Field notes · Jul 2026 · 2 min read
Why start with a puzzle?
An honest game doesn't need an onboarding modal.
A puzzle is a contract. I will show you a rule, and you will want to apply it one more time. There is no onboarding. There is no "tap to continue." There is the rule, and then there is the next move. You either want another turn or you don't, and the game knows which one in the first thirty seconds.
That is why I keep making them. A puzzle is the smallest possible argument a game can have with the world, and the most honest one. If the rule is good, the game sells itself; if the rule is bad, no tutorial will save it.
What I keep trying to make
Pattern Atlas is about fitting — take a fragment, rotate it, find where it belongs. Lantern Grove is deduction — row, region, and spacing clues, and a quiet "aha." Signal Stack bets that one good rule — place a piece, clear a line — can keep generating the next decision. Pebble Choir turns collision into a small instrument. Tideweave is a flood you can steer.
The thread is the same: a rule you can hold in your head, and the pleasure of seeing it compound. Everything else is noise.
If a game needs a tutorial, it is usually apologizing for a rule it could not make simple. I would rather make a simpler rule.