Nice Games Club - a gamedev podcast!

Latest Episodes:

"From apocrypha or experience." 400th Episode Special Jul 31, 2025

Show notes

It's a big one for your nice hosts... and your newest nice host wants to know more. Lydia takes Mark and Stephen though the history of the program, in three acts.

0:02:04

Act I: Interview

0:57:38

Act II: Quiz

1:12:47

Act III: Jam

Page 1 of 2 of the chapter — **"Half trash compactor, half empty." Composting; Overdesigning** Jul 24, 2025
Show notes

Ellen's back for a serendipitously in-sync pair of metacognition-rich roundtable topics. In this episode, Lydia shares a chapter from one of her favorite books and tries to explain ganache while Stephen laments how easy it is to duct tape on features instead of solving problems. Together they discover four brains are better than one when it comes to figuring out how to get out of your head.
0:09:56
Composting
Writing Down the BonesNatalie Goldberg BonbonWikipediaThe Croissant Express diner mentioned in the book, formerly located on the corner of the Uptown Theater building.0:36:00
Overdesigning
Mural Miro via. "Writing at Night: Lewis Carroll, John Milton, and Me" by Mike Mason. https://www.mikemasonbooks.com/writing-at-night-lewis-carroll-john-milton-and-me/

Page 2 of 2 of the chapter — **"Half trash compactor, half empty." Composting; Overdesigning** Jul 24, 2025
Show notes

Ellen's back for a serendipitously in-sync pair of metacognition-rich roundtable topics. In this episode, Lydia shares a chapter from one of her favorite books and tries to explain ganache while Stephen laments how easy it is to duct tape on features instead of solving problems. Together they discover four brains are better than one when it comes to figuring out how to get out of your head.
0:09:56
Composting
Writing Down the BonesNatalie Goldberg BonbonWikipediaThe Croissant Express diner mentioned in the book, formerly located on the corner of the Uptown Theater building.0:36:00
Overdesigning
Mural Miro via. "Writing at Night: Lewis Carroll, John Milton, and Me" by Mike Mason. https://www.mikemasonbooks.com/writing-at-night-lewis-carroll-john-milton-and-me/

Nice Thinking: "Untitled Memory Mechanic" Jul 17, 2025

Show notes

Ellen’s back in the clubhouse, let’s see what she remembers. Lydia brings a Dungeons and Dragons mechanic about recovering memories called 'Untitled Mechanic,' Stephen feels part of a club that is not Nice Games Club, and Mark brags about playing 2nd Edition in middle school.

Untitled Memory Mechanic

Lydia's websiteLydia SymchychOneshot inspirtationZacSpeaksGiantYouTubeLydia's google docLydia Symchych

"Everyone hates Jira." QA Workflows; Designing Discovery Jul 10, 2025

Show notes

Your nice host return to the complex and sometimes underappreciated world of quality assurance in the game dev space, and also explore discovery as a design focus. In this episode: Lydia is still looking for recommendations while at the Serious Play Conference (answer in Discord!), Mark hates on Jira and Stephen finally catches up to the latest gaming trend a couple of months late.

Chants of Sennaar - Rundisc, Steam

0:06:27

QA Workflows

What Is A Kanban Board? The Ultimate GuideLaura Hennigan, Cassie Bottorff, Rob WattsForbes0:50:37

Designing Discovery

3D Workflows for Indie Devs (with Freya Holmér) Jul 03, 2025

Show notes

We welcome Freya Holmér back into the clubhouse to talk about 3D game development for independent game developers. We get into the specifics of the tools available for devs and why they work and don't work for different teams, but it's mostly an excuse to talk about Freya's new 3D modeling software.

3D Workflows for Indie Devs

Game Design Tools UI / UX Valve Hammer Editor - Valve Developer Community PicoCAD - Johan Peitz, itch.io TrenchBroom - GitHub Crocotile 3D What’s the difference between OBJ and FBX? And when to you what - Reddit

Nice Games Jam: "Head in the Clouds" Jun 26, 2025

Show notes

This week, your Nice Hosts have a new prompt from a new source. Lydia's husband, Ian, draws from a rainy source of inspiration and the Hosts are all-in. We brush up on the water cycle, requisition the equipment, practice our Trans-Atlantic accents, dunk on hot dogs, and puzzle over water-based cloud economies.

