My two flagship projects are Worm, which is complete and playable, and Badly Lit Spirits, which is still in progress but is very far along. Each of them represent over a year of hard work and dedication.
However, for the sake of variety I also like to work on other fun side projects alongside the bigger commitments. What follows is a selection of prototypes I have made that, while extremely early in development, nevertheless have some neat features that I’m excited to share.
Although Badly Lit Spirits will come first for the time being, I eventually intend to further develop as many of these as possible.
Badly Lit Spirits Trading Card Game
I’m a huge fan of Magic: the Gathering, so naturally I was drawn to the idea of building a digital trading card game that you can play with your friends. In 2023 I started working on one set in the same world as my main project, Badly Lit Spirits, featuring the characters and settings from that game. There’s a long way to go and this project isn’t my immediate priority, but nevertheless I got quite a few things done already.
(Note that for ease of rapid prototyping the card art is AI-generated for now; I do eventually plan to replace it with handmade art when time and budget permits.)
I’ve got a complete, working deck builder.
You can already create decks, save them in a personal account in the cloud, and take the decks you build into a game to play them.
The deck builder lets you search for cards by name or filter by type, color, etc. for ease of use.
It also gives you stats on the composition of your deck.
Gameplay is coming along nicely too.
Most cards cost mana to play, and the game only allows you to play cards that you can afford. Mana costs can have a generic component (“One blue plus one of anything”) and the game uses your resources intelligently to fulfill the generic costs.
There is a working multi-phase turn system, including a player priority system similar to Magic that allows players to take certain actions on their opponents’ turns.
Your cards can interact with your opponent’s cards, and cards can have triggered abilities (“Whenever this card dies…,” etc.).
There’s an information system: you usually can’t see your opponent’s cards, but if some effect reveals them, they stay visible to you.
Astral Ambitions
Around mid-2024 a friend got me into Warhammer and Kill Team, and while I very much enjoyed both, I found there were certain frustrations I had with the design decisions of each. I quickly found myself imagining what my perfect tabletop war game would look like, and from there I couldn’t resist starting to actually make it. It’s even earlier along than the card game, but there’s still some fun stuff to show off!
Here’s where you create your army.
I wanted army composition to be as flexible as possible; you have to pick a faction out of four possibilities, but you can combine that faction’s units any way you like. Each unit has multiple primary weapons to choose from as well as gear that you can mix and match. All of your choices are reflected in the model you see previewed.
I created a nested tooltip system inspired by the one in Crusader Kings III, a recent favorite of mine. When you hover your mouse over a jargon term like “command points” or “Medic ability” you get a tooltip defining that term. Any jargon used in that tooltip can in turn be hovered over to create a second tooltip, and so on and so forth. It’s an elegant way to make sure explanations are always at the player’s fingertips.
And here’s the game itself so far.
Matchmaking is already set up, and you can pick one of the armies you created to play the game with. Players vote on what map they want to play on.
Each player places their units one by one at the start of the game. The game forces you to stay in the green starting zone, and prevents you from placing overlapping units.
P.A.N.D.O.R.A.
(Paranormal Aberration Neutralization, Detainment, Observation, and Research Administration)
This is by far the youngest and least complete side project I have; I started it in February 2025 and it’s really only a design document and a user interface so far. I had been listening to The Magnus Archives on the way to work, and fictional researchers investigating supernatural horrors were thus very much on my mind. Shortly after this, I discovered Lobotomy Corporation and had a lot of fun with it, but I soon found myself wishing for something with the flavor of that game but deeper management systems to dive into. As far as I can tell this doesn’t really exist, so I figured I would try my hand at making it myself. Attached are mockups of the UI panels for an employee and an aberration.
Further additions to Worm
While Worm is a complete game as-is, I do have plenty more ideas for additional capes, items, and the like, and I do come back and add to it from time to time.
Here’s a sneak peak at Capricorn, an upcoming cape…
Capricorn is two characters in one – Tristan, who controls rock, and Byron, who controls water. You can transform between the two at any time. Tristan plays more like a tank and Byron like a support, but you gain bonuses from switching often.
Byron can temporarily trap opponents in a bubble that reflects any projectiles they try to throw back at them.
Each of them have a wall. Byron’s is a wall of water that lets capes and minions through but reflects projectiles…
…while Tristan’s is a solid wall of rock that lets projectiles through but blocks capes and minions.