quick note: I used to document quite a bit of my game dev process here on this blog. I started doing videos instead in the pandemic (patreon, youtube) because I was finding that drained less energy from me than writing a post. I haven't done either very much recently because I felt so much of what I wanted to talk about would just make more sense once the game was out so you'd know what I was referring to. Now it's out! I'll hopefully be doing some of those posts. I'm not sure yet what the balance of videos to writing will be, but this one's writing!
868-HACK is structured as a series of servers you hack one after another, with increasing difficulty as you go. Quite a few people never even saw the difficulty increase because you had to win a couple of rounds in a row to get there. When I did an expansion for it a few years later (PLAN.B) I wanted to put the difficulty modifiers up front - both so that everyone would see them, and because those of us who'd been playing a bit started to find the game a bit too easy without them. But sometimes a stack of them could just be unfair though so I wanted a way to skip the really bad combinations, and came up with the .QUIT prog. This is just a basic ability you can pick up and use like any other, and what it does is instantly win the round. Actually amazing. This would be blatantly S-tier if not for the opportunity cost: you don't want to take the free win if you could use that siphon to get more points instead.
.QUIT is one of my favourite progs because it's something that computers do but games don't. Coming to the sequel I really wanted to push as far as I could in that direction; try everything I could think of that felt like a "computer" ability and would fit naturally here and not in a typical fantasy game. So .QUIT and .UNDO were at the top of my list for returning progs. (Puzzle games should generally allow undo, strategy games don't because it creates a very boring play pattern around any random or hidden element; putting a cost on it that isn't undone solved that well enough for 868-HACK, but unfortunately wasn't enough to make it work in BACK.) .QUIT fit quite nicely into BACK overall, but the new scrip system made it fairly easy to minimise the opportunity cost.
One of my early ideas for a bonus powerup in 868-BACK was called Local area network!, which I) protected a server from being hacked unless you'd hacked one of its neighbours the day before, and II) forced you to hack one of its neighbors the next day. I really liked having a "map-only" powerup, making a server more difficult to hack not because the levels and enemies were any harder but simply because it was inconvenient to get and out of. I really liked the spatial element this gave to the server map: these little sequences where you had to move step-by-step across it rather than just picking from it like a menu. There were many problems with this. Does nothing on the last day. You could get stuck and lose the game with no options if you weren't careful - and that tended to feel unfair rather than like you'd excitingly hacked yourself into a corner. Didn't interact well with the "reveal powerups by gathering data in adjacent servers" mechanic. So eventually it went away.
Thinking about limitations that could be applied to QUIT to make it slightly less dominant - what about an effect on the server map? I thought of folding in Isolated workstation!: if you quit a server you don't get to explore the ones next to it. Jake suggested folding in Local area network! instead: if you quit a server you have to go to one next to it tomorrow. This was really good! We kept Isolated as the map-only powerup (its device restriction was added much later at Leon's suggestion to prevent it doing less the more of the map is explored). When Linkcubes were added I let it go along those links as well. It seemed like the problem was solved.
Since the game's been released and a lot more people have been playing it, a few rare bugs showed up involving QUIT. This is going to happen - different people have different skills and approaches, so they'll try something in a different situation - or else just the dice get rolled a lot more times so an arrangement comes up that you never saw before. I'd added certain types of server that couldn't be accessed unless specific conditions were met - the megacorp x6s and the shops. In particular this restriction on the shops came very late in development (to stop new players from having a disappointing experience of going to a shop where they can't afford to buy anything). So a few people had been able to quit with only a shop in range but then weren't able to get into the shop! When I dug in to fix this I realised that QUIT was getting quite complicated. We'd already had a few players being confused about when they could or couldn't quit, and this was making it more confusing by adding situations where your ability to quit depended on the status of servers you haven't even explored yet. So rather than add all those complications I gutted it and made the whole thing much simpler: you can always quit, and tomorrow you can go wherever is nearest that you can get into. If you're surrounded by locked shops and corporate headquarters, instead of being sad and stuck you just get to go slightly further. It should play pretty similarly in most cases, but be clearer to understand, less prone to bugs, and maybe even occasionally exploitable in clever ways.
patch is up now!
