Mad Scientist Lab

FILE:
Mad Scientist Lab
STATUS:
Where I play
CONTENTS:
Vector Death · Drifter · Trench Defense · Roc · D20 Craps · Grim Reaper Whiskey
CONFIDENCE:
Mixed. Some shipped, some abandoned, some still cooking.
UPDATE CADENCE:
Whenever something is worth showing

// WHERE I PLAY

Not everything I build has a compliance framework bolted to it. Some of it I started at 2 a.m. because it sounded fun, and then couldn't stop. Thirty years in and around the gaming industry will do that to you. Here's what's on the bench.

// The board

Vector Death

Eight ships. One tunnel. Half of them coming the other way.

Eight pilots, anti-grav ships, one enclosed tunnel. The catch: half of them are coming the other way. This isn't racing where you dodge your rivals, it's racing where you hunt them, plasma weapons and all. I built it on the bones of the games I lost whole weekends to, WipeOut XL's lethal elegance and Red Planet's cult brutality. Every lap is a game of chicken at impossible speed. The crowd didn't pay to watch you cross the line. They paid to see who's left.

[ Open the file ]

Drifter

The galaxy's wide open, the ports are unguarded, and the only law is what your guns can enforce.

The galaxy's wide open, the ports are unguarded, and the only law out here is whatever your guns can enforce. Trade rare cargo across thousands of sectors and build an empire one port at a time, or skip the paperwork and become the pirate everyone warns their kids about. Form corporations, fight wars over hyperlanes, or keep your head down and quietly out-earn every fleet that crosses you. It's the BBS classic that ate my teenage years, rebuilt for your pocket: persistent, ruthless, and it never pauses just because you logged off.

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Trench Defense

They don't stop. They don't sleep. One trench, a few towers, and your nerve.

The enemy's coming. They don't stop, they don't sleep, and the only thing between them and everything behind you is one trench, a few towers, and your nerve. Dig in with WWI machine guns, dig out with future-tech turrets, and hold the line while the AI probes every weak point you left it. Pathfinding enemies find the gap. Status effects stack. The next wave is always worse than the last. I'm building this one with my kid, which makes it the most important thing on this list, the game's half of it, the building it together is the rest.

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Roc

Grandma's card table, rebuilt for your phone.

Grandma's card table, rebuilt for your phone. Roc is Rook reborn: bid bold, call your partner's bluff, drop a trump at exactly the wrong moment for everybody else. Play solo against AI that runs from "kindly aunt" to "the cousin who counts every card and never lets you forget it," or go online against real people in real time. And every regional house rule your family used to argue about at Thanksgiving? It's in there. Pick your variant and play it the way you grew up swearing was the only correct way.

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D20 Craps

Craps is just odds and probability. So what happens if you run the whole thing on d20s?

This one started at a Dragon Con afterparty, more or less. I asked a friend who teaches math for a living, "craps is just odds and probability, so what happens if you run the whole thing on d20s instead of d6s?" Neither of us could let it go. I went home and worked out a full rule set: roll 2d20, and 21 becomes the new 7, the number that wins you the come-out and the number that craps you out once your point is set. Point bands, hardways from 1-1 all the way to 20-20, field bets, true-odds plays with zero house edge. Same heartbeat as the felt in Vegas, rebuilt for people who'd rather roll a d20.

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Grim Reaper Whiskey

Got tired of paying for a bottle to keep in the desk drawer for the C-suite, so I made my own.

Got tired of paying for a bottle to keep in the desk drawer for the C-suite, so I made my own. Blizzard put one of my drinks in World of Warcraft. This whiskey I actually sell.

grim-reaper-whiskey.com
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