You can listen to this episode here.
What’s the best way to convey the emotional experience of being a post-apocalyptic demon-fighting wizard action hero? Did you say “a coloring book with some Yahtzee on the side?” Because that’s what Two Hand Path designer Mikey Hamm landed on.
Last week was an episode all about the joy of destruction and transgression, and I wanted to balance that out today with another episode on physicality in games and the act of creation. But because I’m joined by the wonderful and prolific Jeeyon Shim, this spilled out into so much more: Jeeyon's background in child education, solo games that ask you to do a verb other than journal, how important it is for our humanity to take breaks and touch grass sometimes, and just how much fun art can be.
Further Reading
Two Hand Path by Mikey Hamm
Making Comics by Linda Barry
Field Guide to Memory by Shing Yin Khor and Jeeyon Shim
A Mending by Shing Yin Khor
Ad Links
Socials
Jeeyon on Patreon, Bluesky, and itch.
The Dice Exploder blog is at diceexploder.com
Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.
Join the Dice Exploder Discord to talk about the show!
Transcript
Sam: Hello and welcome to another episode of Dice Exploder. Each week we take a tabletop RPG mechanic and doodle around its corners. Maybe get the cool S in there somewhere. My name is Sam Dunnewold and my co host today is Jeeyon Shim.
I've been an admirer of Jeeyon's work since I first heard about Field Guide to Memory, a game they co designed in 2021 with Shing Yin Khor. It's a solo game in which your mentor, the beloved and illustrious cryptid researcher, Dr. Elizabeth Lee, has been officially declared dead five years after she went missing in the field.
But gameplay involves creating a journal as you respond to prompts, originally emailed to you one a day for three weeks, and then leaves you with this beautiful artifact of play afterwards, your own field notes as a researcher. It's also the project on which Shing coined the term keepsake game to describe a game that leaves you with, well, A keepsake, like that.
Field Guide to Memory really encapsulates so much of what I think of when I think of Jeeyon's work: this intense connection to nature and physicality, thoughtfulness and self reflection, and a little bit of weirdness and darkness hanging out in the background. It's all really great stuff. You should absolutely be subscribed to Jeeyon's Patreon. Support Jeeyon on Patreon! And after last week's episode about destruction, and transgression, and physicality, it felt like the perfect time to bring her on to talk creation, and transgression, and physicality,
and so much more, because the game Jeeyon brought today is Two Handed Path by Mikey Ham, a solo game in which you are a wizard in the post apocalypse fighting demons by playing Yahtzee, And the mechanic Jeeyon wanted to focus on is how your character sheet is a coloring sheet of your hands where you draw tattoos and scars and shit right on there.
This game is just packed with stuff and ideas. Just like this conversation, because we did not just cover physical artifacts of play, we get into Jeeyon's background in child education, solo games that ask you to do a verb other than journal, how important it is for our humanity to take breaks and touch grass sometimes, and just how much fun art can be.
I can't wait for you to hear it. So let's get to it. Here is Jeeyona Shim with Draw On Your Hands from Two Hand Path.
Jeeyon, thanks so much for coming on Dice Exploder.
Jeeyon: Thank you so much for having me.
Sam: one of the first people that I wanted to have on the show when I was, like, making my initial list of people I wanted to eventually have on, and I'm glad we're finally getting to make it happen.
Jeeyon: Oh my god,
Sam: I'm glad that I've since met and become your friend, and so it was much
Jeeyon: no, that makes me feel so good. Thank you.
Sam: ha, ha.
Yeah. But yeah what are we talking about today?
Jeeyon: Today we are talking about Two Hand Path, which is a game that I just read for the first time and I am so excited about and I was thrilled to hear that you also know it and know it better than I do.
Sam: Yes, this is by Mikey Hamm, who has been on the show before. He's the designer of Slugblaster. I talked to him about Exploding Dice, and I want to hear your description of this game.
Jeeyon: Yeah, I mean, how would I describe it to someone who like doesn't play games that much? Uh, This is a solo game. It's a coloring game where you are a battle wizard, but in a post apocalyptic urban setting. Like, imagine having to fight with magic in an abandoned strip mall, because that's essentially what you have to do.
And where a lot of games would have a traditional character sheet with a lot of stats, maybe math instead, in Two Hand Path, you have a double page spread where you're looking down at your hands, and the mechanic is coloring them in. And the symbols and artifacts and the various components that fuel the engine of your magic, are all drawn on with tattoos and jewelry. I think like there's a mechanic to actually physically make jewelry if you want to, if I'm not mistaken. Um, and then you have to color it in as you go.
And it's so cool, like, this is one of those games that I think people get really excited about describing in terms that are very familiar to people who are already familiar with tabletop games, because Mikey takes them and does such interesting like, really refreshing things with them.
So, you know, there are aspects of it that feel very much like a traditional dungeon crawl. Um, You mentioned that there's a puzzle, which I haven't even gotten to yet. All of these things are like traditional and like harken back to like the granddaddy, like first games that ultimately form the foundation of what we think of as tabletop.
But like, this is a game that I would be fucking stoked to give a copy like a physical copy, to all my friends who are really into storytelling, who are really into crafting and things like that, but haven't necessarily played a tabletop game because they're intimidated by it for one reason or another, or because the logistics have just never panned out for them.
I think that this game is an incredible, like, entry level game, not into tabletop in general, but like, the kind of tabletop that I like especially. Indie tabletop, innovative tabletop, tabletop that treats the form as like the art form it is. Because I strongly believe that tabletop games are art and when I find a game that really embraces that, I get really excited.
