eriksvedang.com

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For the last six years or so, I’ve been the maintainer of the Meetup group “Halmstad Functional Programming”. I started the group when I moved to Halmstad because going to Meetup groups back in Gothenburg was a big thing at the time, and it had led to a lot of fun experiences and long-lasting friendships for me.

Unfortunately, Meetup of today (at least here in Halmstad) is not worth the money. Very few people find the group, and the price for membership has been going up a lot lately. So it’s with a sad heart that I have made the decision to terminate my Meetup.com subscription, which will leave the current group in limbo.

BUT! Me and my co-organizer Ola Sikström will try to keep the group going, indie style 🤘. We’ve launched a small website with all the info. Check it out here:

halmstad-functional-programming.github.io

We will use a Discord server to organize upcoming meetings (at least for now, we’re aware of the problems regarding that platform too…)

So if you’re somewhat close to Halmstad and want to hang out (or maybe even give a talk?), please come join us! Or just shoot us an email, that works too.

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’m very happy to announce that I, together with miniature landscape builder Erik Fälth, and comic book artist & illustrator Olof Hjalmar, have received funding from the Region of Halland to develop a tabletop miniatures game about “Slaget vid Nissan” / “The Battle of Niså” — one of the largest naval viking battles ever to occur. (And it happened just close to where we live.)

We are very thankful for the support of this project!

Now, our plan is to create a huge one-of-a-kind diorama game board, filled with viking ships and their bloodthirsty crew. The game itself will be equal measures educational and fast-paced fun.

If you want to follow our progress, you should keep an eye on the game’s webpage at www.eriksvedang.com/slaget-vid-nissan.

You can also subscribe to Erik Fälth’s YouTube channel, where he will post videos throughout the project. Here’s the first one:

Sun, 08 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The woodcut ‘Raikō shitennō to tsuchigumo’ by Utagawa Kuninaga.

Earlier this week I turned 38. It’s not a very exciting age, I know. But this birthday had an additional meaning to me. Something secret that gave it a certain significance in my mind:

“Only two years left.”

No, this has nothing to do with my expected lifespan (I hope). Rather, what I couldn’t stop thinking about was a bet I made with myself a couple of years ago. But let’s back up a bit.

Go is a completely fascinating game (check out its wikipedia page if you don’t know much about it). I learned about it from a book when I was a teenager, but it wasn’t until I started university that I met others who played. They inspired me to become a proper student of the game.

I started playing online, read strategy books, studied old masters, and so on.

For those unware, Go players usually keep track of their skill using a ranking system similar to the ones in martial arts (e.g. Karate). As a beginner, you start at 30 kyu and work your way downwards to 1 kyu. Knowing your rank is very useful, because it also tells you what advantage the weaker player should get to make for an even game. For example, between two players of rank 10 kyu and 14 kyu there’s a difference of four, so the weaker player should start with four stones on the board – effectively four free moves. This is called being “four stones stronger”. When you play online, the server keeps track of your rank and modifies it based on wins and losses. This works very much like Elo on Chess servers and in other competitive games. When you play casually against others, you often state the rank you believe that you have – to find a suitable opponent at a club, or just to get a feel for how deep someone’s understanding of the game is.

So the rank starts at 30 kyu and goes downwards. But what happens when you reach 1 kyu, you might ask? At that point the rank switches to the dan scale and start counting upwards instead! So someone that is one stone stronger than 1 kyu is 1 dan, then 2 dan, 3 dan, and so on, all the way up to 9 dan. The rank of 1 dan is also called shodan, which translates to something like “first rank”. This is quite an interesting name, because without any context it sounds a lot like the rank you’d start with as a beginner. In other words, when you reach dan level you kind of start over. For a game so deeply steeped in Eastern philosophy, this shouldn’t be surprising – without a beginners mindset it’s very hard to improve at anything. You can’t learn if you believe that you’re already an expert.

Now, it’s debatable how important it is to reach the dan level. A good game is ideally fun even when you’re not that experienced, and Go is a very good game indeed. Some of its beauty is there for you to see after playing just a few times. With a bit of guidance professional games can be thoroughly enjoyed, even though most of their depth lies hidden to amateurs. Still, there’s a shared sense among players that you want to achieve dan level at some point. In a game as deep as Go, winning often feels a bit undeserved. None of the players really knew what was going on, after all! Focusing on self-improvement and your own progress is more productive than sherishing singular victories. Ultimately, your rank might become an obsession.

