Games That Make You Cry In A Panera (w/ Hannah Shaffer and Evan Rowland)

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On this episode, we have Hannah Schaffer and Evan Rowland, the two creators behind indie game design outfit, turtlebun. They've published games like Questlandia, Noirlandia, Damn the man save the music, Mud: a golem memoir, and many more. You can find more about those games at turtlebun.com.

Evan and Hannah also co-host a podcast called Design Doc , which is in their own words, about "trying to make a living as people putting things out in the world". If you read any reviews of that show, you'll hear it being described with words like honest, vulnerable, caring, friendly. It's one of my favourite podcasts in the world and you should listen to it. Then, you can too get vulnerable insights into the daily practice of being a game designer and you can also learn that Carrie Fisher once overtweezed Hannah's mom eyebrows at a workshop.

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Show Notes:

02:46 Getting started (Evan reinvents microtransactions)

09:07 Going from making big things to making medium-small things

11:30 Getting deep with Design Doc

25:00 What is collaboration and how do you even do it?

36:25 Infections Enthusiasm: The Beast and Usagi Yojimbo

39:40 Tyranny of Numbers

43:46 RePlay

45:33 All Advice Is Advice For Myself

Some of my personal greatest hits from Design Doc :

• Burnout
• A Cat in the Lap and Other Good Things
• The Work of Games is Not Just Making Games
• The Games You Want To Make The Life You Want To Live