Sam: It's so interesting to me that you led with this is a coloring game. Because to me, the, the lead on game is so much playing Yahtzee. the core mechanic as I see it is this variant, it's using a full set of polyhedral dice, which I think is delightful,
Jeeyon: I love that.
Sam: right? It's, what a cool way to do Yahtzee. And then you're deciding what spells you're casting at a given point by assembling the dice into various combinations, or re rolling them, or otherwise, that's the, like, practice of doing your magic in the game.
And I see the coloring as this like wonderful Sideshow to the game, but one of the things I love about this game at large is that it is so jam packed with ideas and mechanics that are all really small and simple individually but come together to this like maelstrom of like arts and crafts and Ideas and it can be both primarily a coloring game to you and primarily a solo Yahtzee Diablo 2 clone in paper to me.
And the fact that it
is
Jeeyon: like Diablo? I've never played Diablo, so I wouldn't know.
Sam: it is, I mean, it's not like Diablo mechanically, but the feeling that I get when I play Two
Jeeyon: Oh,
Sam: rest assured I have played a lot of Two Hand
Jeeyon: Have you?
Sam: is, oh yeah. I could not stop playing this game. When I, when Mikey um, sent me it. Before he published this, he had a version that was just like, one hand at a time, and one dungeon at a time, like demo sheets that he brought to a couple conventions. And, he sent those to me in advance, and I played them like, multiple times just because I couldn't stop playing the game, I enjoyed it so much.
And it, it to me has that feeling of like, Oh, I'm gonna just like, grind out a little bit more. I'm gonna just go do like one more room. I'm gonna just like play a little bit further in my like Diablo of dungeon exploration thing. And the thing that happens in it is as you go through these dungeons you get to specific rooms that tell you to pause and stop and do the main mechanic that we are talking about today the coloring aspect of it to go to your character sheet and add a tattoo that represents how you got your arcane powers. And, what does that mean? Why were you tattooed in that moment? Or did you get a tattoo representing that moment after the fact? It like, causes you to stop doing this thing that feels like this like,
Like, I played this game on stream uh, little bit because it felt also like speedrunning an RPG
Jeeyon: Oh, that's cool.
Sam: And I just blasted the Challengers score the whole time, right? You know, this like, Bada bada bada bada bada bada bada bada bada bada bada bada bada bada. Like, and so to me, it felt like, you know, you're in that
mode, where they're like, zoned in on like, grinding a video game, and then like, no, it's time to pause, it's time to switch lanes. Let's go to the like, Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo, like track on the Challengers score instead, and like, let's do some drawing for a little bit.
And, I feel like it's really healthy to bake that into the game so that I don't get lost in the just, I'm gonna keep rolling dice, I'm gonna keep grinding ahead. Like, having to stop and do something meditative to go like, metaphorically touch grass a little bit every few rooms feels really good to me about the game.
Jeeyon: Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons I was really excited to talk about this with you and this might just be my version of, you know, guy who's only ever seen Boss Baby: this movie reminds me of Boss Baby, but for design and pedagogy, but there's so much about this game that reminds me of core principles that I was trained in and then trained people in turn when I was a youth outdoor educator.
Sam: tell me about them.
Jeeyon: I mean, where do I start? First of all, in your outline for the episode, there's this quote you have from someone in the Dice Exploder Discord. This game makes everyone admit that they're an artist. We can all draw art, some kind of art, any kind.
Sam: this is from Nabzy on the Dice Exploder Discord.
Jeeyon: Yeah, shout out Nabzy.
Um, There is, are you familiar with Linda Barry?
Sam: I am not.
Jeeyon: Yeah, Linda Barry is one of, the most influential artists that I read growing up. She's an American comic artist, and also a MacArthur Genius awardee. She is an earnest, sincere, incredibly thoughtful writer who does most of her writing in the form of these, like, expansive, colorful cartoons. you know, in reviews, sometimes they're, they're described as like primitive or childlike.
And I've always thought that that was like a little bit insulting, but also at the same time, like she is an artist who is capable of rendering many different styles and chooses this one deliberately. So I think maybe there's something to that because one of the things that she is really interested in is how adults think they are different from children and how that's basically a lie.
Sam: Yeah.
Jeeyon: Simplify like a huge body of work. And in one of her comics, and I wish I could remember the book that it's from, she's very prolific is the other thing, there is a short piece where she talks about how when you're a kid there are all these things that you do because you're human and they feel good to do. Singing, dancing, and drawing. Playing as well, playing make believe is a huge one too, but like she focuses on the drawing because at a certain point, like with all of these skills and all of these actions, but you know, she's focused on drawing because she is an artist at some point you start thinking about your own drawings from a place of judgment because you absorb that other people are too, and you start asking yourself, is this good? Am I good? For whatever value of good that means, where before you just did it because you wanted to do it and because it felt good to do.
And that's always the turning point for people in many cases where they just stop engaging with something that is fundamental to who they are as a person. All of us want to draw. All of us want to make art.
This is one of the reasons why generative AI is like a moral failure. Like, I, I don't want to like get, you have like a very wise, like no AI discussion policy in the server. And I think that's wise, but like, this is one of the reasons why. It's because making art is a fundamental part of being human and it doesn't have to be good to be valuable. It doesn't have to be good to be meaningful.
