Your nice hosts Lydia and Ellen are on a seriously playful adventure in beautiful Rochester, New York for the Serious Play conference! They discuss game accessibility, D&D therapy, lexical gaps, validation, and more.

In addition, Lydia beats the pavement and gets the hot scoop on what attendees learned at the conference and the games that shaped them.

Many thanks once more to:

• Serious Play for Lydia's press pass.
• Ellen for the cute little lavalier microphones that made interviews possible.
• Ellen and Nikita for being the best travel buddies ever.
• Interviewees for sharing their thoughts with our nice listeners.

• Serious Play Conference
• Ellen's previous trip to this conference was recounted in:Serious Play Conference 2023

Returning "favorite" Laura Onderwater re-enters the clubhouse to talk about task tracking, naming conventions, and paper trails of various kinds in an engaging discussion on concept art workflows. Even if you’re not part of an art team, there’s a lot to take away from this one!

• We spoke with Laura previously in an episode onVisual Worldbuilding

As promised, the three Korths, Andy, Beth and Gabe, join us in the clubhouse for our hundred and two or so episode tradition! The clubhouse was too crowded to fit Mark in, but having five hosts makes up for it. Your nice hosts design a game about fixing the messes your child makes and then returning the favor as you age.

• Andy had brought up a chaotic game where you need to prevent your infant from getting into trouble, turns out there's a lot of those but here's an example!
• Who's Your Daddy - Evil Tortilla Games, Steam

• Child causes destruction and you have to fix it
• Child become adult you have to fix parent stuff
• Parent needs to work (remotely) and also fix whatever the kid has broken
  • You want to fix the things as best as you can before your partner gets home
  • Partner will do some fixing at the end of the day (to prevent negative feedback loop)
• Each level is just one day in the life of this family
  • The last level, the parent retires and now the kid is an adult and has to fix parents’ messes
  • And maybe also has a kid they need to take care of
• Mess examples
  • Older parent
    • Find keys
    • Knocking a pot off the stove
    • Install rail in shower/toilet
    • Bookcase falls down
  • Toddler
    • Pulling things with cords (as toddler)
    • Crayons on the walls
    • Legos (or any toy)
  • Pulled shower curtain
  • Teenager
    • Get mad at a thing and punch a hole in the wall
    • Leave the fridge open
    • Shave without cleaning sink
    • Dirty clothes
    • Plates everywhere
    • Dart board
    • Sticky slime
    • Leave milk on table
• What does cleaning look like?
  • Different minigames
• Co-op mode
  • Two parents, or parent and grandparent
• Orthographic camera angle that slides from one room to another
• Maybe the daycare couldn’t take the kid today
  • Basically these are snapshots of unexpected parenting that the player needs to deal with
• Need moments of time for narrative/exploration time
  • When you find an important item, time stops so the player can appreciate it
  • You can find things that you made as a kid
• More preventative tasks for the player to do
  • Place paper around so kid doesn’t draw on walls
• Parent sim
  • Decisions impact future decisions and might cause problems depending
  • How you parent changes how you recover energy/your stats during elderly stages
• Intro
  • Set the tone of the home
  • Ask questions for the player to adjust the game for them somewhat
    • How does a messy home make you feel?
    • How do you respond to criticism? How do you respond to conflict?
    • Center questions on the parent, not the child.
    • What kinds of appliances do you have in your home?