How long does it ...

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Manahex is a digital card & board game for 2 to 4 players. It is played on a map of hexes, which your mage can control to gain mana. The mana is used to pay for your cards (spells, creatures, buildings, etc). With the cards you try to defeat the other players and be the last mage standing. The game contains over 120 different cards with handmade art, and they are all unlocked from the start to facilitate creative deck building for all players.

This is the first of my games released under the Secret Supermarket label.

Wed, 05 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Manahex is out on Steam — yay!

In addition to being my first commercial game since Else Heart.Break(), it is the also the first game I’m releasing under the Secret Supermarket label.

The goal of the label is to make it easy for people to find my digital board games, talk about them, and influence their design.

The central place for this discussion will be the Secret Supermarket Discord server, please come join!

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Today I’m happy to announce my upcoming game, Manahex. It’s a digital card game designed, programmed, scored and painted by yours truly. If all goes well, it will be released this spring.

You can read more about the gameplay on the Steam page. Wishlisting is much appreciated! <3

Here’s a trailer:

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Mjuk Vass is my solo music project that has evolved organically in the last couple of years. Its focus is on live performance using analog modular synthesizers.

Listen on Soundcloud

Upcoming shows

None.

Past

“Bänkfest”, Gothenburg (Feb 24, 2024)
Catbeats & friends, Gothenburg (Oct 27, 2023)
Art exhibition “Komplicerade grejer”, Halmstad (Oct 21, 2023)
Kulturnatta, Halmstad (Oct 1, 2022)

Fri, 15 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Given the state of Twitter / X, I created a Mastodon account:

@e_svedang

See you on the other side!

UPDATE: Now I’m using Bluesky instead https://bsky.app/profile/eriksvedang.com

Fri, 08 Sep 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dear friends,

It is with great pleasure that I’m announcing my return to full-time indie game development.

For the last three years I’ve been working for a startup called coherence, creating a toolkit for multiplayer games. It has been a lot of fun — I’ve learned a lot about networking and how to make online games from some amazing people. But while making tools for others is certainly very enjoyable, my true passion is to work on my own designs. So back to being indie it is, wish me luck!

Cheers,
Erik

Fri, 10 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The 10:th of September 2021 my second child was born!

Mon, 03 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

After releasing Else Heart.Break() in 2015 I’ve been busy with lots of projects, like a programming language, various board games, and a whole bunch of unreleased prototypes. I haven’t released any new major, digital games though. So about 6 months ago I started to feel that it was really about time to create something like that again.

The working title of this new (and somewhat big) game is Ord. It’ll most likely be about human behaviour, the future, and the art of talking to people. Also, no programming puzzles this time. It will be using pixel art, which is both new and exciting for me. I’m looking forward to share more about the game as it progresses.

Mon, 14 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This was a piece of commisioned work for the University Museum of Bergen (Norway), in collaboration with exhibition designer Adam Bartley. The goal was to create an interactive installation where the museum visitors could experiment with the basic rules of crystal growth in a simplified and playful way.

The end result is a kind of microscope simulator with a special built hardware interface. Using large control knobs you can change two different parameters — concentration and temperature, which are the two most important factors for crystals forming (or dissolving). The simulation is in 2D to make it easier to understand.

The piece is part of a larger exhibition about crystals and can be found in the natural history building of the University Museum of Bergen.

Wed, 31 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

You’re now visiting my new website! After about 10 years with a pretty annoying Wordpress blog (still available here) I really wanted a better way of presenting my work, both old and new. Hopefully you will find the site inspiring and fun. If you want to be notified when I post something new, subscribe via rss or follow me on twitter.

Cheers, Erik

Tue, 13 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

The 13:th of February 2018 I became a father!

Wed, 20 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In the fall of 2018 I participated in a course called “Pedagogical Game Design”. Our final assignment was to make an educational game, and I — at the time teaching game design at the University of Skövde — thought it would be a good idea to make a game about designing games. The result was “A Series of Interesting Choices” (named after a quote by Sid Meier). It was inspired by games like Dixit and Balderdash except that instead of coming up with pictures or words you design your own game. While this might sound overly complicated and hard, it’s actually very fun in practice.