Sam: And what does good mean, right? Like, good, can be, it was pleasurable for you as a person to make it. That you've 100 percent hit on what was going to be my emotional climax to this episode of like, how this game makes me feel like I'm a child again, right? It's not just the drawing, it's also the, like, way that I played hours of Yahtzee with my grandma, right? And the way that I played hours of Diablo 2 with my childhood friends, and, like, that, there's weird meta puzzle in the book that feels like doing one of those old logic problems or something.
All of these are, like, things that I did on the airplane when I was 12. And you're absolutely right that the book just feels Purely, it was, it's like, I mean it, it, the literal thing that it is, is Mikey, this like 30 something year old man, just trying to reach back in time to his childhood and to like bring all that back to you, and to gift it to you as an adult. And it fucking works, it's so
Jeeyon: It works so well and actually like knowing what age cohort he's in makes so much sense to me because one of the aesthetics that this book reminded me of were the klutz books that were really big in the late 90s when I was a little kid. They were great. I don't know if they still make them for kids. I hope they do because they ruled.
Sam: yeah,
Jeeyon: who are too young to have seen them if they're not around anymore, they were these, like, usually board books that had some kind of, like, tactile maker component. I remember I had one that, taught you how to do, like, different beading techniques, weaving. There was one that taught you how to French braid your hair that had, like, little tools and stuff like that.
But they just ranged over like a huge spectrum of potential interest because that was a company that understood that kids are very eclectic and they want to explore, they're curious.
And it has that vibe to me.
Sam: Yeah, I'm curious to go back to that, like, you, you said this reminds me of a lot of the principles we had for uh, teaching kids. Like, do you have more of those principles, like, specifically that you can mention?
Jeeyon: Oh yeah, so, the thing that you said that put me on this train of thought, was when you were talking about how there's a very distinct, rise and fall to the tenor of the game. Sometimes you're, like, due in the dungeon, you're in Diablo, and then you're coloring.
And that is also a thing that we taught. When you're teaching kids, they need periods of rest. They need periods where they're not as active and engaged. You want things to be really fun for them, but depending on the developmental stage they're in, that might be punctuated with long periods of what to an adult might not look like doing anything in particular, but what to a kid is still deep engagement. It's just calmer or quieter. And, to me, the secret of all youth education principles are that they're true of adults too.
Sam: Yeah, I'm sitting here, like, head in my hands, like, my resolution for 2024 that I failed completely was to learn how to take a fucking break. That like, as an adult, I have become Let's do some therapy for Sam. Regardless of what you think of Hamilton, the musical, I think all the time about this line, Why do you write like you're running out of time?
Because I feel it so hard, like, I have a Trello board with dozens of projects on it that are in some state of activity that I want to be working on and at any given time I'm probably working on four or five of them. And anytime I try to take a break and play some Magic cards on the internet or do some coloring, or even when I was playing Two Handed Path, as much as I was enjoying it, part of my head was like you could be working right now, kid. Like, you could be getting ahead.
And I hate that feeling, and I know that everything in my life, including my work, is better when I take more breaks. And do the exact thing that you're talking about doing.
Jeeyon: I remember, and this is secondhand because this is not a field that I studied formally, but I remember when a friend of mine was getting her MFT in family therapy she was talking about how there was a body of research coming out that basically was like concerned about how after a certain point, every generation, and these were American research looking at American children, so, you know, putting it in that regional scope, but I think it's true of many other countries as well, after a certain point, there is no generation that is not going to have screens, and is not going to have the internet, and is not going to have apps.
And the ability to be bored is now much more scarce and harder to, to find, to like make because parents and caretakers also know it's like easy to sit a kid in front of a screen and that's not from, you know, I'm not judging anybody I think like in isolation that's fine but neurologically and especially when you're a kid you need to be bored. Being bored and just not really thinking about or doing anything in particular forces your mind to actually for real rest.
This is something that I think people have a hard time conceiving of, and I did not understand until I became chronically ill. Rest includes thinking. Like, if you have a condition where in the recovery period someone tells you you need total rest, like when I got COVID and I learned you need, like, six weeks of solid rest after an acute infection if you want the best chances of avoiding long COVID. And I was like, okay, I can, I can, that'll be hard, but I can do that. And so I just rested at home physically, but I kept working, I kept writing, I kept reading, and to this day, one of my prominent symptoms is a set of cognitive symptoms.
And it's because any kind of thinking is still activity, and especially if it's caused by external stimuli, like you responding to something that you are reacting to because it's something that you can physically engage with or see, then that's even more taxing on your mind. Like, being bored sucks ass. It's like, for me, one of the worst feelings in the world is being bored. But also, I need it. Um, I, I need it and I, and I have to do it regularly now, because I can actually, at this point, kind of predict when I am taxing my mind too much and I have to just stop. Otherwise I won't be able to write for like a week and then there goes that week's like possibility of maybe making a little bit more money, right?
Sam: I think it's also true that the kind of being bored and resting that you're talking about is also a time when your mind is like sorting through thoughts in the background and that can be time, like how often do people have the story of like, my best ideas come in the shower? It's because you're standing in the shower, you're bored, you're resting, and your mind is finally able to click two things together to like get you the next thing that you need.
Like that rest, that rest is a part of the creative process, it's not a separate step, or a separate activity from the creative process
Jeeyon: so many analogs to this too. Like Miyazaki has talked about this in relation to like the rhythm of his movies, which at the time that he was interviewed and he said this, it was unusual for an American animated movie, or an American audience to see an animated movie that had, like, quote unquote lulls in it.
