@jakekbarnhart.bsky.social
Game Designer, Artist, Educator, and all around goof. Let’s talk making great games and great communities! Designer of Engage! Senior Game Designer l Null Signal Games
Game Designers! We will be hosting our monthly in person playtest w/ @breakmygame.com at Redcaps Corner tonight at 6:30pm. Designers! Sign up with the link below!
www.eventbrite.com/e/break-my-g...
Testers! Come support your local design community!
Hey y’all don’t sleep on Eric’s playtesting event at The Board and Brew this Thursday! I’ll be there testing my new lane control game and you should be too!
Designers sign up with the link below - testers just walk in!
www.eventbrite.com/e/break-my-g...
I think it is fairly dedicated to stewarding this one game! I can’t speak for the whole org, but I am aware of individuals/small groups within NSG that have riffed on new game ideas set in our world, nothing official though. Cool as it would be I wouldn’t expect it
01.09.2025 00:32 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Hey y’all! Reminder that we will be hosting in person playtesting at Redcap’s Corner tonight at 6:30 pm with @breakmygame.com 🎲✂️
Designers - Sign up using this link
www.eventbrite.com/e/break-my-g...
If y’all are at TooManyGames Con today, I’ll be on the panel “From The Ground Up: Building a Thriving Game Development Industry in Your City” talking about @breakmygame.com and PGMG how we have formed designer communities in Philly. Come check it out! 🎲✂️
29.06.2025 16:15 — 👍 10 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0So here for this
30.05.2025 23:43 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0That’s a great shout - Smoke definitely helped with sequencing. Did you find that you played stealth packages with other IDs, or did you avoid it for that reason?
25.05.2025 20:47 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Netrunner players! For those of you who miss Smoke, and the stealth mechanic more broadly, tell me why you love that mechanic and your favorite stealth cards and decks! Also interested in the opinions of stealth detractors! Why do you think this missed for you?
Asking for a friend
#netrunner
🎲✂️
3/3 Aim for elegance. Often this means simple (cards with 10-20 words total), but not always. The trick is to avoid “shoe leather”, or as PCH says don’t add any rule that doesn’t add +10 fun. Every line is a barrier to your game, it has to pull its weight or be cut, no matter how cool it reads 🎲✂️
22.05.2025 19:09 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
2/3 Both of these cards do similar effects & quest the player to engineer an asymmetrical board wipe. The key difference is elegance and text density. Split Up needs only 10 words vs Birdcage’s 54 to convey nearly identical content. As designers we should strive to mean a lot while saying little 🎲✂️
22.05.2025 15:30 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Tip #2 of “Elevating Your Card Design” ELEGANCE = DEPTH>COMPLEXITY: If I could give 1 bit of advice to a new designer it would probably be to set word count limits on their cards to increase their depth to complexity ratio. Compare “Birdcage” vs “Split Up”, which is better & why?
1/3 #Netrunner 🎲✂️
3/3 Fully Operational play conditions players to exist in the tense space between glacier & asset spam (where we observe them having the most fun) by offering big value for building & icing several remotes. Identify the best parts of your core loop and make cards that funnel your players to it. 🎲✂️
21.05.2025 15:26 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
2/3 In Elevation, an intermediate product, it was important to make “level up moment” cards with “hidden curriculum” that taught players how to have more fun playing Netrunner. Ritual demonstrates this principle in action, signaling the benefits of drawing early in your turn and planning ahead. ✂️🎲
21.05.2025 13:13 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Tip #1 of “Elevating Your Card Design” PLAY CONDITIONING & SIGNPOSTING: Make sure your designs reward players for play patterns that maximize intrinsic fun. Without this intention we risk players optimizing fun out of the game, so it’s incumbent on designers to make fun optimal!
1/3 #Netrunner 🎲✂️
Okay so with one NSG Netrunner expansion under my belt and two more on the way, I’d love to share some of the best practices and first principles I have adopted and applied in designing Elevation. Would folks be interested in this “Elevating Your Card Design” series/thread🧵? Lemme know below! ✂️🎲
20.05.2025 13:54 — 👍 8 🔁 0 💬 3 📌 0
Philly Game Designers! Tonight we will be hosting our monthly in person playtest w/ @breakmygame.com at Redcap’s Corner, 6:30pm to 9:30pm. Designers sign up with the link below! Testers can just walk in and support their local design community! 🎲✂️
www.eventbrite.com/e/break-my-g...
This is such a good shout - I think of this often as a designer who acts as a liaison to members of the development/balance teams, and playtesters. “Tuning” is a great way to convey that numbers and balance don’t count for much if they aren’t promoting the right moments, play patterns, and feelings.
26.04.2025 03:18 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
AHHHH! The first Netrunner expansion I got to work on is out now! Everyone at NSG did an amazing job with this set and it’s release marks the first of my published design work to reach the hands of players around the world - pretty special feeling. Check it out! 🎲✂️
nullsignal.games/blog/elevati...
Philly Game Designers! Tonight is our monthly in person Playtest event with @breakmygame.com , 6:30 PM, at Redcap’s Corner. Designers, sign up with the link below! Testers, no need to register - just come out and support! 🎲✂️
www.eventbrite.com/e/break-my-g...
Netrunner players! How would you build around this flip ID? Fast advance? Remoteless? How do you cover your central servers? What do you spend your influence on? 🎲✂️
15.04.2025 14:45 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Breaking News! My first article with Null Signal Games is live! So excited to share two of my favorite ID’s in the set! Inverting the psychology of tags with Synapse Global is one of my favorite moments from Elevation design. 🎲✂️
nullsignal.games/blog/new-tal...
Punk is definitely not dead as Phoenix rises from the ashes in Elevation. As many of you know, Anarch was a big focus of mine when designing the set. I literally screamed in excitement when I saw this ID spoiled. 🎲✂️
nullsignal.games/blog/out-of-...
We have reserved a handful of cards which we want to give to people from marginalized groups to reveal. If you consider yourself as belonging to a marginalized group and want to have a card allocated to you, please fill in this form.
forms.gle/oxyiYaTkEGS7...
#ElevationPreviews #Netrunner
Hey Game Designers! My team is recruiting 3 new associate designers to the Netrunner design team. If you are interested in working with me and this amazing org on one of the best games of all time, then apply! Happy to answer any questions about the role here! 🎲✂️
nullsignal.games/blog/april-2...
Visual absolutely crushed it with this set.
04.04.2025 00:40 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Y’all I’m geeking. The card fan for Elevation dropped recently. I want to hear your speculation about the cards! Call your shots now and I will give you +10 designer brownie points for each card you get right come April 24th ;) 🎲✂️
It has been an absolute joy to work on this set. IT LOOKS SO GOOD!
Yep - testing 5-7pm at m2 tonight
28.03.2025 20:46 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Awww shucks that is so kind and so great to hear! We are at UnPub and have the prototype with us. Would be happy to see y’all again! We also have a new family game we are betting this year! Hope to see you soon!
28.03.2025 12:49 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0
youtu.be/7-fSpi7ZHoQ?...
Y’all if you see something like this don’t just keep walking. Help the person who is be abducted - block the car, document everything, help the person who is being taken contact legal representation and family. We need to look out for eachother.
