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 (...
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[Monday Musings] The One-Hour Game Jam, ft. Quantum Reflections

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      Welcome to TwistedSpoon Studio! This week we're back with another Monday Musing, and this one is near and dear to my heart: the One-Hour Game Jam. It's exactly what it says on the tin. That's all for this week!   The Tin     Okay, maybe there's a little more to say about it. The One-Hour Game Jam is not a competition, so much as a game design exercise. You have one hour to make a playable game. Notice that I said "playable." I didn't say "great," "perfect," or "Spiel des Jahres." You're aiming for minimum viable product-- think of whatever you end up making as a rough sketch of a game.     This whole practice is inspired by the podcast Unplaytested . The premise is simple: every week, they make an RPG in an hour, based on a randomly selected theme. It's a master course in building games fast and loose, and it's well worth a listen.     When you have an idea for a game, it's easy to fixate on it. What ar...
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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 over...
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