Check out the official site for more information, rules, and (soon) a way to order a physical copy of the game.

Thu, 01 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Born out of frustration with current tools for digital game making — and a love for the Lisp family of languages — I invented Carp. It’s a programming language designed with game making in mind, focused on speed and predictable performance. Also, it has the kind of tooling and syntax that I prefer. Hopefully it will make me and others feel a little bit better while programming.

The first version of the compiler was made 2015 - 2016, attracting a fair bit of attention in the programming community. In the spring of 2017 I rebooted the project, rewriting it in Haskell (it used to be C). The project is open source and available for your viewing at Github. There you can also find documentation explaining how to use the language, and a link to our chat group on gitter.im where you can ask questions and talk to the people involved.

Mon, 01 May 2017 00:00:00 +0000

An Ikaruga-inspired space shooter made together with Ossian Borén during the Banana Jam 2017. He programmed and designed most of the game, I just made the enemies (art + movement).

This game (just like Fluctus from the year before) was made using Pico-8, Ossian’s weapon of choice when it comes to game making. The final game was displayed in an arcade cabinet made out of cardboard banana boxes. Thanks a lot to Erik Einebrant for helping us out with that!

Sun, 15 Jan 2017 00:00:00 +0000

A two-player platform brawler where you try to shoot the other dude with your gun. The only catch is that your gun shoots waveforms instead of in a straight line (the wave form can also be adjusted by picking up powerups, i.e. to make it oscillate more frequently).

This was a collaboration with Fabian Sörensson during the Global Game Jam 2017. I coded the gun and the waveforms, he did everything else. We used the fantasy console Pico-8 to make it which was great fun. If you’re a bit burnt out by big clunky tools (or is just starting out with digital game making) you should really give it a shot.

Thu, 15 Dec 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Hotrod is a very small software library for live reloading of code in C. This allows you to tweak a function while your application is running. Please let me know if you find it useful!

To download the code (and to file bugs) point your browser in the direction of https://github.com/eriksvedang/Hotrod.

Tue, 15 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

My big interest in board games and their history inspired me to run a study circle on the topic.

Eight times during the autumn of 2016 a group of people gathered at Lindholmen (Gothenburg) to play various board and card games from around the world, both new and old.

Hopefully I will have time to do a second run at some point. Get in touch if you’re interested in participating!

Wed, 26 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

After studying ancient board games during the fall of 2016, I felt inspired to create this game. My primary design goal was to make it feel like something that had just been discovered in an old grave, with inscriptions on the wall for how to play it. I also wanted the act of playing it feel somewhat ritualistic.

The resulting game is one of shape shifting (“hamnskifte” in Swedish) and unpredictable turn order, controlled by the movement of orbs.

A future goal is to create version of this game out of clay, rock and wood (with carved holes for the orbs). Until then I will have to make do with a simple paper prototype. The good news is that it’s very easy to create such a prototype if you want to try the game yourself!

Here are the complete rules for the game:

Components

Five game pieces in two different colors (10 total, pawns from a chess set works well).
Three “orbs” each, in the same two colors as the pawns. These could be wooden tokens, stones or any other small object (I use Go stones).
Four “pillars” (somewhat optional, these are just wooden blocks that create elevated squares on the game board).
A board that looks something like this:

I created my board using an A3 paper, a ruler, a pencil, and some water color. The icons around the edge of the board are supposed to depict (starting from the top and moving clockwise) a sun, a pawn, three horse shoes, an elephant head.

Setup

Place your five pieces on the squares closest to you and also place the four pillars on the “even” squares in the middle. The board should now look like this:

(If you don’t have wooden blocks for the pillars, just mark those squares with color.)

Choose a starting player. She gets to place one of her three orbs on one of the icons at the outer edge of the board.
The other player gets to place one of her orbs on a free icon.
The starting player once again gets to place an orb.
The other player now gets to place two orbs, leaving only one free icon where the starting player must place her third and last orb.

In other words, the number of pawns placed by each player in turn order is 1-1-1-2-1.

