I'm a game designer

Yesterday I redesigned a game I made in 2024 called Tic Tac Toto. The new version is animated, using about 50 images I generated with Ideogram and Gemini. The animations are a bit stiff, but they’re a huge upgrade on the overall experience. The player can actually tell what’s happening in the game.

I basically gave Fable 5 the image assets I made, the old version of the game, and a 700-word specification that explained the game rules, gameplay, and some of the animations. The animation descriptions focus mostly on Toto since it has actual poses it switches between.

The image assets took the most time to prepare, working on them over a week. I also had to plan the new rule set. Chaos events like a twister sweeping through can occur randomly, with increasing odds as more marks are placed on the board. Those events drop items that can be used to win each round. This keeps the game from stagnating.

That was most of the work. Coding the game took Fable 5 barely any time at all. I play tested it, made a few changes based on the experience of playing it, and viola! I’m a game designer.

• Tic Tac Toto the 2026 release.