Fireside Tales

Fireside Tales is a collaborative storytelling card game for 4 to 8 players that Nataly Eliyahu and I worked on as a side project for almost 1.5 years. The goal of the game is to tell an enjoyable story together by suggesting funny/crazy/surprising story elements represented by the cards you play. It underwent numerous design overhauls, detail variations and playtesting sessions – which not only made the game better but also taught us a lot about game design and teamwork. You can find more information about the game itself here and read about it’s origins here.

We finally had a launch event for Fireside Tales at Icon 2015. Here’s a video recorded after the end of the official event – I’m playing with some people who stayed for another game:

Behavioral Economics

Back in 2012 I became interested in Behavioral Economics - specifically the acknowledgment that humans have feelings, emotions and habits that affect their judgment and decision making. It sounds obvious when it’s written like that but back when Prof. Dan Ariely’s book “Predictably Irrational” came out it was an instant best seller. 

Behavioral Economics pushed me to think about crossovers between different fields of applied psychology - for example about the question “why do I like completing tasks in games but hate tasks in real life?”. 

Through that pursuit I’ve created Alfred (together with Ravid) - my own task management app that advises the user on what to do next and sets goals that adapt themselves based on your past progress and preferences (classic game design elements):

And was a “visiting scholar” under the lab of Dan Ariely - working with fintech startups in San Francisco to apply Behavioral Economics research results to real product design. This is a photo from the final dinner - with me trying to play it cool next to one of my role models :)

Game Economics

As part of my “let’s analyze everything!” mentality, when I’m really into a game I sometimes try to “reverse engineer” the game design, progression systems, player based economy etc. a couple of these “mini-research” projects were featured on Gamasutra (about Path of Exile trading and Clash Royale progression rate). The later even landed me my first paid invited research job - analyzing Clash Royale unit balance (you can read about the process and the final summary). 

I Have A Mouth And I Must Clean (IHAM)

We made IHAM in 48 hours during the Global Game Jam 2016. In addition to the loads of fun we had building, playtesting and balancing this humoristic PVP game (depicting the epic struggle of germs vs. toothbrush) - there were quite a few lessons to be learned, as in any high intensity situation, so I wrote a post about it that was later featured on Gamasutra.

Christmas Heist

Another Game Jam project - this time 36 hours and with a team distributed in 3 locations. 

You can play it here:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/christmas-heist

Unwritten? Critten!

This is a fun side project created from scratch by Nataly Eliyahu and I in ~1.5 weeks. At the time we were considering various ways we could help aspiring and hobbyist writers to write more and better, a cute site that motivates you is http://writtenkitten.net/ – showing you a picture of a cute kitten every set amount of words you write. We thought it would be funny to reverse the concept – and so Unwritten? Critten! was born (try it for yourself).

Table-top war machines

I always liked building toys/gadgets/mechanisms. One such mechanism – the table-top catapult – was cool enough for me to conduct catapult-construction workshops at 2 conventions (“Mahanet” and Icon 2014) and even be featured in a magazine. After the second workshop I made a tutorial:

The workshop was very popular so I was invited for a follow up at Icon 2015, this time building a pencil crossbow:

Hearthstone tutorials

I’ve been playing collectible card games since I was 13 (notably Magic The Gathering). In addition to the hours of fun and great friends this hobby provided, it also taught me about strategic thinking, statistical analysis and “never quit” mentality – all at a young age. When I got access to the closed beta phase of Hearthstone, Blizzard’s online CCG, I was very excited and once I learned to play well – decided to create a series of tutorials for beginners: