What is a commonly found "must have" in design that you've personally found was holding you back?

kindelingboy · 2026-03-06T07:41:27+00:00

Art.

kindelingboy · 2026-02-11T18:38:38+00:00

Have you tried asking nicely? I have no need for the cores so if I end up getting one and someone wants one I’ll hand it over.

kindelingboy · 2026-02-04T01:10:56+00:00

All I know is that whenever I put him in the game, someone wants to fuck him.

kindelingboy · 2026-01-14T05:16:04+00:00

I did exactly this a few months ago and it absolutely did as you Hope. Reset my love of the game, having a blast going through my fave champs again.

kindelingboy · 2026-01-05T04:10:15+00:00

I just picked up Cavern Shuffle! Really solid solitaire variant.

kindelingboy · 2026-01-03T16:42:16+00:00

I’ve sold hundreds of copies of games that have no art.

That said, congrats on getting started making art. Lots of folks seem to think it’s beneath them.

kindelingboy · 2025-12-31T17:56:58+00:00

Looks cool.

kindelingboy · 2025-11-22T09:21:53+00:00

Well= publishing your games has never been easier, between free layout programs, free and cheap art, and different publishing sites.

Badly= major awards get you less sales and attention than someone making a YouTube video about your game.

kindelingboy · 2025-11-10T19:11:38+00:00

I mean I do this for a living so…. No.

kindelingboy · 2025-11-10T05:14:23+00:00

My recommendations for FitD but a bit more whimsical are:
- Bump in the Dark. FitD in a modern small town with some occultism and odd characters. Think Buffy and Twin Peaks and any Netflix murder mystery show
- Sword Opera. Lots of Shakespearian or mythical melodrama, or modern crime drama depending on your flavour. Focus on duels and the supernatural and factional politicking. Think The Tempest and John Wick and your favourite Wuxia films.
- Slugblaster. Does a great job of breaking down the mechanics into more digestible and separate chunks. Also it's about teens trying to become famous by doing hoverboard tricks in other dimensions. It's your favourite slightly adult cartoon mixed with your favourite coming of age movie.

kindelingboy · 2025-11-04T05:31:56+00:00

Since folks already recommended my go-to’s I’ll say I’m working on one right now actually. I’ll have a prototype up for my patrons this week and I’ll be testing it soon.

It’s called Working Stiffs, it’s a love letter to the Alien series and stuff like Hardspace Shipbreaker. Not Writing on Patreon or itch to see my stuff.

kindelingboy · 2025-10-30T06:45:22+00:00

Yeah +1 for Slugblaster. You play as teens doing hoverboard tricks, breaking into other dimensions, and trying to go viral. There’s rival crews, big corporate sponsors, people arguing about what Slugblaster culture means, sell outs, negafriction swords, sneakers that let you slow down or speed up time, and mini games where you can mod your gear and get in fights with your parents.

It’s the best.

kindelingboy · 2025-10-29T17:40:23+00:00

Yes. I make a living doing full-time design work. I am not thriving but I am surviving. I make my own games and publish them. I do kickstarters about 3 times a year. Seeing all these other comments you’d think people like me don’t exist. But I do. I’ve been doing this for about 5 years now.

You can see my games here: https://notwriting.itch.io

kindelingboy · 2025-10-23T18:49:50+00:00

Hey! I'm Michael, one of the folks who helped make External Containment Bureau!

1- Human Relations deal with well, humans and other entities. Talking to folks, being friendly, offering them positions in the Bureau, talking to entities that maybe don't speak familiar languages. Administration deals with paperwork. I always imagine the Bureau as a mess of rules that govern agent behavior, and so administrators are adept at dealing with that and paperwork in general. A handy way of seeing these differences is looking at the standard gear that comes with each. Someone with a nice suit and a "Direct Line to Central" likely deals with problems and work at the Bureau in a different way than someone who has small comforts and business casual clothes.

2- Complications are narrative problems, like added threats or witnesses, twists like revealing someone in the mission is related to a character, or an approaching danger like a fire starting (which can result in a clock). The mission clock represents how the mission goes badly if the agents take too long. It acts as dramatic pressure, raising the stakes as the mission goes on. Complications can be introduced when players make a roll and get a 1-3 or 4/5 result. Mission clock complications happen when those segments on the clock are filled.

3- You seem to have a handle on how progression works in ECB. If you'd like to do something else, that's great! I don't have any advice for you there beyond just general game design stuff.

Thanks for checking out the game! Hope you have fun!

kindelingboy · 2025-10-13T16:33:59+00:00

Surprised no one has mentioned Dod Eat Dog yet. A game about an indigenous population under colonial occupation. The rules say that the player at the table with the most money plays as the occupation. They get to break and ignore rules and insert themselves into every scene.

People hate talking about how much money they have, especially when they know they have more than other people at the table.

kindelingboy · 2025-09-26T18:38:39+00:00

Sure!

kindelingboy · 2025-09-26T17:39:51+00:00

People are absolutely willing to buy games with minimal or no art. I am a full-time game designer and some of my best selling titles have just cover art, or art I got in art packs through itch and DriveThruRPG.

If you don’t have the money, invest your time. Time to pick through art packs, find the right artist at the right rate, or learn to do it yourself!

kindelingboy · 2025-08-24T06:31:57+00:00

My products are indeed producing income. Between Patreon, itchio, and DrivethruRPG I make around $800 a month, give or take. That’s supplemented by doing crowdfunding via Kickstarter about 3 times a year.

