Bart de Jong

I'm definitely the moldy sandwich dude

Leder Games@leder.games

BlueSky has four kinds of users.

My highlights of #EssenSpiel: - A surprising amount of people came to play and buy L'Oaf even though it's not the new hotness - @zhoekstra.bsky.social and his bugs got a lot of buzz for his awesome game Pact - I finally snatched a copy of @marcelineleiman.bsky.social's Nebular Colors!

- Mole Racing was the best new release I saw by a mile. I didn't get to play it, but just watching people play was already a delight - It was my first (and hopefully last 🤞) time visiting and working a con in a wheelchair, and it was a smooth ride. Everyone was really nice and helpful!

- Especially my awesome colleagues and friends at @wulfhorngames.bsky.social. they really went above and beyond to ensure I could enjoy the weekend despite my physical condition. I'm so glad to be working with this bunch who are not just awesome designers, but awesome people too!

Bart de Jong reposted

spacebiff.comBewitchments, Buckets, BugsImagine me in a real pickle sandwich. The middle of preview season (ho ho ho), and suddenly I come down with not one illness, but two. Something chronic, something acute. And me with a whole stack …

Our Pact demo very much delivered on the hype. Make sure to book a demo slot if you like asymmetric Tugs of War. (Bugs of War?) Congrats @zhoekstra.bsky.social on making something very cool!

Bart de Jong reposted

Dan Thurot

@danthurot.bsky.social

Because I've been sick, I've been neglecting preview season. Not to worry, because today I'm covering three, that's right three, previews of interesting and strange board games! spacebiff.com/2026/10/22/r...

Fuck EA. Or more specifically, fuck anyone who treats art and artists as a money making scheme.

Me watching everyone go to Essen today, knowing that I'll have to wait until Saturday

Someone wrote this about L'Oaf over on BGG. Pretty accurate for a game about minimum wage workers who hate their job.

I wasn't sure if I could attend Spiel due to boring medical stuff, so I didn't make any appointments. Now that I'm going to be there Saturday and Sunday, I'd love to meet some people. Let me know if you've got time, or just say hi if you see me zooming around in the fancy wheelchair I rented

It's apparently an electric wheelchair, so you can recognise me by the Podracer noises and the occasional "It's working! It's working!" shouts

Bart de Jong reposted

Bat Terror

@mattthr.bsky.social

Now THIS is how you get me interested in a board game crowdfunding campaign

Sam Francis (Samphire Games)@tzartzam.bsky.social

It even had a strike token!

Bart de Jong reposted

This number 1 on our Spiel to demo list!

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gamefound.comPACT by Wulfhorn Games - GamefoundA sudden death, a kingdom on the brink. You have a rare chance to make pacts with key groups and make the future of Branchbourne yours

PACT is live on Gamefound! I've watched @zhoekstra.bsky.social work on this game over the last few years and I can tell you it's a grand design full of passion and craftsmanship. A truly unique game that deserves your attention! gamefound.com/en/projects/wulfhorngames/pact

Bart de Jong reposted

gingerbeardgeekdad.bsky.social

@gingerbeardgeekdad.bsky.social

Even when I was just reading the rules for Pact, I was starting to get excited like I did for Arcs and The Old King’s Crown; Asymmetrical powers, shifting allegiances, and COIN style card selection. It’s a bunch of very cool mechanics, and a high level of player interaction.

This whole thread is my way of saying that you should totally hire me to write, revise, or translate your rules

Bart de Jong@bartgamedesign.bsky.social

I recently started doing freelance work revising and editing rulebooks for games by other designers. As a primary school teacher I'm good at finding the absolute simplest way to explain complex things. What I didn't expect is that writing rules for someone else's game is WAY easier than for my own.

View full thread

3) Your mental model of this game is not just its current iteration; it’s all the iterations it’s ever been. Rules changed, actions got different names, components got added or removed. It's easy to miss relics of old versions in your rules, because to you those things don’t seem out of place.

This all of course doesn’t mean designers can’t write good rulebooks. These are just challenges we face due to the unique relationship we have with our own work. However, I do believe we can circumvent those challenges by getting an outsider's perspective.

I realised that as designers, we are at a unique disadvantage when writing rules for our own games. For three reasons: 1) You’re the only person in the world who can't experience what it’s like to learn your game. You can’t experience which rules are confusing, or which sections need examples.

2) At the same time, you have deeper knowledge of your game’s inner workings than anyone playing it will ever need. A lot of what is important to you as the designer, the players don’t need to know. Keeping your explanations simple is a major challenge when every little detail feels important.

Bart de Jong reposted

Mike Cook

@mtrc.bsky.social

Every AI/HCI paper I review now just sounds like this.

For all the Dutch people my age it's this guy:

Sleepy Hollow Reviews 🎃🐎@sleepingvillage.bsky.social

In honor of scary media month: what is the first piece of media you remember truly frightening you as a child?

@floramerigold.bsky.social

Random 🎲✂️ thought: a puzzle is a conversation between the player and the designer. A game is a conversation between the player(s) and the system.

Bart de Jong reposted

Flora 🍓🏳️‍⚧️

Yesterday's news about Jacob Geller broke my heart, so much that I couldn't stop dwelling on it all day. In an effort to make sense of this horrific news and my admittedly complicated feelings about it, here is my article on the Jacob Geller situation: epiloguegaming.com/what-do-we-d...

epiloguegaming.comWhat Do We Do With Jacob Geller? - Epilogue GamingEarlier this week, a friend noticed Jacob Geller’s book, How A Game Lives, sitting amongst my living room shelves. Under almost any other circumstances, this would have been an exciting invitation for...