Wednesday, 10 June 2026
Friday, 29 May 2026
868-BACK: the sponsors
After I crowdfunded 868-BACK, a couple of people got in touch to see if there was a way they could give a bit of extra financial support. We figured out that the right way to structure that was as a sponsorship. These are people whose work I admire and respect and I'm very happy to shine some light back at them.
Slice and Dice is a wonderful game that takes the combat system of a party-based RPG, infuses it with chaos by leaving the action choices up to a roll of the dice, and builds a whole magnificent structure around a series of these battles with escalating blessings and curses modifying the rules. It's author tann is rather reclusive, but seems like a very lovely person from the interactions we've had. The game has a lot in common with my games - tann has cited Cinco Paus as an inspiration - so I unreservedly recommend that anyone who likes my work check it out.
Puzzmo is a project with a lot of people involved and a lot going on, but a big part of it is the work of Zach Gage. I've known Zach for a long time, and he's had an influence on my work - in fact the core inspiration for Cinco Paus came from a conversation with him. He's a firm believer that the goals of creating interesting artistic games and reaching a broad audience don't need to be incompatible, and Puzzmo is a very serious attempt at bringing those together.
I'm very grateful for their contributions.
Slice and Dice is a wonderful game that takes the combat system of a party-based RPG, infuses it with chaos by leaving the action choices up to a roll of the dice, and builds a whole magnificent structure around a series of these battles with escalating blessings and curses modifying the rules. It's author tann is rather reclusive, but seems like a very lovely person from the interactions we've had. The game has a lot in common with my games - tann has cited Cinco Paus as an inspiration - so I unreservedly recommend that anyone who likes my work check it out.
Puzzmo is a project with a lot of people involved and a lot going on, but a big part of it is the work of Zach Gage. I've known Zach for a long time, and he's had an influence on my work - in fact the core inspiration for Cinco Paus came from a conversation with him. He's a firm believer that the goals of creating interesting artistic games and reaching a broad audience don't need to be incompatible, and Puzzmo is a very serious attempt at bringing those together.
I'm very grateful for their contributions.
Thursday, 28 May 2026
868-BACK: the crew
So first up, the game is out: get it on steam or itch.io.
I just wanted to talk a bit about who made the game! I'm going to go through in more-or-less chronological order of when people joined the project.
Obviously there's me. I started in mid-2024 and worked by myself for a few months before even showing it to anyone else, and I've done SO MUCH.
Jake and Leon were the first people I wanted to show it to. They had both playtested some of my games years ago, and Leon did some writing for 868-HACK (the "with that data you stole..." lines on the victory screen). For several months it was just us three playing - I'd expected to invite more testers in sooner, but they were already finding as much as I could keep up with. They've both contributed a ton of suggestions for all parts of the game - not just the rules and mechanics but writing and aesthetics - and the final design owes a ton to both of them.
Tara (YAKFOX) joined the project somewhere in late-2024. She then started a music production course so it was a while before she was available to actively produce music for the game, but she was part of it, and the discussions we had about the music helped define where the game was going. (And then the music turned out great!)
Then we did the crowdfunding! As well as contributing money, I offered a "name a server" reward and people contributed a variety of names - some cute, some funny, some on-theme, some really weird. This might seem like a little thing but as soon as those names were in there, the world felt more lived-in. Like magic! And a few of those names ended up inspiring strands of the design, folding back in to become very significant elements of the game.
Eventually I felt it really was time to expand the pool of testers a bit more, and Justin (manbearcar) posted an impressive Cinco Paus high score so I invited him in. Again I'd really expected to need more, but just one more person playing it was a valuable flood of information. (He's made a ton of cool games too and recently released Horsey Game.)
Then Finji came on board! Their whole QA and marketing teams contributed a lot. They've done a wonderful job of tuning into the game and making suggestions that will make it easier for people to get into it without breaking what it fundamentally is. They also recognised that I'd bitten off quite a lot with this game, and we set about figuring out what would be helpful to get it over the finish line, so it came about that a few other artists joined in towards the end.
AJ is one of my favourite artists, and his glitchy pixel scenes have been an inspiration for what I want to do in my own visual art. So when we talked about getting in someone else to do some graphics for the scenes that I was struggling with, he was at the top of my list. And he was up for it! He's done some fantastic art for the game - including a scene you will no doubt see quite often.
