iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Hey, I heard you like L'Oaf. So if you get this awesome promo card at the Wulfhorn Games booth in Essen (3H225), you can play L'Oaf with these oafs who are loafing by playing L'Oaf instead of baking loafs

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

At some point in the future I want to publish a line of blatant rip-offs of @garphillgames.bsky.social releases, under the pseudonym Sham Phillips

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I can confirm that @wulfhorngames.bsky.social definitely said he would do this. I was there when this conversation happened. He promised. Even did a pinky swear. Let's do this!

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Zach Hoekstra @zhoekstra.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

🎲✂️ If the Pact gamefound campaign makes at least $2 million, @wulfhorngames.bsky.social has promised to dress up in a Jenna mascot costume for the entirety of next Spiel. This is definitely something I have discussed with him beforehand. Help me make this happen, folks.

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Video game discourse has an issue with players who want every game to be "for them". There are thousands of games being released every year, it's totally fine to bounce off one every once in a while. It doesn't mean the game needs to change; it just means it's not for you.

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

I'm going down the rabbit hole of designing a video game again. Please send help.

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Sam Francis (Samphire Games) @tzartzam.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

To continue this analogy, it depends what you're making. I find the secret to bread is careful measuring, but cakes are much more about flair and style. 🎲✂️

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Using math to balance your game is like measuring your ingredients for cooking. It provides a useable baseline, but it's no substitute for good old tasting

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

🎲✂️ tonight was that magical moment where I finished a playtest without wanting to immediately change anything. The vibe was right, and all the parts were doing what they're supposed to do. Doesn't mean the game is finished, but it's getting close.

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Semi Co-op @semicoop.com · 07/09/2026

New comic! Possession might be nine-tenths of the law, or possession might be theft... We only know that possession of a game doesn't guarantee you'll ever play it! 😇 📜 You can read this week's blog post at: semicoop.com/comic/purchasing-games-2026/ #boardgames

A two-panel comic titled “Purchasing Games in 2026.” In the first panel, a video game executive holds up a videogame and explains, “You’re not buying the game. You are purchasing a license to play a game… as long as we decide to keep the game alive.” In the second panel, Rachel holds a game box and says, “You’re not buying the game.” A second speech bubble continues: “You’re buying the hope that one day you’ll have the free time and a friend group to play it.” (credits to Eize Basa whose message was inspiration for this comic).

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Semi Co-op @semicoop.com · 05/09/2026

Our Spiel plans right now are to demo Pact the first thing on Thursday morning, we're super curious about it!

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

We had an amazing session of @zhoekstra.bsky.social's upcoming game Pact this evening. There was lots of scheming, there were plots being foiled and some poor bug got guillotined. Y'all should be looking out for this one: gamefound.com/en/projects/...

gamefound.com

PACT by Wulfhorn Games - Gamefound

A sudden death, a kingdom on the brink. You have a rare chance to make pacts with key groups and make the future of Branchbourne yours

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Our daughter turned 2 the other day, so naturally she got her first HABA game as a present. I showed her how to punch the cardboard pieces, and then she spent half an hour repeatedly putting them back in the mold and punching them out again. She already knows where to find the true pleasures in life

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Encouraging children to read is to encourage curiosity, imagination, compassion, and wonder. On a fundamental level, reading gives a massive boost to a child's vocabulary, which helps them in pretty much every other aspect of life. It is so very essential. Dolly Parton was nothing less than a hero.

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

🎲✂️ I told my wife about a design I'm working on and she responded with "That really doesn't sound like my kind of game." Of course I secretly hoped for a more enthusiastic reply, but I was still happy she said that. For a game to have a distinct audience, it needs to have a distinct not-audience.

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

🎲✂️ Inspired by video games, my next game will come with half the content locked in a special box. For €20,- you get a Season Pass code that opens it for a month (30 days).

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Last week we played a game of Catan with my in laws, and the rules they played with were WILD. They did the placement draft with the numbers face down, so you had no idea what the good spots were. They also played with open hands, and you could choose the card when you stole one

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

Life would be a much better game if they fixed the runaway leader problem

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Kareem the board game minimalist @gameminimalist.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

I actually wish bgg would include critic scores for board games along with user (audience) scores - like rotten tomatoes. Why can’t we have acknowledged board game critics after many decades of board game review and critique? Sure it’s a bit exclusive but it could be organised in a sensible way.

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KINROKU 🎲 Board Game Comic @kinroku.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Collecting board games is a hobby entirely unrelated to play them.

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

🎲✂️ I'be been working on a solo roll & write campaign, and I'm having way too much fun writing the dumbest story for it. I hope y'all are ready for the Adventures of Sir Pencilot, a graphite knight from Pencilvania, and his nemesis, the pirate Rubbert E. Raser

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I unfortunately don't remember who said it, but I've always liked this quote: "Anyone can solve a problem by adding rules. A game designer needs to solve the problem without adding rules. A good game designer solves the problem by removing rules."

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

I posted this after our first attempt at the Haneda red scenario in Sky Team. I love Sky Team, but this scenario is ridiculously tight. It took us 8 tries before we were lucky enough to make it. 12 if I count the times we restarted after round one because we hadn't rolled the 1 we absolutely needed.

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Lunarpunk Games @lunarpunk.games · 10/08/2026

Games can be games without a hierarchical result. We must broaden traditional definitions of tabletop games to give designers the agency and opportunity to express themselves in new, exciting, and challenging ways. We should be creating new ways to explore artistic mediums, not shutting them down.

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

I understand BGG needs to delineate what does and doesn't qualify as a board game to keep their database from getting messy. But using "has win conditions" as a requirement is clearly outdated. There have been plenty of recent examples that prove boardgames can move beyond that framework.