Sam: yeah,
Jeeyon: you know, he, like, very unequivocally was like, you need that. If you hear someone clapping twice, that's the silence in between it. It wouldn't be as meaningful without it.
And, similarly, like, if you garden, one of the worst things that's happened to the world is the imperial expansion of like British gardening standards being scaled up at like a monstrous proportion because most of those systems don't allow the land to rest. You don't always work a fallow time into your fields if you're following that system of gardening unless you're working on a very small scale and again I'm talking at this point what we call like big ag.
And because of the influence of capitalism and the demand for product, you're never going to let that soil rest. So you just deplete it and deplete it and deplete it until it's just dust. And I think, like, that is a thing I think about a lot in many applications, but it definitely comes to mind every time I, like, feel, like, the physical tension symptoms kind of starting of, like, oh shit, I don't want to dust bowl my own brain, I gotta, I gotta take a
Sam: yeah, yeah, totally, ugh,
Jeeyon: But yeah, and this game is really good at like, cause it is, it is a demanding game. Like, that's the thing. It's decep this, it's so, ah, this game is so cool. It's so deceptively, chaotically simple. It seems like you're just like, oh man, look at this, I could jump right in. But it's actually quite complex, and it is modularly structured in a really elegant way.
Sam: Cause each individual piece of it is very simple, but there are so many different pieces of it, and they're all sort of competing for your attention. Mm hmm.
Jeeyon: yeah, yeah. And the way that they are presented to you, you can skip around. And so you can kind of take it at your own pace, but to play the complete game, there are, like, I mean, God, I didn't actually sit down and count it before we started talking, but I should have, but I, estimate at least, like, eight or nine very different, design tools being used as, like, core scaffolding, which is really, really cool.
Sam: I want to focus in a little bit on what it means to make a physical artifact during play. Because the drawings you get out of this are very validating for all the reasons that we've been talking about but also then you like have a cool drawing. Like I was going back through my character sheets before we recorded and I was like, oh, that was a cool ass little doodle that I did look at that.
But I was also like I was going back through them in the context of the discord channel on Mikey's discord for sharing two hand path pictures and And It was cool to be able to just share that with a bunch of people, right? It like turned this solo experience into a, multiplayer experience in a way, right? Like the fact that there's a bunch of people and they're just kind of like sharing our cool drawings with each other. It made it a community experience. That's a better way of putting it.
Jeeyon: Yeah, when Shing and I put out like our artist statement for Field Guide to Memory, there were two terms that we coined at the time, and Shing coined the term keepsake game, which is perfect, right? In a
Sam: Yes.
Jeeyon: very condensed summary, it's a game where the physical artifact of play is created start to finish by the player, and the act of creation is simultaneously the process of playing the game.
So many solo journaling games are like this. There are some group games that do this too that are really interesting. But there was another term that didn't, it's, it's more pretentious, so of course I, I'm the one who coined it. And it didn't really take off, but it's something I think about a lot in relation to this like kind of community aspect of solo games, which is connected path.
And that's the part of the game where you are sharing what you have made so that other people witness it. Other people who've had the same experience as you are reflecting it back through their own perspective, and it's like a manifestation of the way that every single person is subjectively experiencing the world in their own way.
And we will never know exactly what another person is thinking or feeling or how the world feels to them, but you have a little piece of it when you've all played the same game with the same text and the same mechanics. And you all create such different, beautiful things. Like, that's a really important part of play, I think.
Sam: That's the magic of humanity right there. I mean, it's just, yeah, it,
Jeeyon: it's also like, this is something, you know, and again, coming right back to it, this is something that kids do a lot too. That adults absolutely need as well. Just like the act of listening to a kid tell you something, and then reflecting it back to them in a way that shows them you've really been listening, is something that they need to know that they are valued.
And I think that there is something about sharing a solo game that, like, takes off and a lot of people play together that kind of does the same thing. Like, we're all reflecting back our own fundamental humanity and need for artistic expression in a way that is very joyful and very focused on the act of creation.
I really love that about, you know, that's one of the things about being very online that I think fucking rules, just unambiguously is awesome, the ability to show someone across the world cause you're up too late, and so it's a normal time zone for them, like what you made over video. And then they can show you what they made and, and there's no way in a pre internet time I would have even known that person. And now, you know, I can see what they were thinking and feeling when they played this game. That just rules. It's so cool.
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Can you explain to me why it's so much easier for me to do coloring book drawings of hands than journaling?
Jeeyon: Oh yeah
Sam: I love solo journaling games to be clear, right? I've had a lot of fun playing them, but the activation energy to start playing them is so high where the activation energy of sitting down and just like doodling on these hands is so low, and just obsessed with any solo game that is having a core verb, like the thing that you are doing in the game is anything other than journaling.
Jeeyon: I've been thinking about this a lot because it's approaching the end of the year, Solstice is coming, I've been thinking about what I want in the new year. And I really like making solo games, but I'm interested in going beyond journaling as the mechanic.
And like, even for me, the journaling mechanics that I use for the games where I put, like, the most time and effort, like the live run of The Shape of Shadows, there is some writing, but there was also a lot of drawing, there was collage, there was some engagement with like live online elements, which is what's making the reformatting of it for print and PDF so challenging, but, you know, you had to like dig through nested Dropbox folders in order to find certain puzzles and then, you know, it was really cool and it was very fun to see people navigating it and, getting excited and, feeling resonance with it.