Here’s an example of how the game board could look just before the first move is made:

Gameplay Overview

There isn’t a predefined turn order in Hamnár, instead you use the orbs and the icons to determine who gets to move.

The game starts with an activation of the pawn icon (located in the upper right corner in the photo above). Whoever has their orb there gets to temporarily “transform” one of their pieces to a pawn and move it according to the pawn rule (see “The Icons” below).
Then the next orb (in clockwise order) is activated and the player who owns it gets to transform and move one of their pieces according to the horse rule, and so on.
The activation continues around the edge of the board, using one icon at the time. The player who has their orb one the icon gets to do the corresponding move with any one of their pieces.
If the player can’t perform the move ...

Wed, 01 Jun 2016 00:00:00 +0000

This game was co-designed with Ossian Borén. We wanted to make a collectible card game (think Magic the Gathering) but where the players themselves were allowed to design the cards. We developed the rules at the No More Sweden game jam 2015 and during later playtests in Gothenburg. We also made a website (now defunct) with a form for entering cards into a shared database.

Wed, 30 Mar 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Stomp is a prototype I made based on the idea of a card game played in real-time, removing the need to wait for your opponent to make their move. You can try it out over at itch.io (link above).

I’m pretty happy with how it turned out, and some people really love it. Unfortunately the current version is also fairly inaccessible and hard to understand. Hopefully I can find the time to make a better and more easy-to-play version of the same idea some time in the future…

Sun, 20 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Perdure is my take on how to play Magic the Gathering (or Hearthstone) with a normal deck of cards, nothing else needed. Here’s a description of it’s rules.

Setup

Shuffle a regular deck of cards (no jokers) and split it in the middle, giving each player 26 cards. Each player draws a hand of five. Randomise who goes first.

Turn structure

There are five phases in a player’s turn, executed sequentially:

1. Untap all lands and creatures

Any cards that are turned sideways are turned back to normal, they can now be used again.

2. Draw one card

The starting player skips this phase on his or her first turn, in all other cases this action is mandatory. If you can’t draw a card because your deck is depleted, you lose the game (see winning below).

3. Play cards

Cards in your hand can now be used in various ways:

Land – Play any card face down to create a land. This is a free action, but you can only play one land per turn. A land can be tapped (turned sideways) to earn you 1 mana which can be used to pay for other cards.

Creature – Creatures cost 1 to 5 mana to play and enter the game with summoning sickness, meaning they can’t attack the same turn that they were played (except for creatures of the Diamond suite). Each creature has two values, one for power (how much damage it deals), and one for toughness (how much damage it can take before being killed). This is commonly abbreviated 1/1, 2/2, and so on. See the next page for more info.

Spell – There are four kinds of spells in the game, one for each suit. A spell costs 1 – 5 mana (depending on its value) and will perform an effect when it is played, then the card is put into your own discard pile.

Cantrip – Any card can be discarded for the cost of 1 mana to let you draw 2 new cards from your deck.

Enchantment – Play any card on one of your creatures to give it the power of that suit. A creature can only have one enchantment of each suit on it, and no enchantment in it’s original suit. When a creatures dies, all it’s enchantments are discarded with it.

4. Attack

Select which, if any, of your creatures that should attack. Tap those creatures to mark that they won’t be able to block during your opponent’s next turn. Your opponent now gets to select which of his or her creatures that should block your attackers. A creature can only block one attacker but multiple blockers can gang up on a single attacking creature. When blockers have been designated, all creatures that are attacking or blocking deal their damage. In the case of multiple creatures fighting together, the owner of the single creature gets to decide how to divide the damage between the blockers. Creatures that are dealt damage equal or greater than their toughness dies and are put in their owner’s discard pile. If a creature is dealt damage that doesn’t kill it, keep track of this damage until the end of the turn. Any creature that was not blocked at all will deal its damage to the defending player instead. When receiving damage a player discards that many cards from the top of his or her deck.

5. Play cards (again)

This phase is just like phase 3, i.e. you can play more cards. When satisfied, pass the turn to the other player. Any damage on creatures is removed, in other words t...

Sun, 20 Sep 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Made together with Niklas Åkerblad (art, music, animation), Tobias Sjögren (art), Oscar Rydelius (sound) and Johannes Gotlén (programming). I was the designer, lead programmer and writer.

