Dice Exploder

Designer Commentary

Podcast Transcript: Designer Commentary: Space Fam

TranscriptSam DunnewoldComment

For Ken Lowery’s Disc 2 jam, I decided to finally release the game I’ve been working on for nearly four years: Space Fam.

This is a game about, you guessed it, found family in space. In particular, it takes a lot of inspiration from The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet in that you’re the crew of a ship escorting a traveler from point A to point B, and along the way you deal with your feelings of guilt and stress about living under an oppressive government.

It’s a hack of Our Traveling Home by Ash Kreider, and it’s like 90% of the way to really great. But that last 10% is always the hard 10%, and I decided it was time to let this game just be what it is and push it out into the world.

As a part of that, I wanted to look back on the design process. What went well, what didn’t, what would I change if I was going to spend another 30 minutes or 30 years on this thing. To do that, I sat down with two of my friends who playtested the game, and we talked about all things Space Fam.

Space Train Space Heist: Design Commentary

Sam DunnewoldComment

Because I’m shy on twitter, I never talked about the first RPG I ever finished designing: Space Train Space Heist. But I recently remembered how much fun it was, back when I was playing a lot of forum mafia, to read and write debriefs on a given game’s design and playthrough.

I thought today, while STSH is part of this itch bundle of Forged in the Dark (FITD) games, would be a fun time to revisit it. So let’s do it! Here’s a post mortem, retrospective, “director’s commentary,” and/or essay about the design of STSH.