346: ‘Like Neo Dodging Bullets’, With Zach Gage

The Talk Show With John Gruber

Zach Gage joins the show to talk about game design and creativity, including his new game Knotwords.

Transcript.

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Links

• Knotwords.
• Zach Gage’s portfolio website, with a full list of games.
• Really Bad Chess, which is actually, of course, really good.
• SynthPod, Zach’s first iPhone app.
• HyperStudio — a classic developer tool like HyperCard, but with color support.
• Apple’s original “Cocoa” — Stagecast Creator/KidSim.
• Zach Lieberman’s OpenFrameworks project from 2010.
• Lights Off — the first native iPhone game, nearly a year before the App Store. (I mistakenly called it “Lights Out” during the show.)
• CandyBar — Mac utility for customizing icons, including, back in the day, the icons for the system itself.
• Threes, a great puzzle game of iOS from 2014. (App Store link.)
• 2048, a free Threes knockoff.
• Texas Instruments TI-83 Graphing Calculator, and games written for it.
• PICO-8 fantasy console.
• Playdate Pulp, and Bitsy, Pulp’s inspiration.
• Sol LeWitt, conceptual artist.

This episode of The Talk Show was edited by Caleb Sexton.