Else Heart.Break() is by far the biggest and most ambitious project I’ve ever been part of. It took about five years to finish and the end result requires both wit and persistance to play through. If you have tried it out — thank you very much!

While we most likely will never make a sequel to this game, I learned an immense ammount about digital storytelling when making it and can’t wait to put that to good use in my future endeavours.

Mon, 01 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

The Advent of 2014 I challenged myself to make one piece of art everyday, posting it to an advent calendar. You can have a look at the result here.

Fri, 14 Feb 2014 00:00:00 +0000

A lot of my programming work is open source and can be found at github.com/eriksvedang.

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Dmrsion is a game about fluctuating dimensions of time and space, represented by pieces of art throughout history.

It is a very quick game for 2 – 4 players, packing a lot of depth and replayability into a single 50 card deck. Matches take only about 5 – 10 minutes and almost every card is unique, leading to very different situations every time you play. The rules are so simple they fit on a single card, yet the intricate interactions between all the cards lead to very strategic gameplay with many interesting choices. The game can also be played in pairs, 2 vs 2.

I’m currently looking for a publisher who can bring this game out to the wider public. Please get in touch if you can help out with that!

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Initially designed by me as a board game in the spring of 2011, later to be digitized by Johannes Gotlén (programming), Niklas Åkerblad (art), Oscar Rydelius (sound), and me (programming and design).

It’s a 2-player game similar to chess, except that both players plan five moves ahead (secretely) and then watch them play out. There are various attacks available and a whole slew of destructible levels in various configurations.

At its peak (the winter of 2012 or so…) there were quite a few players playing the game, making it easy to find opponents. Nowadays it’s harder but if you and a friend buy the game you can always just play with each other. The servers are still running and everything works well. Our goal has always been to publish the game for iPad (since it has the perfect form factor for making secret moves). Hopefully one day it will happen…

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The colorful and party-inclined cousin of Shot Shot Shoot. Made together with Shelby Cinca, adding several elements to the gameplay (powerups, legion mode) while preserving its strategical depth and reliance on reflexes. In fact — Tri Tri Triobelisk is even faster than the original Shot Shot Shoot. It also contains an album worth of songs by Triobelisk.

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Shot Shot Shoot was designed when the first iPad came out. It’s a local multiplayer game for two players that plays to the strengths of the unique tablet form factor. The goal of the game is simple: destroy the five squares on the opponent’s side of the board. Maneuver single shots with high precision or overwhelm the other player with massive attack waves — Shot Shot Shoot is a mixture of fast-paced gameplay and deep strategy.

Sat, 01 May 2010 00:00:00 +0000

A watercolour space exploration game made together with Niklas Åkerblad. Circle the planets, eat stuff and find pieces of art scattered around the universe. Designed as a relaxing experience for iPhone and iPad.

This game can’t be bought from the AppStore anymore because we haven’t updated it for modern phones and tablets.

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This article was first published by Gamasutra in 2010.

I was a bit reluctant to write this text at first, since I don’t think I’m the best person to pick my own game apart. I’m a creator, and not a game critic, and obviously what I’m going to write about lies too close to my heart for me to really see it clearly.

Initially I was going to write a regular Gamasutra postmortem, which would have solved the problem to some extent. I could have focused on obvious mistakes such as releasing a game with no saving functionality, ridiculously high system requirements, and extremely limited buying options in today’s video game market.

I resisted this, though; it’s not what I am interested in. I’m primarily a game designer, and since the rest of the world clearly has moved beyond my level of amateurishness I will just promise to do better in the future and move on to look at the more interesting points of my game.

When I set out to create the game, I almost completely looked at it as an experiment, or rather two experiments, combined into one whole. First of all, I really wanted to create a game where the underlying world was a working ecosystem. I imagined many creatures with different behaviors eating, mating, dying, etc. – completely independent of the presence of the player.

Secondly I wanted to see what I could do with the idea of telling a story solely through interactivity, the “holy grail” of our art form. This would include not forcing the player to do anything she didn’t want to do.

