Week 160

I’m writ­ing this under the influ­ence of a slight cold so for­give me if it’s a bit terse.

We’re head­ing to Lon­don for the Hide&Seek Week­ender in a few days, so last week I worked with Tim to dot Is and cross Ts on Cer­e­mo­ny of Sur­prise’s game design. I also spent time research­ing and writ­ing my talk for the conference.

I attend­ed the first post-sum­mer net­work­ing lunch at the Dutch Game Gar­den and most­ly caught up with famil­iar faces.

Speak­ing of catch­ing up, I also vis­it­ed Sam who is now with Sanoma.

Towards the end of the week I spent a day talk­ing Hub­bub strat­e­gy with Alper. We most­ly reviewed 2012 so far, but also made some plans for the com­ing year.

In between our ses­sion we found the time to cel­e­brate the wrap-up of Beesten­bende with Hanne and Karel over cham­pagne at Lefeb­vre.

The week end­ed with a game of Dun­geon Petz at the stu­dio, for which I was joined by Tim and Joris. The game turned out to have a lot of mov­ing parts, as is typ­i­cal of Vlaa­da Chvátil’s designs. But each was easy to get the hang of thanks large­ly to the coher­ence of mechan­ics and theme.