But it was still very writing focused, and I think the thing about writing is that anything creative can be easier to start if you are doing so within constraints. And I being the weirdo I am, I guess, like, I thought of a prompt as a constraint, but for most people that is open choice, and so they get overwhelmed, right?
But something like two hand path, like, you're literally visually constrained by the hands, like, you know what you're supposed to do, even the dungeon mechanics and the puzzle mechanics are very, like, clearly laid out and demarcated in sometimes in literal boxes. And yet, it still feels really open and free because the action that you're taking, the thing you're physically doing, is coloring, which is just, like, very uninhibited and very intuitive as well.
And so in the new year, like, one of the things I want to do is make solo games that have no writing component in them. I've actually started working on a couple that I'm really excited about seeing where they go. But, Two Hand Path felt like a vindication of that decision, because I was looking at that, that, you know, I have this like handwritten list of like things that I'm sort of like aiming myself towards next year, and I'm like, is this like real? It feels so different than the other things, and then I read Two Hand Path, I'm like, no, no, no, I'm so excited about this game. Clearly this is a thing that I want to pursue.
Sam: Yeah. So a couple of things in there I want to touch on. The first is, I wonder how much of prompts aren't really a constriction is due to how hard it is to write a good prompt. I think a lot of people write really open ended prompts, a lot more open ended than they could be. think having a really restrictive prompt that's what I want when I play a game for exactly the reasons that you're talking about, right?
I was talking with some folks on the Dice Exploder Discord the other day, and the topic came up of like, can you write a prompt that's , too restrictive? And I was trying to make the argument like, we don't need to worry about that because no one's doing it. But in theory I guess maybe you could, right? Like, if the prompt is, you've been stabbed, you're dying, what was the hilt knife made of that stabbed you?
Jeeyon: I mean,
Sam: nova came in and was like, Yeah, and then, like, I was like, wait, that fucking rules, and Nova was like, yeah, yeah, here's how to make that prompt, if you've, like, established that, like, horses and scorpions and bees are all interesting animals, and the question is what animal is on the hilt, suddenly the symbols of the rest of the game come in and make meaning in this prompt, and like, I'm like, yeah, that's actually exactly what I want. I want a prompt that is that fucking specific. \ Yeah, so I
Jeeyon: That's really interesting. This is making me, I'm like scanning through my chaotic, literally copy pasted the text from the emails into this doc formatting doc that my editor and I are wrestling with right now. And going through the prompts,
it's so weird looking back at your own work, like, a year or more after you've made it, and it's almost like writing something written by a stranger, and yet also you're like, oh, I remember wrestling with this section for like five days, it's so nice to see it done and polished.
Anyway the scope of the prompts, you know, mostly is, like you said, more open ended, like a typical one is let me just find one randomly. What is the most ambitious act of true magic you want to master and why does it frighten you? That's a pretty open imaginative prompt. For me, that felt constrained because I think maybe after six years of spontaneously having to tell stories on a bus for children, like this is not a problem for me.
I can do that without thinking, but like that,
Sam: Well and there's also, like, I think it's easier to practice the ability to do that verbally out loud to children on a bus than writing it down, where, like, you have too much time to critique yourself when you're writing it down, because writing is so much slower than speaking, but when those kids are right there friggin looking at you,
Jeeyon: yeah. And it's interesting because one of the early pieces of feedback I got before I rewrote The Shape of Shadows before it, went live, was like, these are, all of your prompts are too open ended, you need to constrain some of them, and so there's like a naming system, which is like, if you can't decide on it, you know, it gives you the option of just come up with a name, and then if you can't decide on it, use your real life name, but only one letter from it. And use that as a start. And like, even that, just having one step to go off of is often enough for people to at least get started and feel some momentum.
And so, a lot of the earlier prompts are like, momentum starting tools that are still evocative. I thought in a way that would support these more open ended prompts later on, but I think a lot of people, like, just, I don't know. They can't, I think, for me, if I had to guess, I would assume that it comes from a place of judgment of themselves, right? Both like, oh, is this good? I don't know. Even though, like, who's going to be reading what they write, right? Unless they want to share it, there's no problem. And also, if they do share it, most people are just going to be stoked to read it because it's cool.
And then, you know, there's also, I think, the self judgment of like, I quote, unquote, fell behind.
And in this case, for this game, I think there is something to that second part. Because it was a live game and one prompt came out in your email every day, there was this feeling of a schedule. And so that's something that I'm thinking about too, like how would I create that effervescent kind of like temporary feeling of a, of a live experience, but like in a way where people don't feel like it's a deadline.
It's hard. It's hard. I haven't figured it out yet. But yeah, like a lot of the naming systems also start putting you in the mind of thinking about flora and fauna which are like a huge component of the magic system in this game. And I think like there's ways that you can telegraph what you are aiming the, the themes of the game towards, what you are aiming the aesthetic of the game towards.
That for many players, they might not consciously know it, but if they can maintain the momentum of creating for a period of time in this world, in this imaginative space that they are kind of co designing with you, if, asynchronously, then those early telegraphed little keys can be keys that they use to unlock more imagination that comes from a place that is just connected to what they read in the beginning that is evocative for them, that is like inspiring for them to keep going.
But also, you know, writing is, different than, than art, I
think. Writing is something that you have to learn non intuitively. I think that verbal skills are very human and fundamental. Communication and language is very fundamental, but writing is not intuitive. You have to learn it from someone, right? And I think, like, that is enough to make it harder to get started for a lot of people if they're not accustomed to having to do it every, you know, day in day out for, like, hours.