In other words, she would have total control over the actions of the player character. In my mind this meant to not use any cutscenes, descriptive texts, or triggered events – all meaning of the story would have to emerge from the systems of the game (and these systems would have to be general). This would turn out to be a very difficult thing to do, indeed.

I started the actual production in early 2008 as a part of my final thesis at the bachelor degree Game Design program in Skövde that I went to at the time. As I worked along on my game and people got hold of the trailer and my working version, it became increasingly clear that I could not look at my work as completely academic or self-fulfilling. I realized that people would actually want to play my creation (and even pay money for it – gasp!)

This of course presented me with some interesting problems, mainly concerning the length of the game. This text aims to look at these two main parts of the game (the ecosystem and the interactive storytelling) in separation to see how well they work on their own. After that I will discuss how they combine into a game and how they represent some possibilities for creating meaning through interaction.

The ecosystem

The idea of having an ecosystem in a game is naturally nothing new. It has been done many times before and I should have taken a better look at existing examples to be better prepared for the daunting task I had set up for myself. The reason I wanted an ecosystem in the game in the first place was that it’s one of the most interesting and easy to understand real-world systems with emergent properties.

For some reason it speaks to the human soul that we’re just part of a greater circle of life. Also I wanted to beat Peter Molyneux by putting growing trees into games before he succeeded.

To make the ecosystem “real” I decided that it had to be simulated in all places simultaneously, without any difference if the camera of the player was there or not. This is something that I think many people that are new to video games take for granted, but gradually learn that ...

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Slice & Dice is a minimalistic card game designed by me with illustrations by Nicolai Troshinsky. It could be described as a novel take on the deck-building genre. Over the span of five rounds the players build up their troops and fighting power to win treasure in battle. With just two decks of cards and some dice this game is packing strategic and novel gameplay into quite a small box.

The game is for two players and takes about 30 – 45 minutes to play.

We’re currently looking for a publisher for the game, contact me if you can help.

Sat, 09 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Blueberry Garden is an experimental game about curiosity and exploration. You take on the role of a creature investigating a mysterious world to find out what is going on there. It’s probably not very much like anything you’ve played before but I hope you will find it enjoyable!

Awarded with IGF:s Seamus mcNally Grand Prize, 2009.

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

No More Sweden was a gathering of independent game developers from the whole world meeting up somewhere in Sweden, making games and partying for a weekend. At it’s peak, we had around 100 visitors.

The event was been run by me and Martin Jonasson (@grapefrukt) from 2008 to 2018. Read more about it at www.nomoresweden.com.

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

My old blog posts are still available here:

https://eriksvedang.wordpress.com

Wed, 05 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I was born in Uppsala (Sweden) but grew up on the countryside in the tiny village Haberga. There I roamed the forest and learned how to play the clarinet, among other things.

When I was 12 years old our family moved to the west coast of Sweden. Me and my three younger siblings spent a lot of time making movies. I also practiced magic but decided to not become a wizard until my beard was gray.

In 2005 I moved to Skövde to study game design at the university. My final thesis was the game Blueberry Garden which through its successes allowed me to become a full time independent game developer.

Soon after that I was lucky enough to spend five years working with awesome friends on a very ambitious project.

I lived in Gothenburg for 10 years, but since the summer of 2019 I’m based in Halmstad with my partner Marie and our two kids.

Tue, 04 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

This essay contains some recommendations for where to surf on the internet.

I’m a big fan of the oldschool kind of homepage — a personal and self-made collection of static pages with lots of little nooks and cranies to explore. One excellent site with excactly those properites is the one of David Parlett, renowed games scholar and designer. If you have any interest in board or card games you must explore his material! Related but of a more encyclopedic nature is Pagat, a handcrafted database of card games from all over the world.

Another great collection of pages are those of Bret Victor. He has ideas for how to improve math education, user interfaces, and more. His visionary talk “Inventing on Principle” on how software development really should work took the programming world by storm back in 2012, be sure to check that out if you’re interested.

When on the topic of programming and math — this video series on linear algebra is really cool and accessible. If longing for something less serious the Math with Bad Drawings blog is also pretty fun.

