TwistedSpoon Studio

    Welcome back to TwsitedSpoon Studio! It's been a hell of a year, let me tell you. Or better yet, I'll let you tell me. Well, maybe not about Coronavirus, but about your game design journey. This week, I'm interviewing you!  Even if you don't share your answers, it can still be fun to think about the questions and reflect on your own experience. Here are the questions, and to start the dialogue, I've included my own answers as well: How long have you been making games professionally? How long have you made games recreationally? "Professional" is aspirational for me, which is one of the reasons why this blog exists. Recreationally, I've been making games since I was a kid, with more serious efforts starting my sophomore year of college, back in 2016. What medium do you design/develop for? (Tabletop, digital, mobile, etc.) What tools and software do you use regularly? I've developed tabletop games ranging from board games to card games to RPGs, an...

      Welcome (back) to TwistedSpoon Studio! The last couple of weeks have been spent going over common designs and firming up creative details for Festival or Urbestia . This week, we're throwing all that out the window.       Okay, not all  of it. But much like last time, this card file doesn't feel like a furry world. It has furry things, it has diversity, it has flavor, but it's just not hitting that note that we're looking for. What are we looking for, anyway?     The point of Vision design is to create a bullseye to direct your efforts for the rest of design. Part of following my design process means that you're also going to follow my mistakes, so here it is: I messed up. I got excited to design and I jumped the gun. That's okay-- there's no better way to learn why things work a certain way, than to do it differently and watch it explode.     Today, we're going to learn from those mistakes and un -explode some things. Fi...

 Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio. This is our last Designer Talk before Christmas, so I've saved something special for you: our first interview with a Triple-A designer! Without further adieu, let's meet our guest! - Welcome to TwistedSpoon Studio, and thank you for coming! What should I call you?      Jason Lentz works, but when I suit up in my corrugated costume, I am known as the "Giant Cardboard Robot" (You can google that for more info.)   I thought that was a joke until I looked it up, and boy was I wrong. How'd you get into that?      In my sophomore year of college as an architecture student, I decided to come up with a plan for a giant suit that could be anything. I just needed an armature to base it on, and being a broke college student, my budget steered me in the direction of cardboard.      Long story short, once I had the plans, I had to build it. Then for the next 5 years of college , I iterated upon it, making it...

Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! This week on Designer Talks, we have indie developer Perfect Chaos at the table! - Welcome to TwistedSpoon Studio! What should I call you? Jay will do just fine. Nice to meet you Jay, and thank you for participating in this interview. How long have you been making games? What mediums do you develop for? I started my game in March this year (2021)... Currently, only on PC. I’ll be releasing through the Steam store and on itch.io, with a scope to move onto mobile as it’s a platform I seem to have a lot of ideas for. I would love to get hold of a Nintendo Switch dev kit, but I have two consoles already so can’t really justify it until I have some kind of sales income. As for tools, I’m using Unity, just because I heard it was the most beginner friendly along with various free web based editing and recording tools. Why did you decide to start making games? Is there a particular game, franchise, or developer that inspired you? Me and my friends would dra...

     Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! Last week in our series on Festival of Urbestia, the custom Magic set about a world of beast folk , we discussed the relations between the tribes and saw the map of Urbestia for the first time. This week we're back on the design side with more card-by-card designs! (If you missed it in the last Card-by-Card article, the current card file can be found here. ) CW14 - Vivid Bonds {2}{W} Enchantment - Aura Enchant creature  Enchanted creature can't attack or block.   Vivid -- When [Cardname] enters the battlefield, if three or more colors of mana were spent to cast it, create a 1/1 white Rabbit Folk creature token.       CW14 is the white entry to the common Vivid cycle. The intention for the cycle was for each card to have a different card type. White seemed like the best color to do an enchantment, but it turned out to be a bit tricky. Because of the artifacts-matter theme, the common positive aura that each...

 Hey guys, gals, and the rest of us. Life is crazy, especially this time of year. While the regular content schedule is unchanged, this week's designer interview is going to be a few days late. Things should be back on schedule next week. Thank you for understanding, and I hope to see you again soon!

      Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studios! Last week in our series on Festival of Urbestia, the custom Magic set celebrating the cultures of beast folk , we released the new card file and covered some card-by-card designs. This week, we're going to focus on the creative side by looking at the tribes and their connections to one another. By the end of this, we'll have a map of the setting!     Festival of Urbestia takes place on the eponymous plane of Urbestia, a world of humanoid animals that are as diverse and colorful as nature itself. We have ten major tribes: Wolf, Fox, Dog, Cat, Scale, Bird, Bear, Elk, Sea, and Wall (small animal) Folk. We established in the last  worldbuilding article  that the story takes place on an island split into five territories (the tundra, desert, forest, grassland, and coast) surrounding a central city. Let's talk about each biome, the folk that live there, and their relationships with each other and the other tribes. ...

Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! For the month of December, I'll be sharing interviews with experienced designers and developers discussing their experiences in the industry. Let's go ahead an jump in! - Welcome to TwistedSpoon Studio, and thank you for coming. What should I call you? Thank you for having us; we’re a boyfriend & girlfriend and collectively call ourselves Petrified Apple. The story of that coming from a petrified apple one of us owned, split in half. We each carried a half when we were briefly continents apart. How long have you guys been making games professionally?   We’ve been working on our first “commercial” project for about a year now, although the concept art and idea for it was conceived almost 2 years ago-- shortly after whimsically making & releasing our first game recreationally. Why did you decide to start making games? Is there a particular game, franchise, or developer that inspired you?   Girlfriend does art, boyfriend does programm...