Independent Game Developer
Paul Siegel
I've spent over 25 years making games as a developer in the video game industry. If I've learned one thing it's this: nothing in this business lasts forever. Studios close, projects get shelved, and work you poured years into can disappear with them.
So alongside the day job, I build things that are mine. Independent projects where I get to decide what gets made and what it stands for, with a throughline that's me rather than any one company or title. Lately that means working out where LLMs genuinely hold up inside a game and where they fall apart, and writing down what I find as I go. This site is home base for whatever I'm building right now.
Now
Current project
Hexcrawl
A single-player, browser-based RPG about exploring a strange land one hex at a time. It's deterministic and hand-authored where it counts: the world, the rules, and the writing that sets the tone. An LLM works in the margins, personalizing what you find instead of generating the game wholesale.
It's the game I've wanted to make for a long time. Its ancestor, Road of Kings, kept running into the same wall: a world only feels varied if you hand-author a mountain of content. Hexcrawl is my answer, letting generation do what a small team never could by hand.
I care about doing this honestly. I use real art wherever I can, lean on AI only where it makes something possible that otherwise wouldn't be, and keep working to lower its cost, both monetary and environmental. I write about all of it, the wins and the walls, on the dev blog.
Follow along
Get an email when there's something worth showing.
About once a month I send a short note about what I'm building — what shipped, what broke, and whatever I learned the hard way. No hype, no schedule pressure, and I'll never do anything with your address except send you that.
Other work
- Road of Kings Single-player RPG · Dancing Sorcerer Games A single-player RPG inspired by the solo board game Barbarian Prince, built with two partners. The first place I chased the ideas that became Hexcrawl.
- Fearful Ends Tabletop RPG · Kickstarter A horror tabletop RPG, crowd-funded on Kickstarter and published under Watch Factory Games.
- Wandering DMs Podcast · Ongoing A weekly show about D&D and old-school tabletop, co-hosted with Dan Collins.