I asked Adam (from Finji) to also do one of the scenes - see if you can spot which is his. He also suggested adjustments to my font in a way that improved readability without losing the style I was going for, and he brought on Sven Ruthner and together they worked on the title logo, scaling up my font and adding glitchy detail.
Finally, we were missing sound effects. These usually show up quite late in my games, because I have to get into a quite different mindset from design and programming. But they hadn't shown up yet and we'd announced a release date, and I had my hands quite full with everything else, so Adam suggested Josie Brechner as someone to collaborate with on these. She came in and did a fantastic job, some of her sounds are so delightful in a way that you can tell she must have really had fun making them. (.row, wow!)
So that's the crew! It's my biggest game yet, and the one that's most a team effort. It's still very much "me" - I felt that my time working on the game by myself had established a strong voice for it, and when new people came on they were able to get into the flow of what was already happening and do great work that fit into it. And having other people supporting helped me to do my best. And now you all can play it!
I just wanted to talk a bit about who made the game! I'm going to go through in more-or-less chronological order of when people joined the project.
Obviously there's me. I started in mid-2024 and worked by myself for a few months before even showing it to anyone else, and I've done SO MUCH.
Jake and Leon were the first people I wanted to show it to. They had both playtested some of my games years ago, and Leon did some writing for 868-HACK (the "with that data you stole..." lines on the victory screen). For several months it was just us three playing - I'd expected to invite more testers in sooner, but they were already finding as much as I could keep up with. They've both contributed a ton of suggestions for all parts of the game - not just the rules and mechanics but writing and aesthetics - and the final design owes a ton to both of them.
Tara (YAKFOX) joined the project somewhere in late-2024. She then started a music production course so it was a while before she was available to actively produce music for the game, but she was part of it, and the discussions we had about the music helped define where the game was going. (And then the music turned out great!)
Then we did the crowdfunding! As well as contributing money, I offered a "name a server" reward and people contributed a variety of names - some cute, some funny, some on-theme, some really weird. This might seem like a little thing but as soon as those names were in there, the world felt more lived-in. Like magic! And a few of those names ended up inspiring strands of the design, folding back in to become very significant elements of the game.
Eventually I felt it really was time to expand the pool of testers a bit more, and Justin (manbearcar) posted an impressive Cinco Paus high score so I invited him in. Again I'd really expected to need more, but just one more person playing it was a valuable flood of information. (He's made a ton of cool games too and recently released Horsey Game.)
Then Finji came on board! Their whole QA and marketing teams contributed a lot. They've done a wonderful job of tuning into the game and making suggestions that will make it easier for people to get into it without breaking what it fundamentally is. They also recognised that I'd bitten off quite a lot with this game, and we set about figuring out what would be helpful to get it over the finish line, so it came about that a few other artists joined in towards the end.
AJ is one of my favourite artists, and his glitchy pixel scenes have been an inspiration for what I want to do in my own visual art. So when we talked about getting in someone else to do some graphics for the scenes that I was struggling with, he was at the top of my list. And he was up for it! He's done some fantastic art for the game - including a scene you will no doubt see quite often.
I asked Adam (from Finji) to also do one of the scenes - see if you can spot which is his. He also suggested adjustments to my font in a way that improved readability without losing the style I was going for, and he brought on Sven Ruthner and together they worked on the title logo, scaling up my font and adding glitchy detail.
Finally, we were missing sound effects. These usually show up quite late in my games, because I have to get into a quite different mindset from design and programming. But they hadn't shown up yet and we'd announced a release date, and I had my hands quite full with everything else, so Adam suggested Josie Brechner as someone to collaborate with on these. She came in and did a fantastic job, some of her sounds are so delightful in a way that you can tell she must have really had fun making them. (.row, wow!)
So that's the crew! It's my biggest game yet, and the one that's most a team effort. It's still very much "me" - I felt that my time working on the game by myself had established a strong voice for it, and when new people came on they were able to get into the flow of what was already happening and do great work that fit into it. And having other people supporting helped me to do my best. And now you all can play it!
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