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Hulk Loves Fabio
During the delirious early morning hours of our second Kickstarter telethon, Stu Horvath, speaking to no one in particular, announced, “The funny thing about Wizards & Warriors II: Iron Sword is that Fabio is on the cover.” Everyone on the stream – Unwinnable editor-at-large Charles Moran, Unwinnable contributor Matt Duhamel and game designers Teddy Diefenbach and Nina Freeman – suddenly had a joke to make. One joke was particularly portentous: someone compared Fabio’s barbarian girdle to a wrestling belt. It was the birth of a Twine game. Teddy quickly created an open design doc and a rough plot followed suit. What
Unwinnable Island
There isn’t always a lighthouse… In a recent Team Unwinnable survey, members were asked to rank, in order of importance, four of our ongoing construction projects: digital distribution pipelines, members only forum, an official store and our fortress on Unwinnable Island. That last one was a joke. We don’t have a plan to build a secret island headquarters. We don’t even own an island (or do we?). Of course, the good people of Team Unwinnable voted overwhelmingly for Unwinnable Island to be our first priority. We hate to disappoint, so Matt Duhamel volunteered to create Unwinnable Island from scratch in
Jostle Bastard Developer’s Notebook
One of the most interesting things about the creative process is the artifacts is leaves behind. I’m not talking about the art itself – the value of that is intrinsic. I mean the physical byproducts of process. Painters make sketches. Sculptors build maquettes, filmmakers leave behind elaborate sets. With videogames dwelling almost entirely in the digital realm of builds and iterations, what remnants mark the progress of their designers? For Pippin Barr, it is the scribbles and doodles in an unruled reporter’s notebook that mark the birth and refinement of Jostle Bastard. Play Jostle Bastard. Then dig into earlier builds
The Jostle Diaries
Towards the end of the development of Jostle Bastard, I received an email from Pippin Barr that said: Have also pulled out all my diary entries on the subject [of Jostle Bastard], which I’m attaching. They sound a bit disjointed because they’re pulled from my actual diary, which of course includes a bunch of stuff unrelated to this game! The attached document was a kind of poem of doubt that oscillates between the heights of triumph and the depths of despair. After reading through it, I replied: The diary is great stuff. It kind of reads like Dracula or a