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

Just a brief intro to the podcast. Welcome to the show!