In 2020, I made a short puzzle game and put it on Steam. I did everything myself besides the music, which I paid a friend to do. My goal was to finish something, just to see what it would be like to take a game all the way from the 'just an idea' stage to release to post-launch bugfixing. People often say the hardest part about creative work is just sticking with it and finishing something—Victoria Clair was a personal challenge for me to commit to a project and see it through.

A lot of my games are historical fiction or otherwise historically-inspired. Oftentimes, this history is intricately woven into the gameplay. So, how do I impart the most important information to players? Ideally, they should absorb the information effortlessly, without even consciously thinking about the fact that they're learning history while playing the game. Today, I'd like to use Beyond the Silk Sea as an example and go over the lessons I've learned from working on it.