ABOUT THIS PODCAST 🔗
A game development log where I share the hardest game design problems, and share thoughts on the games I'm playing. My name is John Rudolph Drexler and you can find my games at catacombian.com
Hosts:
Update frequency:
every 13 days
Average audio length:
10 minutes
English
United States
38 episodes
since Aug. 19, 2025
episodic
LATEST EPISODE 🔗
Stealing is a superpower if you do it well.
PREVIOUS EPISODES 🔗
David Gordon (co-designer of Finspan, and many others) gave me an insight into why it's so much harder than it looks to design simple games.
Kim Swift, of Portal fame, shared that Valve uses this simple tool to inform what they design next. I found it immensely helpful.
Codenames lures you in as a family friendly party game, but it is deep, sophisticated, and difficult.
Frank Lantz's book The Beauty of Games blew my mind. And so I made a little book report. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLW8ZvKjmko
I had a big combat system that I didn't feel good about. I finally ripped it out, and it left a vacuum that inspired my best idea yet. Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfgcoyz9HFY
Gen Con was an awesome experience. I got third place in a Cat in the Box tournament. Tabletop gaming is the opposite of doom scrolling.
I'm building something that doesn't have an obvious precedent, and it's been very tedious to figure out the right shape.
You can have one action in 3 different form factors, and you've got 3 essentially different games. It's worth iterating a lot to find the one that unlocks the biggest design space.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Drexler, which is the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Listen Notes, Inc.
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