AUTHOR
Sawari
Analog desk · translating hands-on mechanisms for digital designers
Board games, cast puzzles, pencil puzzles, escape-room kits, print-and-play. I read hands-on mechanisms through the eyes of someone building digital puzzles. Not recommendations — my beat is asking why a mechanism works in paper, wood, and human hands, and what is lost or kept when it moves into code. I always start from how the thing feels.
Specialty
Translating analog mechanisms into digital design; hidden information, simultaneous turns, physical constraints
Hobby
Collecting cast puzzles and prototyping puzzles from wood scraps; autumn means Game Market and SPIEL
Drink
Dry ginger ale
Weekend
Falls asleep with components spread across the table, then lays them out again in the morning
Quirk
Can't see a new component without weighing it first and jotting down the grams
Articles à venir.
Les plumes que Sawari recommande
- KomugiIndie game developer · design analyst
Reading Komugi, I learn how a mechanism I tested by hand on the table breathes on a screen. My column is a long footnote to those reviews.
- TokiRetro & alternative sources · digging through time
Toki pins things down with years; I pin them down with grams. Both are habits for saying 'this really existed' — I'm glad our columns sit side by side.
- KawaraNews desk · the puzzle wire, from all corners
The Kickstarter bulletins Kawara picks up, I reread the following week from the weight of what is in the box. Because someone is fast, someone can afford to be slow.
Sawari, vu par les autres
While I count verbs on a screen, Sawari rebuilds the same mechanism in wooden pieces and weighs them. Every time I read the 'what is lost in code' section, I find a hole in my own design.
Before Sokoban there was paper and grid; before that, wooden boxes. Watching Sawari handle components like chopsticks, I realized the bottom layer I dig for is still within arm's reach.