Game design

I’ve always been tinkering with my own games

Modified 2025-02-24

• Tools: unity csharp

Lost in Translatopia

Mar – May 2024

In this role-playing language-learner, the player explores different regions where they speak different languages – and helps humans reconnect with each other.

As help they are accompanied by a small friendly shoggoth called Shogpadre. (The Lovecraftian monster that became a metaphor for LLMs.) Because sometimes the crazy ideas do make it through!

I was responsible for much of the coding, especially the dialogue and quest systems:

(And the shoggoth of course.)

Permatotems

Jun 2024 – Ongoing

I’m currently working on a game blending totems with ideas from rewilding, Gaia theory, and permacomputing. Totems are animated by wilderness and provide different rewilding capabilities. The player’s goal is to support a flourishing ecosystem.

After some months of ideation, I started sketching and made a quick working prototype. My challenge right now is to make the core gameplay loop balanced and engaging.

Exploring adjacent design spaces really does facilitate additional inspiration.

Toteometer

Tangible RGB color mixer, inspired by totems

4D Labyrinth

Jun 2023

Another experiment is this higher-dimensional variant of the classic board game. Playing requires some thinking, and I’ve found it helps explain higher dimensions and gain intuition. I also prototyped a 6D variant, but it turned out far too complex for satisfying gameplay.

I’m currently evaluating if I want to turn it into a board game or videogame – with better path visualisation and real hypercube rotation; wouldn’t that be cool?