Notes on Play

John Drexler
  • ٠٫٠ (٠)
  • ألعاب

A game development log where I share the hardest game design problems, and share thoughts on the games I'm playing. My name is John Rudolph Drexler and you can find my games at catacombian.com

  1. 29: Form factor is everything

    ١٧ يونيو

    29: Form factor is everything

    You can have one action in 3 different form factors, and you've got 3 essentially different games. It's worth iterating a lot to find the one that unlocks the biggest design space.

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  2. 28: I accidentally made a whole game in 3 weeks

    ٢ يونيو

    28: I accidentally made a whole game in 3 weeks

    Notes on Play

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  3. 27: The trouble with abundance

    ٢١ مايو

    27: The trouble with abundance

    I want to be generous, not chintzy with the coolest parts of my game. But that does not mean I should be generous with all the parts of my game. Brian Moriarty's talk linked here.

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  4. 26: How board game distribution actually works

    ٢٩ أبريل

    26: How board game distribution actually works

    I learned a lot by calling some people up on the phone. Most notably: physics matters.

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  5. 25: I made my dream game, but something was wrong

    ٢٢ أبريل

    25: I made my dream game, but something was wrong

    Canticle came to life, and to my exact specifications. But my exact specifications were wrong. Fixing it led to an explosion of great ideas.

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  6. ١٤ أبريل

    24: Where do good ideas come from?

    Mark Brown made a great video about finding great ideas. And it made me wonder: where did my best ideas come from, and how do I set myself up to have more?

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  7. 23: Is Catacombian a designer, a publisher, or both?

    ٨ أبريل

    23: Is Catacombian a designer, a publisher, or both?

    Brian Bornmeuller's talk at NYU Game Center helped me finally articulate a question I've been wrestling with: what is Catacombian Games, exactly? In this episode I map out the five layers of the board game industry — design, publishing, manufacturing, distribution, and retail — and share how I'm approaching 2026 like a product manager: setting clear experiments, defining success criteria, and actually measuring results.

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  8. 22: Steel vs. Soft

    ٢٠ مارس

    22: Steel vs. Soft

    A framework for deciding what needs to change next in a game prototype that I developed with my friend Walter Somerville. I used this recently to make some huge improvements to Canticle.

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مشاهدة الكل (٣٠)

حول

A game development log where I share the hardest game design problems, and share thoughts on the games I'm playing. My name is John Rudolph Drexler and you can find my games at catacombian.com

المعلومات

  • صناع العمل
    John Drexler
  • سنوات النشاط
    ٢٠٢٥ - ٢٠٢٦
  • الحلقات
    ٣٠
  • التقييم
    ملائم
  • حقوق النشر
    © 2026 John Drexler
  • موقع البرنامج على الويب
    Notes on Play

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