About Us

    Welcome to TwistedSpoon Studio! If you're interested in tabletop game design and want to see inside the brain of another designer, you're in the right place. This blog is an open journal where yours truly, notKingCole, shares insights into the design process, tips and tricks, and concrete examples from games I'm working on.

    Our content comes in three flavors:

  • Monday Musings: Thoughts on game design topics ranging from workflow, to balance, to analysis of published games
  • Workshop Wednesday: Custom Magic: the Gathering designs, with in-depth discussions of the processes that produced them
  • FUR Friday: Progress reports on my personal project, Festival of Urbestia-- the custom Magic set starring beast folk of all shapes and sizes
    You can pitch in to the discussions too! Feel free to use the comments at the bottom, or share your thoughts on our subreddit here. You can also contact me directly via the Contact Us widget below, or via mod mail on the subreddit.

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Monday Musings: The Work Must Flow

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     Welcome to TwistedSpoon Studio! This is the first article in a series I'm calling Monday Musings, where I ramble about whatever game design topic is on my mind and, hopefully, turn it into practical advice for you. This week, the topic is work flow. When you're approaching a new project, it can be daunting to figure out where to start. Every designer has their own methods, but there are some best practices that apply to any project. Below I'm going to outline my own process, but don't take it as set in stone-- feel free to adjust it for your own needs and the needs of your game. Time Sieve by Franz Vohwinkel Pre-Design     Pre-design is exactly what it sounds like-- it's all the stuff you have to do before you start designing proper. For my money, this process has three broad steps: Exploration, Research, and Planning.     The order of the first two steps will vary depending on whether your project is top-down or bottom-up. For a top-down design (starting with
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[Workshop Wednesday] Call of Gathering: Magic Warfare

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      Welcome to TwistedSpoon Studio! It's Wednesday my dudes, and that means the Workshop is open. This week, we're getting into the trenches with some top-down military designs featuring the custom Backup mechanic:     Backup is an alternate-cost mechanic that can go on any non-land card type. (Well, technically... no, we're not getting into that again.) If you played Battle for Zendikar, you might recognize this mechanic:     Personally, I think Surge was a great mechanic. It lets you "combine" spells into a one-two punch, and you can even cooperate with your teammate in some formats. (I'm a sucker for Two-Headed Giant sealed deck, so I may be biased there.) Backup is more limited-- it only cares about creatures, and only your own-- but it's meant to allow you to break timing restrictions (like Miracle does) if you get clever with it.     That being said, it's a pretty simple mechanic. I suspect that the feedback wouldn't have been as overwhelmi
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[Workshop Wednesday] All the Hits

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      Welcome back to TwistedSpoon Studio! Workshop Wednesday is where we share custom Magic designs and discuss the process behind them. This week, I thought it would be fun to look back at the Workshops that we've done so far! Cost Lands     Lands? With Costs? Witchcraft!      This was the first Workshop Wednesday and the design that inspired the series. Cost lands were extremely divisive, but the response was net positive. If you want to learn more about the design space, you can find the original workshop here . Prophecy     On the other end of the spectrum, prophecy was very  well received. My old college roommate-- the infamous Zuberan, for those in the know-- and I came up with this a while back, but this workshop explored the design space and found some interesting places it could go. You can find the original article here . Backup     These designs demonstrated the power of flavor, elevating a well-received mechanic into the stratosphere by connecting it to a beloved franc
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