Designer Notes #71: Matthew Davis

In this episode, Soren interviews independent game developer Matthew Davis, co-founder of Subset Games and best known for his work on FTL and Into the Breach. They discuss whether FTL is a roguelike, how they resolve conflict at Subset, and whether Soren can convince them to add unlimited undo to Into the Breach. This episode was recorded on Sept 19, 2022.

Games discussed: Super Mario World, Secret of Mana, Fallout series, Scorched Earth, MLB 2K ???, HeroQuest, Ticket to Ride, Battle Line, FTL, Red November, Tetris, DOTA 2, League of Legends, Spelunky, Civilization series, Slay the Spire, Vampire Survivors, Into the Breach, XCOM series, Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem series, Tactics Ogre, Advance Wars series, Triangle Strategy, Old World, Offworld Trading Company, Invisible Inc., Civilization: The Card Game

https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/matthew-davis

3 thoughts on “Designer Notes #71: Matthew Davis

  1. Pingback: Designer Notes #71: Matthew Davis Game Download – NINEJAGIDI.COM

  2. In Slay the Spire, Force Quit (Alt+F4) can function as a clunky cumbersome Undo Button. Relaunching the game after Force Quitting during a battle, will bring you back to the start of that battle. The RNG is deterministic, so all of the cards you draw are the same and in the same order. this way you can maximize card ordering and damage. at a certain point it does start to feel like save scumming bc I’ll use it more frequently toward the end of the run or once I got a good build going.

    awesome episode. love the show.

  3. Slice & Dice (https://tann.itch.io/slice-dice) has unlimited undos and they really makes the game, buuuut the undo’s are separate from the random rolls. You can’t undo a bad roll but you can undo/experiment with all of your available choices. Feels like a nice balance!

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