Promptto match the current weather - what goes on inside the clouds during a thunderstorm?Game typeDesign documentPlayer count1Rules

You control a cloud factory and manage what the cloud distributes
Mission-based, scenarios
- Plenty of fun fantasy options
Condition options
- Sunshine
- Water
- Static (use a balloon?)
- Wind
- The shape of your factory/cloud
Water is your core resource
- Use it to build the factory, use it to make the rain and complete tasks, use it to expand
- Gain it from water vapor and such (water cycle)
- Your factory is also water, you can reuse it
You go through a campaign
- Pick between a set of jobs each time, bigger jobs give more rep
Isometric view
Level 1: rain on the hot dog cart
- Have the cloud rain over an area for a specific period of time
- The mission before you just needed to dump some water
- The player needs to collect water to have enough rain on the hot dog cart
- Automation is the game
- You need to shape the cloud to fit all of the machines that you order from a catalog
  - Catalog has a ton of options, with their own efficiencies
Level 2: rain on a hot dog festival
Level ??: Flood the Nile

"It's about trust." Save Systems; Keeping Secrets Jun 19, 2025

Show notes

Your nice hosts talk about saving both your position in a game and saving your secrets from being spread around. Also in this episode: Stephen's birthday is coming up, Lydia's been presenting in webinars for a while, and Mark's got a new game coming soon!

Category Quest - ELB Learning
Webinar | Let’s Play! Category Quest: ELB Learning’s Newest Game - ELB Learning, YouTube
Webinar | Escape Room Rx: Innovating Game-Based Clinical Education - ELB Learning, YouTube
Episode we interviewed Lydia on before she became a host!Digital Escape Rooms
Blippo+ - Panic
Blippo+ on Steam - Panic, Steam

0:09:50

Save Systems

Building Cognitive Accessibility Into Your GamesGame Developers ConferenceYouTubePassword SaveTV Tropes0:33:20

Keeping Secrets

"I’m intrigued by big door." Emotional Effects of Music; A New Foe Has Appeared! Jun 12, 2025

Show notes

Mark rushes through the introduction to talk about his two rush projects, one of which, Blippo+, was announced on Sunday during the PC Gaming Show! You'll hear more about that next week, but until then, Lydia talks about feeling seen in Anime, Stephen laments that his filmmaking class has not only ruined movies for him, but also music, and Dale does a good job editing out Lydia’s coughs.

Blippo+, coming to PC and Switch this fall!
You Need To See FMV Cable TV Simulator Blippo+ - Wesley LeBlanc, Game Informer

Emotional Effects of Music

A New Foe Has Appeared!

Video Game History (with Adrian Sandoval) Jun 05, 2025

Show notes

This week in the club house Adrian Sandoval describes how video games are speed running art history. Your nice hosts have their minds blown many times and Steven discovers he might actually like history!? Stay tuned to find out where the 90 day return policy came from.

Little Nemo and the Nightmare Fiends - Team Nemo
Chris Totten, co-author of Adrian's book, has been on the showTeaching Gamedev to Young People, Again!

Adrian Sandoval

Game Design Hardware Marketing Spacewar! - Wikipedia Adventure (Atari 2600) and its designer's easter egg - Atari Online Alex Smith, They Create Worlds - They Create Worlds Ep. 22: Remembering Atari with Howard Scott Warshaw - Robin Kunimune, Video Game History Hour Teach Me Something in 5 Minutes 2 - What Games Can Learn from Theatre w/ Adrian… - Adrian Sandoval, YouTube Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation - Blake J. Harris, Goodreads

"The things that create the geometry." What Happened With Future Club; Design Surface Area May 29, 2025

Show notes

Your nice hosts all secured a Switch 2 pre-order... from a certain point of view. Then, Stephen examines the body, Mark attempts a vocabulary, and Lydia has recommendations.

0:22:17