(Note: This post is adapted from our newsletter, to which you should definitely subscribe)
You won’t believe this, but an actual human wrote this post. It’s me, Rob, from brainfruit, the new independent game studio. On behalf of myself and Garrett, whose full power of attorney I received as part of an elaborate ceremony on our first day as studio partners, thank you for following our journey from the very beginning.
It really does mean a lot to us that you’ve showed up at this primordial stage. Maybe you played Tide Breakers at an event, maybe you’ve followed us on Bluesky, maybe you’re a web-crawling spam bot who’s now in way over its head. Whatever the case, we’re glad you’re here, and I’m excited to share a bit about what we’ve been up to!
Let’s work backwards actually, from the present: We’re sharing this update today because we’ve just launched a new discord. Announcing smoothie bar, where you can follow our progress more directly, pull together a group for a Tide Breakers session, playtest some of our works in progress or share some of your own. We know everyone has 1,000 fallow discords but based on the folks our studio has already brought together, we think our particular community will be special.
OK but what about the games?
Yeah we have those too! Cards, politics, different cards, you name it. Here’s a bit about what we’ve been working on and when you can play everything.
Starfriends: Now Tangible!
Earlier this spring at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, I heard a few friends discussing their Letterboxd accounts and speculating about what each other might have rated various films. I’d been in the habit of carrying around a set of sharpies and blank playing cards, waiting for a moment when a game idea might occur to me, and so when this happened I was ready.
I sketched out some cards with 1-5 star ratings on them, dealt them out randomly, and asked one person to name the one film that would most likely earn the ratings displayed in front of each person. It drew a crowd, and I ended up playing with a stranger who I later learned was early-Internet nerd-rap legend MC Frontalot.
Garrett developed a gorgeous design and we added a wider variety of topics to supplement Film – Book, Place, Weather, etc – and Starfriends was born. We now have a handful of draft decks printed and it’s delightful to hold a legitimate card game that looks SO much better than my hand-drawn prototype.
The game itself is done; we’ll launch a digital version alongside a crowdfund campaign for the physical deck in October.
Decks available for pre-order this fall!
Tide Breakers World Tour: From Berlin to Pittsburgh
Meanwhile, I spent most of May and some of June in Europe, initially representing our six-player city-council sim Tide Breakers at the A MAZE festival in Berlin. We were one of 30 games nominated for an award out of a field of over 350, which meant showcasing American-style municipal politics for a crowd of highly engaged Eurocentric players.
You really haven’t lived until you’ve seen your video game cause 25 minutes of continuous argument in German. A MAZE was the first leg of what I affectionately termed the “Tide Breakers World Tour,” which concluded with a rousing showing at the LIKELIKE art space in Pittsburgh. That one was part of a general gallery crawl for the general public, and it was tremendous to see so many folks who don’t necessarily identify as gamers ALSO argue with each other for 25 minutes at the behest of our game.
We really should have made a tour t-shirt.
Discovering Skat: A Fateful Train Ride
Between Berlin and Pittsburgh, I took what I will always now remember as a fateful train ride from Germany to the Netherlands. I don’t know if you’ve ridden on one of those trains before – I sure hadn’t – but the way seating works is in enclosed pods of 6. As it turned out, mine was shared with a multi-generational German family of five, three of whom were deeply engaged in a rapid-fire card game I’d never seen before.
I dared to ask them about it, and that’s how I learned about Skat (pronounced “Scott”), which it turns out is a 200-year-old three-player bridge-like game with some incredibly modern-feeling flourishes; think hidden information, asymmetrical 1v2 gameplay, and a multiplier-based scoring system perfect for tournaments.
I was immediately hooked, and Garrett and I have now developed a prototype of a digital adaptation for non-German audiences. Our version’s coming together like a combination of bridge, Fifa career mode, and Blaseball.
Join Our Community
If you want to get in touch or check out some of these projects (the Skat game is playable now!) come join us at the smoothie bar. We’re planning to share builds in progress and generally hang, so we’ll look forward to seeing you there. We’ve both gotten a lot out of smaller digital communities in our time as Internet-dwelling grown-ups, and we’re pretty excited to be cultivating our own space as a studio.
So yeah get in here!!
Until next installment, remember: If you live in the game, you live in real life.
Yours truly,
Rob and Garrett
brainfruit studio
