Hollis makes games

Sitting at my gate in Hartsfield-Jackson, and it would be wonderful if someone would close the door one gate over that’s been continuously alarming for several minutes

Working on the packaging for CTF, and I got to the point where it made sense to print, cut, and glue together a model to get an idea of how it all fits together. Still some tweaks to be made, but I should be able to do my first test print Soon™

Just printed my first paper prototype of the @ctftcg.com instruction manual! I normally design for 4x6in, so doing a poker-card-sized booklet is a fun challenge (and look how cute it is!)

Just posted the first in a monthly series of design diaries for the game that I’m self-publishing next year! This one’s about the ideation and some very early prototypes. I think it’s fun to show off how different the first version was, but how it still shares some of the final version’s essence.

Next month I’m planning on covering card design, prototyping, and playtesting. December and January are just sketches for now, but I’m planning to talk about printing last year’s batch for the market (lots of mistakes to talk about there!) and how CTF’s design had to change for a bigger release.

Man, Canadians are up here _innovating_. I just got a giant bowl of chicken shawarma poutine. In unrelated news, I overate and now wish to lie down.

DAGnabbit! at the PNW Tabletop Game Market: postmortem time! I sold 28 copies of the game, just under 60% of what I brought to the market. That’s 28 people who were as excited to play my weird little math game as I was to make it!

• PAX West staff and enforcers for making the whole thing possible • The other vendors! Events like this only work when there’s a supportive community behind them.

DAGnabbit! at the PNW Tabletop Game Market: postmortem time! I sold 28 copies of the game, just under 60% of what I brought to the market. That’s 28 people who were as excited to play my weird little math game as I was to make it!

So what marketing we’re doing is working! I’m sure there’s room for improvement, but people are finding us. I only have my perspective as a vendor, but the market felt well-run, so whatever minor catastrophes most certainly happened behind the scenes, the organizers shielded us well from them.

DAGnabbit! at the PNW Tabletop Game Market: postmortem time! I sold 28 copies of the game, just under 60% of what I brought to the market. That’s 28 people who were as excited to play my weird little math game as I was to make it!

For the market itself: I think it went great! We had a huge line out front at the start. I think this was helped by the fact that the market opened right as the main tabletop vendor hall closed, and they made some intercom announcements pointing folks our way. bsky.app/profile/fanf...

DAGnabbit! at the PNW Tabletop Game Market: postmortem time! I sold 28 copies of the game, just under 60% of what I brought to the market. That’s 28 people who were as excited to play my weird little math game as I was to make it!

This was also the first big outing for my new business cards, which have a tiny roll-and-write game on the back! Folks who picked up a card were generally delighted to see the game, and for a market in was nice to have a cool little freebie to hand out to everyone.

DAGnabbit! at the PNW Tabletop Game Market: postmortem time! I sold 28 copies of the game, just under 60% of what I brought to the market. That’s 28 people who were as excited to play my weird little math game as I was to make it!

Knowing that there is an audience for mathy games, maybe there will be more in the future! I’ve even got a hidden movement game on the back burner that’s actually about group theory… (the boards are all finite nonabelian groups!)

DAGnabbit! at the PNW Tabletop Game Market: postmortem time! I sold 28 copies of the game, just under 60% of what I brought to the market. That’s 28 people who were as excited to play my weird little math game as I was to make it!

I was unsure what the reception would be. Part of the reason DAGnabbit! is an indie market game is I think any publisher who wanted the game would start with the question, “can we find a resonant theme to explain why we’re drawing these arrows?”

One day and a few hours from now, DAGnabbit! will be available at the PNW Tabletop Game Market, along with a bunch of other fantastic games by local designers. Find us all on Summit level 0 from 7-10pm tomorrow!

Picked up some buckwheat flour for another recipe, but I figured I’d try my hand at a galette breton. It may not be perfectly shaped, but it was delicious.

Okay, so I’m baking a cake for a friend’s engagement party. I’m bringing it over in disposable aluminum pans to make the dish/cleanup situation easier. Unfortunately, the recipe calls for a 9"x9" pan, and these aluminum pans are ~7"x7". That means the bottom area is ~60% of what it should be.

New plan: frantically grab pan #3 and use all 3, even though I’m probably still overfilling them. Start the oven at 350°F, lower it to 325°F halfway through in the hope that I can get the interiors cooked before the outsides burn. Also it’s a chocolate cake, so I can’t use the color as an indicator.

Okay, so I’m baking a cake for a friend’s engagement party. I’m bringing it over in disposable aluminum pans to make the dish/cleanup situation easier. Unfortunately, the recipe calls for a 9"x9" pan, and these aluminum pans are ~7"x7". That means the bottom area is ~60% of what it should be.

I’ve been messing with some of the more fun-sounding (to me) fishwife flavors. I was thinking about what I could do with the chili crisp smoked salmon (other than just eat it), and the package very helpfully suggested onigiri, so… I made chili crisp smoked salmon onigiri!