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Design Dilemma: Any vs. All

July 10, 2025 Apps, Birdigo, Games, Projects

In Birdigo, the game that Corey Martin and I are releasing on July 30th, we’ve run into an interesting design question.

The central mechanic of the game is using letters in your hand to build words, much like in Scrabble. Each card has a single letter on it, with the exception of the QXZ card, which can be played as ANY of those letters.

Birdigo screenshot showing cards make ZITI
ZITI, not QITI or XITI

The QXZ card comes from my previous (physical) card game, AlphaBirds. It’s a useful innovation, turning a card that could be an albatross into something more flexible and useful. You’re not inclined to automatically discard QXZ like you might with a J.

Since Birdigo isn’t constrained by physical reality, we can do fun things to the cards themselves. They can be transformed into speckled, gold, platinum or diamond versions, scoring higher points when played. We can duplicate or destroy cards. We can even merge them using a special song:

Corncrake
Merge two selected cards

If you have a N and G in your hand, you can merge them into a NG card. But what exactly should that card do? In my head (and Corey’s coding logic), the card is counted as either an N or a G. You can use it to play words like LAWN or GRADE.

But that’s not how playtester Budgie saw it:

i combined N and G into one tile and the game frequently (but not always) fails to recognize words using the new tile. For example, e(ng)ine and leavi(ng) weren’t recognized as words, but fa(ng)s was.

Budgie saw the merged card as being both NG, not either N or G. But that’s not how the game logic works. It was letting him play FAN, but not ENINE, EGINE, LEAVIN or LEAVIG. It was user error, not a game bug.

Here’s the thing: Budgie’s mistaken assumption was potentially better than reality. Corey and I both got excited. What if Corncrake created cards that were ALL the letters rather than ANY of the letters? We could even let it fuse together more letters:

Corncrake
Merge up to three selected cards

This would make certain strategies much more plausible, including these feathers:

Do-er +20 flaps if word ends in ER
Click +20 flaps per played “CK”
Birdigoing +30 flaps if word ends in ING

The problem is, that would create a new design challenge. The QXZ card means “any one of these letters.” Should a corncraked ING card mean “all these letters in this order” or “any one of these letters” depending on context? How do you make the distinction clear to the player?

After a lot of back and forth, Corey came up with four scenarios:

Option A:
unpublish Corncrake
don’t have ALL cards, only ANY
+ simplest to implement
– least fun

Option B:
make an ALL card type
make Corncrake create ALL cards instead of ANY
QXZ is the only ANY card and is visually distinct from ALL cards
+ fun new game mechanic
– potentially confusing to existing players
– a fair amount of work

Option C:
turn ANY cards into ALL cards
split our Gold QXZ into Diamond Q, Platinum X and Platinum Z
+ easy to understand
– Q, X and Z are harder to play
– makes lean decks riskier to play

Option D:
make merged cards valid as ALL or ANY
+ maximum flexibility for player
– confusing ambiguity
– extra game logic

As of this publication, we’re trying Option B. We will redesign the QXZ card to make it visually distinct from merged cards. We’ll play around with it internally before pushing it out to testers.


I’ve honestly loved iterating on Birdigo. Design dilemmas like this challenge your assumptions, and force you to look at problems from multiple perspectives. I’ve have similar experiences with Highland, Weekend Read and Writer Emergency Pack, all of which benefited from a team poking and prodding at every detail.

As a screenwriter who’s always dealing with narrative hypotheticals, it’s gratifying to be able to talk through a change, see it implemented, and quickly decide if it works.

When I’m pushing words around on a page, I’m mostly trying to make my inner critic happy, because the feedback loop with executives, producers and directors is so much slower. Collaborative projects like Birdigo require consensus and compromise, disagreement and discovery. I love it.

Featured Friday: Writers

March 7, 2025 Weekend Read

Weekend Read, our app for reading scripts on your phone, features a new curated collection of screenplays each week.

This week, we celebrate the release of Highland Pro with stories about the exhilarating stress and satisfaction of being a writer.

Our collection includes:

  • 30 Rock – “Tracy Does Conan” by Tina Fey
  • Adaptation by Charlie Kaufman and Donald Kaufman
  • Almost Famous by Cameron Crowe
  • American Fiction by Cord Jefferson
  • Barton Fink by Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
  • Bored to Death – “Pilot” by Jonathan Ames
  • Can You Ever Forgive Me? by Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty
  • Castle – “Flowers for Your Grave” by Andrew W. Marlowe
  • Mank by Jack Fincher
  • Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen
  • Misery by William Goldman
  • Murder, She Wrote – “Incident in Lot #7” by J. Michael Straczynski
  • Poetic Justice by John Singleton
  • Ruby Sparks by Zoe Kazan
  • Saving Mr. Banks by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith
  • Sideways by Alexander Payne & Jim Taylor
  • Trumbo by John McNamara

Read these and other featured collections only on Weekend Read 2, available on all Mac and iOS devices. Download for free!

Introducing Highland Pro

March 4, 2025 Apps, Highland, News

Today, we’re launching Highland Pro. It’s the next generation of our flagship screenwriting app, now available on Mac, iPad and iPhone.

Here’s a video I made about it.

With Highland Pro, our mission is to keep you focused on your work. From its clean interface to innovative features like the shelf and /lookup, Highland is designed to help you avoid distractions and get things written.

I’m incredibly proud of Highland Pro and the tiny team who made it. Nima Yousefi does our coding. Dustin Bocks handles design. Chris Csont heads up support, while Daniel Sauvé-Rogan leads our marketing. Drew Marquardt and I tackle whatever else needs to be done, like the video above.

Highland Pro wouldn’t be nearly as good without our hundreds of beta testers. Thank you Team Highland!

Highland Pro is now available on the App Store worldwide, with a 30-day free trial. A single subscription covers all platforms. Try it today!

Featured Friday: Puzzle Boxes

February 28, 2025 Weekend Read

Weekend Read, our app for reading scripts on your phone, features a new curated collection of screenplays each week.

This week, we look at puzzle box series to see how they craft their mind-bending mysteries, use their unknowns to heighten character drama, and structure clues to keep the audience dying to know what the hell is really going on.

Our collection includes:

  • Lost – “Pilot”
  • Severance – “The We We Are”
  • The Leftovers – “Pilot”
  • The Man in the High Castle – “Pilot”
  • Twin Peaks – “Northwest Passage”
  • Westworld – “The Bicameral Mind”
  • Yellowjackets – “Pilot”

Read these and other featured collections only on Weekend Read 2, available on all Mac and iOS devices. Download for free!

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