Don't do it, by the way. Don't become a writer if you're listening. Do not become a writer.
Sam: Do not, yeah, do not
Jeeyon: it.
Sam: a writer. If you can do anything else, do that instead.
I'm so excited you came back to that word intuition and intuitive because you mentioned that earlier too, and I really wanted to underline the fact that journaling does not feel intuitive at first.
Like I think journaling at its best in Paulzegega's book Zine, The Ink That Bleeds, is this whole zine about how to use, yeah, solo journaling to get to an intuitive place and an intuitive understanding of yourself. And I think I have gotten there, I think you can get there, but that is not where you start when you first put pen to paper when you're journaling. And that's, that's all cool, but it is, it's a high barrier to entry.
Whereas when you are sitting down to draw on the two hand path hands, yes, it is totally intuitive. You are putting away the intellectual part of your brain, you're just getting started. Tapping into, weeee,
Jeeyon: Yeah, like, if there's like a one to one comparison I could make that I feel like is illustrative of the difference, you know, drawing in the way that Two Hand Path asks you to draw is to like running around playing capture the flag versus, you know, journaling is like a formal workout regimen. And you can absolutely get to a point where you are deadlifting like 400 pounds, but you have to work up to it and develop habits, routines, strength, frankly until you can attempt something.
And like, it is actually unreasonable, I think, sometimes to ask someone to go all the way for it without scaffolding, like a lot of scaffolding. And it, it's making me look like more critically at some of my earlier work in a, not, not in like a judgmental like this sucks way but just like how could I have improved this? And like one of my projects for next year is in fact like revising a lot of early games just for fun.
And it's interesting because it's just you know, this is one of those things where before I started teaching kids I had all these assumptions about kids, and how kids work and how they think, and how they interact with the world. And all of them were wrong. And then I had to, you know, I didn't choose to leave that career, but the, the pandemic, forced the circumstances of me leaving that career.
And after leaving that career, I've started making assumptions about adults that I think are also wrong in a kind of similar way. And one of them is that adults are, you know, I sort of assumed like, oh yeah, like, this is an adult player. They can totally handle writing I don't know, half a page in one night. Like, that's fine. But actually for a lot of people, that's like way too much, given their schedule, their time, their energy, and how used to writing they are.
Like,
creative
Sam: I mean, My experience with that is that, like, the actual act of writing half a page is not the issue. It is the sitting down and making space for that writing half a page that is a lot harder.
Like, once you actually sit down to do it, I mean, I can only speak to my experience, I guess, but like, once I sit down and open the journal and pull out the rulebook for the thing that I need, or whatever, or like, I decide I'm going to journal about my day today, and I like, pull out my pen, it goes really quickly.
But all of that mental energy to get to that point, it always feels like it's going to be so much a bigger deal than it is.
Jeeyon: Absolutely. Yeah. And it's, it's so, god, this game, Two Hand Path is just so clever. I, I like, did not understand that it was Yahtzee until you said so, and then you said it, and I'm like, oh, yeah, I have played Yahtzee a grand total of two times in my life. And
Sam: I mean, God bless.
Jeeyon: yeah, I remember the first time being like, how do you total the score? Like, apparently that's like, A thing it's known for is it's really hard to total the score at the end. I'm not familiar with it enough to know if that's like an actual reputation or just my friends making me feel better. But yeah, so because I'm not familiar with Yahtzee, I was just like, this is so neat. I've never seen this before.
Sam: yeah,
Jeeyon: but like, I think even Knowing Yahtzee, like you also kind of still haven't seen it before because the way that it guides you through all of these different rooms, for people who can't, who don't have a copy of the game and thus I can't like look at it, there are a bunch of pages with these connected blocks that almost look like a dungeon map. But in each one, it describes, like, a part of this urban wasteland that you are trying to traverse. So there's, like, a loading dock, a concourse, service tunnel, like, there's also, every now and then it'll throw in, like, torture car. At the end of the day, it is still, like, a wizard game about the post apocalypse.
And it's really cool because these are all spaces that, at some point, many of us have been in, or worked in, or seen. And so there's a certain, like sense memory that comes up when I look, and I, I think that's, it's so clever because the page itself, I think, cold is the wrong word, but it's very, it looks almost very technical.
But because of the choices that Mikey made in the prose, in just like the very short descriptions of these places, like you, I don't know, for me reading through it, I just immediately was like, oh, an executive suite. And then the actual description is like, silk robes and tropical fruit, french wine and classical art. He's amused and he's sorry to say he doesn't know who you even are, but he's about to. I'm like, well that's not any executive suite I've been in, but that rules! And it's just so, it's so fucking cool.
Also, how did I not, okay, I'm reading through this more, like, closely now. In the in the lead up to recording this for people listening, I told Sam that I started reading this closely and I got so excited because it was so cool that I then skimmed it really fast. I haven't read it very thoroughly, but I'm just now noticing these locks. There's all these little lock symbols in the corridors of these spaces. So what do you have to solve to get past the lock?
Sam: Well, you have to go pick up a key. It's like Doom almost, right? Like if you're looking at the hotel, there's a lock between the aquarium and the executive suite, but there's a key over in the men's room. So you have to go to the men's room first to get the key.
