In this episode the club house talks about the games that they have been playing. Mark attempts to define the terms good friction and bad friction, declares his distaste of rouge-likes, and talks about friction in his current projects. Lydia shows us how to make scoring sound way more academic.

• Civilization VII
• Age of Mythology Retold
• Blue Prince

A new Nintendo is on the way, and your nice hosts talk about both it and the world it's being born into. It kicks off a longer than usual episode where Lydia just wants a way to experience horror games, Mark has an unpopular opinion, and Stephen thinks players have too much agency already.

Your nice hosts settle their differences in opinions when it comes to food to serve up a fresh game design document in a new Nice Games Jam episode.

(Stephen note: This is more of a set of notes taken during the episode outlining a game design document.)

• Human in an alien culture, giving recommendations for pairings for food
• You should need to learn the rules before you can break them
  • Gain credibility
• People order categories of food and you put it on the plate (no cooking)
• Gamer Journey
  • You’re a plater at an alien restaurant
  • You first do it like a human (based on taste)
  • You get feedback that opposes basing plates on taste
  • Player starts to get curious about how to make better plates to meet needs
• Sense criteria
  • Touch
  • Sight
  • Temperature
  • Spiciness
• Taste the “wine” to know what it “tastes” like
• The threat is if you do poorly you get shipped to another planet, they have different foods and different desires for foods
• Options to change
  • Two ingredients (tomato and other tomato? Looks similar)
  • Position of foods
  • Container of foods
  • Orientation of foods
  • Aesthetic of the restaurant?
• You design the special
  • Create one dish for the special, you get an amount of feedback based on the size of the restaurant
  • You can tweak your dish based on the feedback you get
  • Things change as you go through the game and impact what you have available and what patrons like
  • The goal is for players to experiment with the different foods (positions, containers, etc.) so they begin to understand the rules of the game
  • There can be clues with the background/worldbuilding so players can learn why the foods these aliens like are why they like them
• When do you get to influence cultures? Do you get to at all?
  • Yes, you need to figure out a way to get aliens to love the food and not just like it

Roles reverse as Dale joins Stephen and Lydia for a Nice Game Jam prompted by Mark. The results are an antiques-fueled jaunt through time, and an unexpected win for Stephen.

• Costcodle - Zak Kermitz, Costcodle
• Timeline Inventions - Zygomatic, Zygomatic
• Hypodermic Needles - Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine, Maximum Fun

Set of item cards from various years

10 chips for each player

Set of years/events

Timer

• Place 8 item cards on the table easily accessible for all players.
• Pick a random year/event.
• Set timer for 1 minute.

• Start the timer to start the round
• While the timer runs, players place chips on items to bid on them
• When the timer runs out, the player with the most chips on an item gets that item. In a tie, no one gets an item and it gets added to the pool during the next round
• Items that are earned get their times revealed, player closest to the chosen year/event wins
• Play repeats for three rounds, player with the most round wins wins the game

Beth leads Mark and Stephen through a therapy session. Stephen talks Kickstarter, Mark talks Patreon, and everyone agrees Beth's game Verdant Skies is great.

• Part-Time Hero: I'm Broke But I Have To Save The World! - Future Club, Kickstarter
• Dreamsettler - Tendershoot, Patreon

Beth Korth, board member of Nice Games Alliance, enters the clubhouse to talk about the purpose of the NGA and how to best fulfill that mission. They discuss how workshops, talks, and conferences fit into their plans. And how they can provide unique experiences and services that the gamedev community can't get elsewhere. They also emphasize the importance of lunch.