27. A Tiny Game That You Can Play Forever

Asher Vollmer, creator of Threes and Close Castles, joins us to talk puzzle games. We discuss the process of designing developing Threes, and what goes in to making a great little puzzle game. We then talk about the whimsical minimalism that works so well in indie games, and how to bring them to life. We talk about difficulty, complexity, and how to tune games. We touch on the effects of free to play on puzzle games, and how it makes us feel weird. Afterwards, we talk Wii U games, Divinity: Original Sin, trying to get our RPG fix, and Manwiches.

• Asher’s game Threes
• The development of Threes
• Greg Wohlwend, the artist that brought Threes to life
• Mike Bithell on Thomas Was Alone and ‘ugly games’
• SpyParty’s Chris Hecker on doing depth first, and accessibility later
• Asher’s upcoming multiplayer game Close Castles
• Asher’s blog
• Divinity: Original Sin