341. The Real Jim Stormdancer (On My Birth Certificate)

From Topic Lords by Jim Stormdancer

May 4, 2026 · 1h 4m

About this episode

The episode features discussions on game design, storytelling, and the challenges of working with open-source tools.

Lords: Andrew https://kittenm4ster.neocities.org/ Noel https://noelcody.itch.io/ Topics: Moss Moss design & process Being gaslit by an open-source 3D physics engine ACME products Splinter by Carl Sandburg https://allpoetry.com/poem/14327262-Splinter-by-Carl-Sandburg Microtopics: Blippo+ Wearing merch for a TV show in the Blippo+ cosmology. The bureau where you keep your cotton. Mossing the world and finding secrets. Designing for mystery and discovery. A platformer with no skill checks. The standard puzzle game playbook. Designing your game to offer one question per screen. Pig Farm. Discovering your way through a story. What to show and what to hide Collecting leaves that grow a vine up to something at the top. Cats or rabbits or turnips or something. An underrated comment on the Pico-8 BBS. A secret at the end of the game that you try to be okay with most players not finding. Play testing with your local game dev scene. Various Pico-8 data compression strategies. Code golfing until you can't stand it. Ending every project in a nightmare slog. PARENS-8. How Pico-8 makes constraints feel real and not like some arbitrary bullshit you decided to do. Forking Pico-8 and expanding…

People in this episode

Host: Jim Stormdancer

Guests: Andrew, Noel

Topics covered

game design
open-source software
3D physics engines
storytelling in games
puzzle design
game development

Keywords

Moss design
game mechanics
play testing
Pico-8
3D physics
puzzle games
story discovery

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Pico-8

Products: ACME products

Books & works: Splinter by Carl Sandburg