Jeeyon: Oh my god, that's so cool! Oh
Sam: Something you were saying about the way it kind of looks like a technical manual or something, I think is totally undercut by the like fun round corners on all the icons and the font choices also feel just sort of a little candy y and fun and it like mixes this like technical manual thing with a like, Saturday morning cartoons kind of feel
that is really on brand for Mikey and also like works really well for the game
Jeeyon: think that that's so important for having fun is not taking yourself seriously, and I think this game encourages you to have fun and not take yourself seriously. this is like a, a struggle in talking about art sometimes, because art is, you know, a thing to be talked about seriously quite often, and also at the same time, like, who fucking cares? Do you like it? Do you respond to it? No? Then fuck it. Leave it behind.
And I think it's, it's hard when you are making art, because you're still, if you're not accustomed to it, like if it's not, something that's ingrained in your daily, the daily rhythm of your life, then you're looking at it, even your own creative process, almost like someone on the outside looking at and judging a piece of art, and thinking like, that they have to think of it in the terms that you often see art discussed in, whether it's like formal critique or even just like casual discussion, but it's always discussion of its merit or value. And that's when you start taking yourself too seriously, because you're trying to find worth in what you're doing.
And I think that's uh, that's, that's sad. And I love how this game encourages you to leave that behind.
Sam: Yeah
Jeeyon: and you're right, like, I didn't notice it before, but there are a lot of visual cues to do it, which is really, really cool.
Sam: and fits that kind of drawing theme, right?
The last thing that I really wanted to make sure we talked about here is with the actual drawing is just, probably last week I did an episode with LadyTabletop about Wreck This Deck, which is another solo game that is really not a journaling game but in that game you are taking a deck of playing cards and beating the shit out of it.
Like, you're drawing on cards, you're cutting them up, you're covering them in honey, you're burying them in a river and coming back three days later, like, you're doing all this nonsense. And we talked about the joy of destroying something.
Jeeyon: Mm hmm.
Sam: But a lot of the joy we talked about is how you come out of that experience of wrecking a deck of cards with this cool ass deck of cards that like you probably couldn't play poker with but maybe you could play poker with and like is yours it's undeniably yours and that feels so similar to me to the experience of coming out of Two Hand path with your two hands and even though one of them is an act of creation, allegedly, and one is an act of destruction, allegedly, they feel so similar.
And I'm just curious if you have any reflections on that.
Jeeyon: I mean, yeah, like, games of this nature, where you are making or breaking something, at the end of the day, that object is like a talisman, right? It's a talisman that, when you have it in your hands again, you remember the experiences that it's tied to.
Like, all game design is experience design. This is why designing with Shing was such a pleasure, and like, joyful process, because Shing has like decades of experience as an experience designer specifically.
But, you know, like, working with them really expanded my perspective on game design in general, and the thing about games, that also have, like, a thing that you destroy, or can mimic that process a little bit, even if it's not the same thing, in such a way that when you then look at the object again, it's not just the object, it's your experience and memory that alchemizes with it, and it becomes really special to you.
are some games that I think get close but are different kinds of games, and thus don't quite take on that talismanic quality of the object, like Starcrossed is one of them, right? Like, the Jenga Tower is such a fun, tactile mechanic that originates in Epidiah Ravachol's Dread, which when you topple the tower, Jenga tower, it's so exciting. You know, that big crash. And it's cathartic. And then you put the tower back together and put it back in the box.
And I think that's the thing that that sort of prevents it from becoming, which isn't the design intention, right? Like, you know, Alex didn't want to make that a thing, and so like, that's why it's not there. But, you know, I think the beauty of the design in Wreck This Deck is like, sure, you can't use the cards as they were intended, but you can still use them in other ways if you want to. You know, at the point that you've wrecked it that much, what's to prevent you from using them in a mixed media piece, or like creating a little altar display, or something, right? Like, you could do whatever you want with them.
And I think like, that's really beautiful, a game that sort of leads you by the hand into looking at things in the world and being like, I mean, as long as I'm not hurting anyone or anything, I can do whatever the fuck I want, actually. That's what art is. I can do whatever I want just for me. Yeah. I am the sicko that I'm making art for. I don't have to care about anyone else. And that's a really freeing, liberating
Sam: It's A, it's a powerful mindset to have that I recommend everyone take with them.
I have one other thought about the Wreck This Deck comparison that came up while you were talking, which is in some ways what you're doing in Two Handed Path is wrecking that pristine piece of paper, right? it's a blank white piece of paper with these two hands on it and the name of the game and it's pure and it's clean and you can imagine all the possibility that could come from it after you've read the game.
And then you draw all the fuck over it you wreck it down into your playthrough It becomes one thing. But even that thing could become something else. It could become a collage. It will eventually become dust, you know, it's like Like,
but, also, similarly, like, on the Wreck This Deck side, maybe the thing that you're doing is drawing all over those cards. That's an act of creation, right? Like, destruction and creation feel like, isn't there like a major world religion based around this idea? But like destruction and creation is a matter of perspective. It's a matter of semantics. It is two sides of the same coin in a way. And
Jeeyon: Yeah. And I think the, fact that it is a relatively short experience is also important there. These are games that don't demand a huge amount of time from you.
Field Guide to Memory is, to this day, like, maybe one of the games I'm the proudest to have worked on. It was also like, I didn't know it at the time, but in many ways it was like a love letter and kind of a farewell letter to my work in outdoor education.
And also, it is a game that requires a lot of its players. Not, it's not insurmountable, certainly, right? But like, it is a good couple weeks of time, probably? And it's a lot of introspection as well, which is work in its own way.
