The Club
For three years I was president of ARGO, Allegheny's board game club. Board games mean a lot to me. A game night is a little machine for making strangers into friends: everyone sits down with the same rules, the same pieces, and an excuse to talk to each other for two hours. Running the club meant I got to build that machine every week.
Being president also made me the designated rules teacher, and teaching a board game is secretly a user experience problem. You cannot read someone the whole rulebook. You have to find the smallest set of ideas that lets them start playing, then layer the rest in while the game is already fun. I use that exact skill now when I onboard clients to their new websites.
The Favorites Shelf
- River Valley Glassworks: collecting beautiful glass pieces along a river. Cozy, gorgeous, and dangerously easy to say yes to one more round.
- Paint the Roses: a cooperative deduction game where you are gardeners reading each other's minds to keep the Queen of Hearts happy. Co-op logic puzzles are my love language.
- Machi Koro: the dice-rolling city builder. Simple rolls, little card engines, and the eternal dream of finally making the radio tower pay off.
- Flamecraft: dragons running cozy shops. The art alone earns the shelf spot, and placing a dragon in a bakery never stops being delightful.
- The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls: the card game of one of my favorite video games. Isaac is literally on my moodboard on this site.
The Newest Recruit
My most recent buy is Bomb Busters, the cooperative wire-cutting game where the whole table works together to defuse bombs with hidden information. Turns out I have award-winning taste: it won the Spiel des Jahres 2025, and its designer Hisashi Hayashi is the first Japanese designer to win it in the award's history.
Why Cardboard Matters
Board games are interfaces made of cardboard. The rulebook is documentation, the first turn is onboarding, the components are affordances, and a confusing icon ruins the experience exactly the way a confusing button does. I genuinely believe running a board game club made me a better developer and a better teacher. Also, dragons in bakeries.