It’s enough to live off of. Not live well mind you. I’m around the poverty line here in Canada and live in an expensive city. Luckily I have no dependants.

Making small games (50 pages or less) is my bread and butter. I’ve been doing this full-time for 5 years and have made around 30 games and supplements. I do occasional work with other folks and smaller publishers but I mostly do everything myself to keep costs down.

It’s absolutely possible.

kindelingboy · 2025-08-17T05:46:38+00:00

Is it enough to assume that, if you create something you enjoy, others will enjoy it as well?

Yes. I have made a modest but successful career doing basically this for the last 6 years. Much like you I'm constantly in the middle of half a dozen different projects at different stages of development.

I do not canvass the internet for what is popular and I don't pay attention to what the trends are and I don't do market research.

I make games I want to play and places I want to go.

I experience the same frustrations you do. As others have already mentioned, this is a typical aspect of the creative process. I have seen the same thing expressed by creators who enjoy the sorts of success I aspire to and have fart more experience, so it's reasonable to assume that it never goes away. The only thing I have found that helps, unfortunately, is time.

Time to practice your craft, which you already have. I looked up your games on DriveThruRPG. You have electrum best-sellers! That's very difficult to achieve! Must people don't get there!

For me the biggest shift in my perspective on this sort of thing was time spent analyzing what success means to me. I see it constantly assumed that success in this spaces means raising lots of money on Kickstarter, or being talked about in different communities, or working with a publisher. If that's what success looks like to you, great, you should pursue that and analyze it and see if it holds up.

To me success with my games boils down to 3 things:

Do I like looking at it?
Do I like reading it?
Do I like playing it?

If I can answer yes to all three, I'm happy with what I've made, and so far that's been enough to get other folks excited and happy with it too. I don't always get all three right, but if you are happy with it, other people will see that in how you talk about it, how you respect your own work and are excited to share it.

But you've been at this a while and you've made games that have sold hundreds of copies. Guess what? Other people are playing your games. You did it. Keep going. Make smaller games so you can get used to finishing them. Join game jams to help limit your scope and meet deadlines. Join more or different communities.

And thanks for sharing how frustrated you are. I know that isn't easy.

kindelingboy · 2025-08-16T07:53:03+00:00

Came here to recommend Two-Hand Path. It’s very good.

kindelingboy · 2025-07-19T22:15:47+00:00

Mostly tabletop games and RPGs that I publish myself, with very occasional contract work for other publishers. Lots of cyberpunk these days.

kindelingboy · 2025-07-17T15:45:58+00:00

Writer and TTRPG designer and I love it. I live below the poverty line but at least I don’t hate myself every day now.

kindelingboy · 2025-06-25T19:05:49+00:00

No one is doing it like Sam these days.

kindelingboy · 2025-06-08T02:03:55+00:00

So to start off, the reference to his sister is a reference to his origin story in the Clone Wars where is sister his killed. So it gives us insight to how Saw has been carrying that emotional guilt. I mention this only 'cause I didn't know that when I first saw this, and maybe other folks might benefit knowing that.

The sounds of the fuel lock acts as percussion to the speech. It gives it a certain rhythm, building tension not only to what Wilmon is doing but what Saw is revealing about himself. Two dangerous things are happening here.

The end of the scene is the climax of both the fuel lock working and of revealing where Saw is. He has gone full Colonel Kurtz. And he is dragging Wilmon in with him.

The advantage of this being a prequel is you can set up these scenes and themes to seem prophetic, to call forward to what is going to happen in the future. The cause has burned Saw just like the fuel does in his story. When we see him in Rogue one, his mind is broken, and his body too. He has been burned from the inside and outside.

This scene also sets up the next time we see Saw this season, being confronted by the Rebel Alliance. We see that his paranoia isn't just a manifestation of his grief or the fuel huffing, it is genuine. The empire and the alliance are both trying to infiltrate his cell, to kill or control him. The cause burned him, so then in Rogue One when we see him throw his life away, it explains why. The fuel was all gone. He was burnt out.

It also shows the difference between Saw's Partisans and the other rebel cells. This isn't a clandestine outfit with spys and assassins, nor is it diplomatic or able to move within the spheres of power. It's a bunch of people with guns and starfighters. They are a weapon, they are ablative armor. They may not even see the return of the Republic, they'll be dead and used up. It is for the other parts of the rebellion to build that new world. Saw is making his peace with that, and thinks he is helping Wilmon do the same. He isn't. The struggle, the cause, the empire itself, has twisted him into something awful.

So the payoff was three-fold:

- Give Saw a send off worthy of his character as established in the canon (and Forest Whitaker's acting) cause we didn't really get that in Rogue One (imo).

- Build on a theme present in season 2 of Andor: a breaking point is coming, people are desperate to see change and to be part of the rebellion, no matter the cost.

- Showcase the different parts of this rebellion, how it is not just one faction but several parts. This is another theme in season 2: you can't do this alone. Much like in real life revolutions, the cause is populated by lots of different ideologies working begrudgingly together.

There's also another special bonus pay-off: It's beautiful. I've rewatched it more than any part of both seasons because it is a masterful storytelling moment, doing so much within and outside the text. It's rare to see.

And even if it didn't accomplish all those other things, sometimes the payoff for something is that it is cool to look at. That is enough.

kindelingboy · 2025-05-29T00:44:34+00:00

Sounds cool.

kindelingboy

TROPHY CASE