Bart de Jong reposted

Geoff Engelstein - The Universe Explained with Cookie out now!

@gengelstein.bsky.social

I wrote something I think is important. gametek.substack.com/p/changing-t...

gametek.substack.comChanging the WorldA Modest Proposal

22 Sept

Hey, I heard you like L'Oaf. So if you get this awesome promo card at the Wulfhorn Games booth in Essen (3H225), you can play L'Oaf with these oafs who are loafing by playing L'Oaf instead of baking loafs

21 Sept

At some point in the future I want to publish a line of blatant rip-offs of @garphillgames.bsky.social releases, under the pseudonym Sham Phillips

19 Sept

I can confirm that @wulfhorngames.bsky.social definitely said he would do this. I was there when this conversation happened. He promised. Even did a pinky swear. Let's do this!

This post is unavailable.

kotaku.comIt'd Be A Disaster If The Blood Of Dawnwalker Sequels Got Rid Of The Time Mechanic - KotakuIt's the most interesting thing about the game and players should be mature enough to accept that

18 Sept

Video game discourse has an issue with players who want every game to be "for them". There are thousands of games being released every year, it's totally fine to bounce off one every once in a while. It doesn't mean the game needs to change; it just means it's not for you.

Kotaku@kotaku.com

Kill the creature in your head that hates friction https://kotaku.com/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-sequel-time-mechanic-rebel-wolves-2000735592

spacebiff.comBaba Is BossIf you haven’t heard of Baba Is You, grab hold of the nearest guardrail, because you’re about to be hit by a wrecking ball of descriptors. Here goes: released in 2019, Baba Is You was a…

15 Sept

Intrigued is me

Dan Thurot@danthurot.bsky.social

Baba! Is! You! And Baba Is You Is Very Good, Too. My preview: spacebiff.com/2026/09/14/b...

Sam Francis (Samphire Games)

13 Sept

I'm going down the rabbit hole of designing a video game again. Please send help.

Bart de Jong reposted

@tzartzam.bsky.social

12 Sept

To continue this analogy, it depends what you're making. I find the secret to bread is careful measuring, but cakes are much more about flair and style. 🎲✂️

Bart de Jong@bartgamedesign.bsky.social

Using math to balance your game is like measuring your ingredients for cooking. It provides a useable baseline, but it's no substitute for good old tasting

12 Sept

Using math to balance your game is like measuring your ingredients for cooking. It provides a useable baseline, but it's no substitute for good old tasting

9 Sept

🎲✂️ tonight was that magical moment where I finished a playtest without wanting to immediately change anything. The vibe was right, and all the parts were doing what they're supposed to do. Doesn't mean the game is finished, but it's getting close.

Bart de Jong reposted

7 Sept

New comic! Possession might be nine-tenths of the law, or possession might be theft... We only know that possession of a game doesn't guarantee you'll ever play it! 😇 📜 You can read this week's blog post at: semicoop.com/comic/purchasing-games-2026/ #boardgames

Bart de Jong reposted

gamefound.comPACT by Wulfhorn Games - GamefoundA sudden death, a kingdom on the brink. You have a rare chance to make pacts with key groups and make the future of Branchbourne yours

5 Sept

Our Spiel plans right now are to demo Pact the first thing on Thursday morning, we're super curious about it!

Bart de Jong@bartgamedesign.bsky.social

We had an amazing session of @zhoekstra.bsky.social's upcoming game Pact this evening. There was lots of scheming, there were plots being foiled and some poor bug got guillotined. Y'all should be looking out for this one: gamefound.com/en/projects/...

gamefound.comPACT by Wulfhorn Games - GamefoundA sudden death, a kingdom on the brink. You have a rare chance to make pacts with key groups and make the future of Branchbourne yours

4 Sept

3 Sept

Our daughter turned 2 the other day, so naturally she got her first HABA game as a present. I showed her how to punch the cardboard pieces, and then she spent half an hour repeatedly putting them back in the mold and punching them out again. She already knows where to find the true pleasures in life

26 Aug

Encouraging children to read is to encourage curiosity, imagination, compassion, and wonder. On a fundamental level, reading gives a massive boost to a child's vocabulary, which helps them in pretty much every other aspect of life. It is so very essential. Dolly Parton was nothing less than a hero.

23 Aug

🎲✂️ I told my wife about a design I'm working on and she responded with "That really doesn't sound like my kind of game." Of course I secretly hoped for a more enthusiastic reply, but I was still happy she said that. For a game to have a distinct audience, it needs to have a distinct not-audience.

19 Aug

🎲✂️ Inspired by video games, my next game will come with half the content locked in a special box. For €20,- you get a Season Pass code that opens it for a month (30 days).

19 Aug

Whenever your character dies, you can pay €1,50 to instantly revive it. If you don't, you respawn with all progress lost. On average, a character dies 6 times in a 30 minute play session.

19 Aug

After a year or so I'll decide that the game isn't making enough money and all copies will instantly self-combust. You can't sue me because you agreed that house fires were at your own risk when you accepted the terms and conditions.

17 Aug

Last week we played a game of Catan with my in laws, and the rules they played with were WILD. They did the placement draft with the numbers face down, so you had no idea what the good spots were. They also played with open hands, and you could choose the card when you stole one

17 Aug

There were a bunch of other things they did "wrong", but those were less critical. What was wildest to me is that they have been playing and enjoying the game like this for years. Sure, as a competitive experience it wouldn't hold up, but as a shared activity for a family gathering it did just fine.