2020 has been a strange and tough year for just about everyone, and it brought about a fair number of changes in my life as well. On top of all the global happenings, Mary and I became parents as Tobias was born in June, we moved into a new house, and I started a new job! Amidst it all, I still made an effort to keep up my creative endeavors, and it is time to reflect on all that I worked on in the past year. As always, it gets me excited for what the next year has to offer creatively!
Easily the biggest creative effort this year was starting the Ludo Lodge YouTube channel. I had used Ludo Lodge as a personal blogging brand for a while, but decided to split my personal brand to this site so that Ludo Lodge could really focus on content aimed at game designers. Along with that came the big decision to really commit to primarily focusing on video content.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AZwP4pKoP4
Since uploading my first video in February of 2020, I posted a total of 30 videos over the course of the year and was able to grow to nearly 1000 subscribers. It has been a great way to combine my passions of game design and teaching, and it has been very intrinsically rewarding to see how many people I have been able to help with my videos. It is certainly a big time commitment (I have settled on publishing two videos each month), but I am excited about the future of the channel. If you are a game designer, consider subscribing and let me know what kind of content you’d like to see!
2020 marks another year of my brother John and I working very slowly on AlphaNoodles, our puzzle game about finding hidden messages in your pasta. Part of the slowdown was due to taking some time to rebrand our collaborative efforts (rather than releasing games in the app stores under “Ryan Langewisch”), and we landed on Bullet Squid. If you would like to be notified of when we release games under Bullet Squid, consider signing up for our mailing list over at BulletSquid.com (we appreciate it!).
https://twitter.com/rlangewi/status/1298083665365422082?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1298083665365422082|twgr^|twcon^s1_c10&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ryanlangewisch.com%2F2021%2F01%2F14%2Fcreative-year-in-review-2020%2F
Last year, I think I claimed that AlphaNoodles would be released in 2020. I think I can now say with high confidence that it will be released in 2021. It is really coming together as a puzzle game that feels different from other word puzzle games I’ve played, and will also have quite good replay value with over 1000 puzzles, each with dynamically generated solutions.
On the board game design front, I collaborated with my friend Tyson on an entry for the Button Shy “18 Card Legacy Game” contest, with our submission Temple of Xibalba. It is always fun to work under the constraints of a design contest, and this one, in particular, was especially constraining with just 18 cards and some sticker sheets at our disposal. It was also fun to truly co-design a game, and it ended up being a very positive experience that has me excited about the possibility of collaborating on more designs in the future. Our entry ended up as a finalist but didn’t end up finishing in the top 3. I am still proud of what we created though, and see potential to develop the design further to a point where it could be publishable.
I worked on and off on a few other board game designs, namely my “Racing Game” and some initial ideas for a “Rock Band” co-design with Tyson. I feel that the Racing Game has some really solid ideas and has come a long way, but it kind of fell off my radar a bit when the wave of quarantine/new baby/new job hit. Hoping to return to it at some point with a fresh perspective!