Games

A brief adventure in game development. I wanted to know what it felt like to build something whose only job is to be fun, and these two games are the answer.

• Super Sphere: you control a sphere, you avoid obstacles. Easy to learn, genuinely hard to master.
• Super Sphere II: the sequel. Same concept, tighter mechanics, harder levels.

Both are open source.

What Games Taught Me

The "for humans" philosophy translates directly to game design, it turns out. A good API and a good game share the same property: you understand them in seconds and keep finding depth for hours. No tutorial screens. No settings to fumble with. The interface disappears and the experience remains.

Making games also taught me how much craft hides inside "simple." Tight controls are brutally hard to get right. The difficulty curve that makes someone say "one more try" for an hour is a designed thing, tuned by feel, one playtest at a time. I shipped two small games and came away with more respect for the people who do this for a living.