But the thing that comes out of it, the keepsake, that's part of the design intention. You are pouring so much of yourself into this journal, that when it's done, when you've finished it, it's perfect. Like, it is so imbued with what you've brought to that experience, not just of playing the game, but of your actual experiences of being in nature, or experiencing you know, spontaneous encounters with birds or wildlife or flora, that Like, you can pick that journal up at any time, and open it, and it is still as precious to you as it was when you made it.
And like, that's the thing I think about like, keepsake games, where the keepsake is a journal, or also, keepsakes that involve like, more labor in that way, like in amending, you learn how to sew, embroidery is the mechanic and that, you know, depending on where you're starting from, that could be a steep learning curve or a shallow one, but nonetheless, you're still putting a lot of time into that sewing.
And I think the beautiful thing about a keepsake is that by doing that, you are ensuring that that is, in fact, a keepsake. Like, that is something that becomes memento that is very sentimental and important to you.
And I don't think that's necessarily less true of, like, a deck in Wreck That Deck or a two hand spread and two hand path. However, you can, if you want, just put it down and it doesn't stall the momentum. You can come back to it at any time. And if you lose a sheet, it's not devastating,
Sam: Yeah.
Jeeyon: And I think like there is something to that as well. It's important to create things that we treasure for a long time. And often like if that's something that you made, that is blood, sweat, and tears, and time that you've poured into making that thing. And that's part of why it's precious.
But it's also important to have things that you just do to fuck around. You know, fucking around is so important. And these games are so good at getting you, adults with all of your baggage about all the serious adult shit you do, to just fuck around and have fun. And I think, like, that's so important.
Sam: I love fucking around and having fun and even finding out. It's all uh, it's all a joy. Is there anything else you want to make sure we talk about here before I kind of sign us off?
Jeeyon: I don't, I mean, I feel like, it's you and me, we could talk for another two hours, oh, there is one thing, actually, I wanted to talk about the tattoos.
Sam: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, so I have this was going back through the pictures of other people's playthroughs in Mikey's Discord, and LadyTabletop has this picture of playing this game with temporary tattoos on her hands. Which is something that Mikey, like, brought to a con I believe. Like, printed a bunch of temporary tattoos and brought them out.
And that's so cool. I mean, that's its own fucking mechanic, right? Of like, how does all of this change when you're actually doing it on your physical body and your
Jeeyon: I love that. you know, my introduction to game design was making LARPs, so I love when shit gets a little LARP y, you know? That's, it's one of my favorite things. the first con game that I ran, I made people crush up charcoal into like a paste and smear it around on their faces and arms. To me, that's a tabletop game. I love when tabletop games kind of like verge into that physicality.
But yeah, like you know, one of the things about all the tattoos is they're all flash tattoos. Like these are you know, it's a sheet you would get at any tattoo parlor in any town of any size in the country, and I think that's so fucking brilliant. I don't know if this was like on purpose on Mikey's part I don't know Mikey as a designer person that well. But if he'd come up with like, a bunch of really esoteric, game specific images, I think that would have been really cool, but the fact that it's flash, and like, there's like a fucking like, I Dream of Genie ass witch on a broom winking at you. That whips because it's also stuff that you kind of don't think about. You're just like, that's cool. I want it. And that's it. It's that simple.
But they're all constrained by dice rolls. You're not really choosing any of this, you know? There's this feeling of like, easy come, easy go, except that whatever you end up with is so consequential in the fiction of the game that it makes me rethink like what Flash is even, right? Like, it's still a tattoo. You're still getting it embedded in your skin for the rest of your life, like that's, that's still a decision that has consequential impact on your literal body. And it's, I don't know, I remember thinking like, it is so fucking genius to use Flash as the tattoo aesthetic in this
Sam: Yeah,
Well, it fits that like, you know, even if you're getting a fucking smiley face, it's gonna be your smiley face, and it's gonna give you memories of when you got it tattooed in whatever tattoo parlor you were in at the time, right? Any symbol takes on personal meaning when, you know, you do a personally meaningful thing with it.
Jeeyon: Yeah, yeah. Anyway, that was, I just wanted to remark on that as like a, moi, chef's kiss aesthetic consideration. when a game is so internally cohesive like this, I just want to yell. I want to, like, run around in the street and just be like, Yeah! Like, after a sports game. Like, it makes me so stoked.
It's so good.
Sam: Well we have been yelling about it for an hour here, and I think we should call things here, but Jeeyon, thank you so much for coming on Dice Exploder.
Jeeyon: Thank you so much for having me, this was such a pleasure.
Sam: Yeah, yeah, thanks so much.
Sam: Hello, listeners. I am once again back before the credits to give you a little homework assignment. This is something new I'm trying this season. at the end of the episode here, and You can think of these as like a small little design challenge just for yourself, you know? Try it out if you want to, maybe don't if you don't. I'm just trying to get you to think more about how to take the lessons from these episodes and put them into practice in your own design work.
So, today's homework assignment is try and write a prompt that's so narrow that answering it is not fun. Then take whatever you write and think about a context in which answering it would be fun.
That's it. Thanks again to Thanks again to Jeeyon for being here. You can find them on Patreon, on Blue Sky at Jeeyon, or at jeeyonshim.itch.io. As always, you can find me on Blue Sky at sdunnewold or on the dice exploder discord. You can order my design memoir Dice forager diceexploder.com, and you can find my games at sdunnewold.itch.io.
Our logo was designed by sporgory. Our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Gray, and our ad music is lilypads by my boy Travis Tesper. And thanks to you for listening. See you next time.