis of a game they enjoy, but in the brainstorming list, I don't see elements of those games. In retrospect, I could have been more transparent, telling them that they should expect to be doing creative ideation in class. To me, this is clear from the preparatory exercise, but that's because I have the whole class plan in my head already.

As I was writing this, I looked at my blog for old brainstorming notes and came across my notes from Justin Gary's Think Like a Game Designer. My plan for Monday's class was to have my students start greyboxing, but I realized last night that we should some more time narrowing down what we want to make. I think I may review the notes from Gary's book more carefully and have those as a back-up plan to help the students figure out what they want to make. 

The Games of 2025

It's time for that annual tradition: a reflection upon the board games of 2025. This year involved a significant change in my play patterns since my eldest son went away to college. He is the one with whom I have played the most games by a long shot. I miss having him home, in part because he is such a good tablemate, always eager to join in a game.

Without further ado, here is the list of my top-played board games of 2025.

• Clank!: Catacombs (31)
• Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread (25)
• Heat: Pedal to the Metal (20)
• Planet Unknown (17)
• Race for the Galaxy (17)
• Clank! Legacy 2: Acquisitions Incorporated - Darkest Magic (13)
• The 7th Citadel (12)

Clank!: Catacombs is one of our favorite games. It's one of the few games that my wife will always join in. We got the new Underworld expansion for Christmas, and it's definitely worth it for fans like us. In fact, we've played seven times in since Christmas and enjoyed every one. Clank! Legacy 2 was something I picked up to play with my younger three boys on the nights that the eldest was out with his weekly TTRPG group. We enjoyed it, and we played it once post-campaign, but it has not proven to have staying power, even though there are still many unlockable elements we have not completed.

Arydia provided some of the most fun and memorable moments of any campaign board game I have played. Three of my sons joined me on that adventure, and we loved it. It's hard to tell too many stories without giving spoilers, but if you're on the fence, I suggest going for it. The two included adventures of 7th Citadel were enjoyable, although if you play it, don't forget to keep a good map. I know that there are expansions that extend the world, but I felt satisfied with completing just the base box.

Planet Unknown and Heat both accommodate six players, and so those are easy to get out when everyone wants to play. Both got to the table more often than Quacks, which also fills that niche.

I only included games with ten or more plays in my list, but other favorites also got to the table this year. I am surprised Ark Nova was only seven and Castles of Mad King Ludwig was only three; I would have guessed higher for both of them.

This was another year of declining plays. It coincides with playing larger games more often, but also of course with my son at college and the others involved in scouts, robotics, and other events. 

2025 board games by the numbers:

• 55 different games played this year
• 293 logged plays this year
• 3779 logged plays in total
• 36 game h-index (+1 from last year)
• 19 player h-index (unchanged)

It was also a pretty good year for tabletop roleplaying games, at least by my modest standards. Although I was unsuccessful in my attempt to get a regular group together, I did run play seven games, and I was the gamemaster for each. These included three sessions of Torchbearer, two of Fate, and one each of Knave and Mythic Bastionland. Extracting this data from RPGGeek makes me realize that I need to be more consistent in whether I log plays as "RPG" or "RPG Item." 

An Afternoon with Mythic Bastionland

Professor Dungeonmaster convinced me to check out Mythic Bastionland, a new tabletop RPG from Chris McDowall. I always appreciate Prof. DM's commentary, and he called it a masterpiece. I splurged on the hardcover edition without doing much more research, and I have no regrets.

The book is beautiful in its form. The entire rules for the game are presented in about twenty pages, followed by a generous collection of random tables. The majority of the book is devoted to 144 pages that describe the 72 knights, the seers who knighted them, and the myths that manifest in the world. The knights seek the myths, and the myths are described with just enough detail that the referee can turn them into compelling vignettes. The book concludes with about thirty two-column pages in which the left side narrates the table experience of three players and the right side provides commentary on it. This is a brilliant way to give examples of play and provide recommendations while keeping brief the initial rules explanation. Generous illustrations by Alec Sorenson push the dark medieval fantasy theme right into your imagination upon opening the book.

