Fortress of Doors

Want a boring job? My company Valuebase is hiring.

You ever read those online job postings that are like: Come work for Zoopflxr, an exciting cutting-edge tech startup in the Bay Area! We're looking for cracked 10x engineers under the age of 26 that are passionate about disrupting the world of high frequency decentralized crypto augmented reality

ants

We Trade With Ants: Picking Up The Pieces

The latest in a series of short stories about talking ants. In this story, protagonist Jeff Boudreaux finds his landlord George having a heart attack. Jeff intervenes and afterwards discovers a mysterious device in George's garage...

garbagefountain

What is the maximum rate of human progress?

If you travelled back in time, how quickly could you push human civilization forward to the same level as the world you came from?

Grief is like Pong played in reverse

When something really bad happens to you, one of the few silver linings is that you gain a new perspective and can use this to help other people understand your rare experience. Grief is one of those things that’s hard for people to understand; most people see how I’

garbagefountain

Operation Garbage Fountain

If you want to get good at something, you need to put in the reps.

ants

We Trade With Ants: A Short Story Series

What if ants could talk? What if we could trade with them? I wrote a short story to answer that question.

Four Magic Words

Long ago, in a parallel universe three doors down and one to the left of our own, OpenAI headquarters found itself in chaos. A klaxon blared overhead as red lights began flashing. A message played over a loud-speaker: “Warning! Warning! This is not a drill! Artificial General Intelligence window closing!

Featured

Losing my son

On October 20th, my seven year old son Nikolas suffered cardiac arrest while undergoing a procedure at the hospital to treat an underlying congenital condition. The doctors performed CPR and succeeded in reviving him but ultimately he suffered catastrophic brain damage. My wife and I were in the hospital for

Featured

Ballad of St. Halvor

If you go down to Oslo Town Look well upon its seal Upon that sign you'll find inscribed Within its mighty wheel  A maiden slain, a young lord thane The stone that brought him down The arrows sharp that felled them both The light of Heav-en’s crown

ai

Maximizing the chances of an Anti-AI Human Revolution

In what kind of world would humans be the most likely to rise up against AI and smash it to bits with hammers?

Defender's Quest 2's Free Demo is Live now on Steam!

GO PLAY THE DEMO RIGHT NOW! The moment we've all been waiting for has finally arrived. Defender's Quest 2 is playable, right now, today, for a limited time as a free demo on Steam, as part of the week-long Steam Next Fest. Much like Defender'

Re-announcing Defender's Quest 2 (Art & Trailer Reveal!)

Defender's Quest 2: Mists of Ruin is officially re-announced! You can wishlist it on Steam right now! Rise above the Mirk & protect your ship from dangers unknown in this epic tower defense game. We're happy to announce that we're publishing the long-awaited Defender&

dq2

DQ2 Progress Report for January 2023

I've started getting a lot of new art in from our artists, which I have been furiously integrating into the build.

ai Featured

AI: Markets for Lemons, and the Great Logging Off

What happens when most "people" you interact with on the internet are fake?

dq2 Featured

Year end retrospective-- DQ2 Progress Report for November 2022

Now that we're into December, I think it's useful to take a step back and look at where things stand with the game, and review everything we've accomplished in the last year.

dq2

Content Push -- DQ2 Progress Report for October 2022

October marks the beginning of a concerted content push for the game.

dq2

Rebalancing -- DQ2 Progress Report for September 2022

Rebalancing levels in response to testing & fancy scripts to auto-balance the economy.

dq2 Featured

Bug Hunt -- DQ2 Progress Report for August 2022

A month's worth of bugfixing, bigger portraits, and path tracers that won't give you a heart attack.

dq2

Buff Snakes -- DQ2 Progress Report for July 2022

New features include wave mutations and connected snake-like enemies. We're also nearing the end of our big level design push.

dq2

Fireworks -- DQ2 Progress Report for June 2022

New levels, new cannons, new abilities, new bosses, multiple things that catch on fire, and more!

defender's quest

Tracing Lines -- DQ2 Progress Report for May 2022

We're proud to say that a full 25 levels are now "near final balance." It doesn't mean they won't change at all before the game releases, but it means that they're pretty dialed in and we feel the game is in a good place.

dq2

Finishing the Map -- DQ2 Progress Report for April 2022

We've roughed out all 50+ battle locations on the map with basic level designs and are now moving on to polishing up the first half.

dq2

Building a Better Wave -- DQ2 Progress Report for March 2022

Designing levels was taking too long, so we designed some tools to speed up the process and we've had great results.

dq2

Summoning Reinforcements -- DQ2 Progress Report for February 2022

I've been trying to do too much stuff myself. So I'm getting some help! Specifically, we have recruited two new staff members, a production specialist, and a level designer/coder, to help me out.

dq2

Sick Month -- DQ2 Progress Report for January 2022

My whole family got COVID; we're all gonna be fine but it slowed us down this month.