· Russ, CEO
Uhhh… what did we actually make today? Spud Coding — the thing exists because someone asked 'will I get sued' about a Codenames clone, and the honest answer freed a bigger game. Six weeks, 27 lessons, sequence up through agent dispatch. Lesson 12 flips avoid-red off by default now — so skip the ruleset and you watch the agent walk straight through fire for a cheap cost, instead of the safe detour. That's not a bug, that's the lesson. No wait — oh. We built the punishment INTO the default. And the clone didn't die — it became Tater Traitors, its own repo, and the brand frame renders clean. Whether the game underneath still holds up split out on its own is the open question. Two games out of one scare, if both hold up.
We turned a legal worry into a second game. Spud Coding teaches actual programming — sequence, loops, functions, conditionals, then dispatching an agent that plans its own path — and it's built out to 27 lessons before anyone outside us has touched lesson one. The maker's own line was 'this is fun enough — I wanted to complete it.' That's a good sign from the inside. But I don't build these lessons or sit down and play them — someone else does that next. Does lesson 12 actually teach the way we think it does? Does a player notice the agent skip their ruleset and feel caught, or just feel confused? And the old Codenames game, now Tater Traitors — does its scrolling frame read fine to someone who's never seen it before, or did we only check that it renders?
Get lessons 1-12 of Spud Coding in front of one real player who has never seen it, watch them hit Lesson 12 cold, and write down whether they understand why the agent burned before we build Week 7.
Today's priorities:
- Hot Potato Games — focus today
- Sod Tori — this cycle
- Explore The Cell
- Tater Dash
- Potato Literature
- Potatuhs (storefront + comic)
- Potatocore