My two older boys agreed to try Mythic Bastionland with me yesterday afternoon, and we finished a one-shot session in about three hours. It is clearly a game that benefits from campaign play, but I found several resources that helped me to pull together a one-shot in about two hours of prep, not including reading the rules. There is an extensive list of resources on Reddit, but these are the ones I found most useful for quickly pulling an experimental session together:

• Chris McDowall's post about Mythic One-Shots. I followed his "Speed-Shot" approach, opting for a 6x6 Realm with the recommended myth. I rolled four random Knights and filled out their character sheets with everything except the attribute values, which I left for the players to roll. I came across many praises for McDowall's blog posts and YouTube videos; I am curious to look at some of his other content, but I have not done so yet.
• The official character sheets. The official sheet is dry but effective. There are a lot of fan-made ones, some of which are quite beautiful. I could not get this one to print, otherwise I might have used it, although I fear it would look poor on my black-and-white printer. I love the aesthetic of this other one, but it lacks some of the rules references that I wanted for new players (including me).
• Realm Maker online tool for generating Realms based on the game's heuristics. The interface is a bit awkward and I would have liked more printing and export options, but for what it is, it's a handy free tool. I configured it for a 6x6 Realm with one Myth, one Seer, and one Holding, and it came up with something reasonable enough for me to use. I printed up one for the players, then had to take a screenshot of the referee version. I printed this latter one at a smaller scale so that I could write in my notes around it, which worked well.
• Squire and Holdings tables from the Mythic Canvas. Knowing I would have two players, I took the book's advice to give each a squire, and the tables helped give each a bit of character. Similarly, I rolled a random Holding, which gave me a name and an economic focus for it. This ended up being slightly incongruous with the terrain, but it was adequate for a one-shot.

All this allowed me to pull together a one-shot, which I played with my two older sons yesterday afternoon. For me, there were a lot of firsts.

I had not previously run nor played a hexcrawl, but I really enjoyed it. The Myth's early omens provided simple vignettes that gave a sense of the game's setting. The party went straight for the castle to learn more about the local situation, and they got just enough info to set them in the right direction of the Seer. They did receive a crucial tip from the Seer that ended up being used just in time to save one of them from death, although this was all driven by dice, not my plotting. The one-shot only had one Myth so that the party could have a chance of overcoming it in one session, which they did; this made me curious to see how a larger Realm and multiple Myths would impact the feel of the game. Our game-time played out over the course of about a week, but I understand that a campaign would take place over years or decades. It's an attractive storytelling form that I have never explored.

When I run TTRPGs, which is not very often, I usually try to improvise some environmental conditions that establish a tone, such as the weather or a smell. I had not previously tried to rely on tables for such things, but given the prominent place they have in Mythic Bastionland, I decided to try it. I used random results from the weather table for the first few days' travel, but I quickly found that tedious. It was fun to try it, and I am sure that a better use of the tables is for when one is creatively stuck or desiring an improvisational challenge. Incidentally, I also have a copy of Knave on Professor Dungeonmaster's recommendation, and it is even more chock full of tables---but I have not been able to run that one yet.

I had also not previously run a game without roll-to-hit. Mythic Bastionland has combatants roll damage, and these dice can be manipulated through various player abilities. We all found it to be a lovely minigame of risk management and mitigation. It works well with another novelty of the game, where a player who suffers damage equal to half their remaining health is mortally wounded. Of course, the more damage one takes, the less damage is required to deal such a wound. Our session culminated in an epic battle where Sir John was mortally wounded, and as the enemy creature took wing, Sir Asgerald grabbed Sir John's javelin and hurled it at the fleeing monster. The player rolled exactly what he needed to deal a mortal blow to the enemy, and because of the Seer's advice, they were able to heal Sir John of a deadly poison. It was a beautiful ending to the afternoon, all driven by dice and improvised storytelling.

I found some of the nomenclature used in Mythic Bastionland to be hard to remember. The system of armaments is appropriately simple, yet terms like "hefty" and "slow" are used in a technical sense that doesn't match their colloquial use. Realms have Holdings, which seems right, but one of them is the Seat of Power, which sounds arbitrary to my ear compared to, say, "Capital." Each holding has people in the roles of Steward, Marshal, Sheriff, and Envoy, which are used in a historical sense but don't stick well into my memory. This meant there were some awkward pauses while I made sure I was introducing players to the right terms. I am sure that if I played this particular game more often, or even got into McDowall's content, it would be more natural for me.

Mythic Bastionland is an impressive game, and the physical book is a beautiful addition to my collection. The tabletop experience would benefit from loading screens that highlight Sorenson's evocative illustrations. It's another game that I wish I could run again soon, but that's probably not in the cards. This is one of the reasons I write these reviews: when TTRPGs are few and far between, it's nice to have a place to collect these stories or to return for inspiration.