For those who plan on travelling the long and winding road that is game programming, the free web book Patterns of game programming is a good read. The author’s new article series on how to implement a programming language is just as clear and enthusiastic. If that sounds like a nice way to spend your time, you definitely should read the best programming book ever written. Be warned though, this is a deep rabbit hole that you might never escape. Perhaps you will make something slightly esoteric.

Oh, and the first (?) wiki is also worth a visit.

Now I know I said that I like simple and static websites, but I do read some blogs too — especially those with lots of pretty pictures. My favourites are It’s Nice That, Colossal and But Does it Float.

In my practice of designing board games, The Game Crafter has been of tremendous value for producing near-professional looking prototypes. For more general game parts like tokens and blank cards I’ve also enjoyed placing big orders with the German specialist spielmaterial.de. Speaking of board games and craft, these hand made games from Crete are really inspiring and I hope to acquire some of their works one day.

If you haven’t guessed already, I’m pretty into playing cards. The japanese kind (“Hanafuda”) are some of the most beautiful ones and the article The Flowers of Hanafuda explains what flowers they contain.

Another Asian game that I really enjoy is Go...

Mon, 03 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

Here’s a list with some of the places where my work has been exhibited:

Mediateca Expandica, Madrid, Spain (2009)
Art Center Nabi, A.L.I.C.E. museum, Seoul, South Korea (2009)
FILE Games, Sao Paulo, Brazil (2010)
Mansedanse Play!, Tampere, Finland (2010)
Hjärta Spel, Linköping, Sweden (2012)
Game Masters Exhibition, Sydney, Australia (2013)
Hjärta Spel, Tekniska Museet, Stockholm, Sweden (2013)
A MAZE, Berlin, Germany (2015)
Game Masters Exhibition, Halmstad, Sweden (2015)

If you know of some exhibition I’ve forgotten to list here, please let me know…

Sun, 02 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

I really enjoy giving lectures, talks and workshops. Here is a list of the ones I have already prepared, contact me for booking and more information. All lectures can be given in either Swedish or English.

Gameplay Design Workshop

We play the classroom version of my board game A Series of Interesting Choices which is tailored for practicing game design skills — both practical and theoretical.

2 h

How I Tell Interactive Stories

A lecture about what makes the storytelling of Else Heart.Break() work. What I set out to do with the game and what I learned from it.

1 h

Where Do Game Mechanics Come From?

A theoretical framework for looking at the game design process. What’s the motivation behind game different types of game mechanics? This question gives insight into the choices made for various games, both classic ones and my own.

2 h

Crafting Experiences in Unity

A series of workshops on how to make things using the game creation tool Unity. Aimed towards beginners, no prior experience is required.

1 – 5 occasions, 3 h each

Designing Slice & Dice

A participatory lecture where I take the audience through my mental process of designing a 2-player card game.

1 h

The Creation of Clairvoyance

A lecture about the asynchrounous computer board game Clairvoyance. I talk both about the design process and the actual production of the game.

1 h

The Technology of Else Heartbreak

A look behind the scenes of Else Heartbreak, focuses on architecture and advanced programming techniques in C# and Unity.

45 min – 1 h

Three Games I’ve Made (together with some friends)

A lecture about Blueberry Garden, Kometen and Shot Shot Shoot where I talk about lessons learned and my journey as an independent game designer.

45 min – 1 h

Sat, 01 Jan 2000 00:00:00 +0000

E-mail

erik.svedang@gmail.com

Phone

+46 (0)73 - 75 66 716

Bluesky: @eriksvedang.com
Mastodon: @e_svedang
Twitter/X: @e_svedang

Discord Server

Secret Supermarket

Steam Developer Page

store.steampowered.com/developer/eriksvedang/

Board Game Geek

Designer Page

eriksvedang.com

Upcoming shows

Past

Components

Setup

Gameplay Overview

Setup

Turn structure

1. Untap all lands and creatures

2. Draw one card

3. Play cards

4. Attack

5. Play cards (again)

The ecosystem

Gameplay Design Workshop

How I Tell Interactive Stories

Where Do Game Mechanics Come From?

Crafting Experiences in Unity

Designing Slice & Dice

The Creation of Clairvoyance

The Technology of Else Heartbreak

Three Games I’ve Made (together with some friends)

E-mail

Phone

Social Media

Discord Server

Steam Developer Page

Board Game Geek