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NGU HANH GAMES @nguhanhgames.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

I’m killing the product category that brought us the most licensing deals. Sounds crazy, right? After 5 years of self-publishing, I realized publishers were buying the game, not the box.Here’s why we’re saying goodbye to our $25 games. #boardgames #selfpublisher #vietnam

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 08/08/2026

🎲✂️ It seems to be less and less common for published games to have a minimum player count of 3. I appreciate the desire for games to be playable at 1 and 2, but that choice puts strong constraints on a design. I fear it limits diversity, as certain interactions simply need 3+ players to work.

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

🎲✂️ Took me only a couple of hours to realise that RPG's solved this problem decades ago. In your typical RPG, players gain more powers as the difficulty rises. So instead of narrowing the path to victory, they just move the whole thing upwards on the complexity scale.

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

🎲✂️ Co-op games seem to have an intrinsic problem with their difficulty scaling. Increasing the difficulty should increase the importance of skill. This is true up to a certain point. When the margin for error becomes too small, the randomness in the system itself can start creating unwinnable states

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Gloomhaven is perhaps the only game where I would prefer a re-theme with the same mechanics over a different game in the same universe. I absolutely love the Gloomhaven system, but I don't care for the gloomy fantasy setting. I'd love a spacehaven, ninjahaven, anthropomorphicanimalhaven, anything

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Zulu's Games @zulusgames.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

If you're looking for game recommendations this Summer, we've got you! ☀️😎 - Welcome to Parks - Flip 7 - Mushroom Cats - SCOUT - Hanabi - The Hobbit: There & Back Again - Things in Rings - Pickle Grab - L'oaf - The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

🎲✂️ Playing games makes me want to design games, and designing games makes me want to play games. It's the ideal virtuous circle, but unfortunately all too often interrupted by boring things like life and responsibilities.

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

This is so very important. We've come a long way with the designers' (and illustrators'!) names on the boxes, but still it's the publishers who get mentioned in media coverage. Even most game awards mention the publisher but forget the designer.

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Cat Manning @catacalypto.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

deeply annoying that creative breakthroughs don’t come on schedule from direct work but from things like “open-ended conversations with interesting people” and “doing nothing”

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

That one playtest where you feel a game finally coming together is my favourite part of design. When all the parts move in exactly the ways you want them to, when the players are feeling all the things you want them to feel, when the game transcends the cardboard, that's pure magic.

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

gamefound.com/en/projects/... My friends over at Wulfhorn Games have just launched their newest game on Gamefound. Go check it out if you're into backstabby intrigue and/or want to support a friendly bunch of indie creators!

gamefound.com

Council of Serpents by Wulfhorn Games - Gamefound

Three noble Houses are vying for power, but you are not one of them… You are a member of the Council of Serpents, and manipulate their attributes to ensure the Triumph or Collapse of a specific House....

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

This afternoon I will be interviewed about the design journey of my game L'Oaf. I'm slowly getting used to people writing or talking about my work, but this feels way more personal. It's flattering but frankly also a bit scary. Any tips for how to not make a fool of myself?

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

This is the best news in a very long time

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a team of bumblebees @saramchenry.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

On behalf of all people who run crowdfund campaigns and artist stores, let me be the one to say it today: International shipping really is that expensive. It really costs that much. I know it's expensive. That's really what it costs. I'm sorry. I don't set the prices. But it really does cost that m

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Osprey Games 🎲 @ospreygames.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

Did you miss Rattlesnake designer Michael Hardacre's design diary over on @boardgamegeek.com? We now have a version on our website blog as well. Read all about the creative process behind this chaotic, card-based, cowboy shootout: bit.ly/4ovmEjN // AVAILABLE NOW // bit.ly/3J8NKwH

An image with a game of the card game Rattlesnake set up against a sandy desert background. The cards are illustrated with various scenes of Wild West gunfights and arranged into a shared market, two decks, hands and discards. Text reads "DUEL WITH EXPLOSIVE CARD COMBOS IN THIS WILD WEST SHOOTOUT".

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Zach Hoekstra @zhoekstra.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

🎲✂️ Hey a general cast out there, if you're one of them newfangled Instabooktube content creators and you've been following Pact with some interest, reach out to me, because we're starting planning for the media part of the publishing cycle.

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Jason Gamber was responsible for the incredible illustrations and visual style for L'Oaf. It's always a joy to see games come to life under his skillful hands

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Andrew B. @swordcompass.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

More board games stuff from UKGE day 1! Checked out and picked up L'oaf and Steery. Both are the sort of small quickplay games you can pull out anytime.

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Placeholder Games @placeholder-games.com · 27/03/2026

This week we're commending L'oaf, a game that explores the vagaries of working a job that demands too much. You play as a worker in a bakery. Your goal is to work as little as possible. Its a good game if you know how to bluff. #boardgame #cardgame #bakery boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/43...

boardgamegeek.com

L'oaf

Bakers try to work as little as possible, without getting fired!

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Georgios @georgiosp.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

I think that any games criticism that isn't based in lived experience and observed contextualisation, is pseudo-intellectual faff.

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

I'd like to add "you should just do *insert neurotypical habit*". And then if you don't do *neurotypical habit* because you've tried that a million times and it doesn't work for you, they get upset and will blame any struggles you might have on your refusal to do *neurotypical habit*.

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Bart de Jong @bartgamedesign.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

I heard that L'Oaf completely sold out at UKGE! I keep being surprised by how much it touches me that people play my games. I made something in my little corner of the world, and now complete strangers in faraway places are finding joy in it. That's pretty damn close to magic!

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