Back from the Void

Well now...it sure has been a hot minute, hasn't it. Welcome to Doom Thoughts. This [waves hand around gayly ] place is the new home base for all of my board game and digital game creations. I've been meaning to revamp my web presence for a long time now. Some of you might recall my old freelance writing blog, which had some ad-hoc game related stuff on it. It was outdated, didn't reflect who I am now ("he" pronouns? Ewww), and was a little too entrenched in old vibes for me. I nuked it a while ago, but I've been wanting to replace it for some time now.

So here we are! But what is here?

The recent shuttering of PNP Arcade, the sole place were I had print-and-play copies of some of my small board games available to purchase, left me without a good solution for how to make those games digitally available for download. Folks in the PNP community have been reaching out to me lately asking me about that, so it gave me just the nudge I needed to get this website together, finally. Thanks all, that was helpful. I've been needing to do this for a long time.

Aside from being a one-stop place to find info on all of the digital and board games I've made (or am making), this website is where you can buy my PNP games. The cool thing about having a platform like this is it lets me get back into designing some PNP exclusive games. I had been working on a handful of PNP only designs for a while now, and this makes me want to get back to those and finish a few of them for eventual release. Making physical copies in the current world climate is pretty expensive and miserable for publishers and game enthusiasts alike. It makes sense to me to lower the barrier a bit. Plus I love making small games as a design challenge.

What I've been up to

Life has been both weird and interesting since pandemic. I've changed a lot, grown as a person, and had some big life pivots (hell, I'm still in the middle of another one). I'll admit, making games has sort of fallen by the wayside for a spell. Working for a major board game publisher for a few years was inspiring in many ways, but it's sort of hard to focus on something for fun when it's also your full-time job. That is no longer the case, and I've been getting back into playing digital and tabletop games lately...and the itch to design is back.

I've also been enjoying making and performing live music as Burial Woods -- which has kept me busy playing an average of 30 shows a year around New England and NYC. That has been great and a nice change of pace, but I've never been able to have only one creative outlet at a time (thanks autism/ADHD).

It has been a while since I last released a new game, but that should change in the near future. I recently regained the publishing rights for Dead Machine Gods -- a really neat cyberpunk mint tin worker placement / tableau builder I designed several years ago. It was signed by a publisher but never got published, unfortunately. So I'm doing it myself, which is also my preferred way to make and release games, TBH. Running a Kickstarter is exhausting, and I'm and old tired thing, but I'm exploring my future options for how to get that game out in the wilds. One step at at time, though.

Unfortunately, I lost almost all of my game design layout files when my hard drive died, so I've had to rebuild a lot of things from scratch. That has slowed or halted progress on some games I would have liked to have released. But I do have projects in the works. I'm just taking life at a bit slower of a pace these days.

Last summer I got back into coding again...which has been fun. I'm still using Game Maker, which I enjoy a lot. It wasn't too hard to kick the dust off and get back into a groove. In 3 months I finished most of a fully functioning digital version of Doom Machine. That's something I've been wanting to do for ages. It's not finished yet, but the core loop looks lovely and plays well. I'm currently working on meta game progression, adding new cards, and deciding how to structure some of the progression. You can also still just play the OG basic loop, too. But I wanted to add something extra. That project is still a ways off from completion, but I am chipping away at it.

So yeah...I've been both busy and not busy. Now I have a home base to dump all of this stuff, and a way to let people now and have access to the projects I'm working on. Expect to see some design diaries, post-mortems, and other written updates here in the future. Thanks again for stopping by. Cheers!