What was the inspiration that led you to build Death Match Island using the Paragon system? Were there ever any points in development where it used a different engine or original rules entirely? What did your experience with Agon bring to the design?

Yeah.

Um, I, I kind of feel like, uh, at least for me, w- when I approach a new game, I, I either have the concept and, uh, look for the sort of mechanical system second, either coming up with something new or looking for like an, a framework to adapt, like PBTA or, um, Paragon or what- whatever it happens to be.

But I think there's another path where you play a game and you think, "There's something in here, uh, that I could use for something else." It feels like a lot of, say, PBTA games maybe came out of that.

Like, Power- uh, like, Apocalypse World came out, and people sort of played it and thought, "Oh, this would be great for X, Y, Z," and, and these other games came about.

And so Death Match Island is in that kind of vein, where I played Agon and had a great time, and it wasn't quite like other games I'd played.

And so it just sort of sparked these ideas of like, if, if we focused in on this bit of it, we could do A, B, C, or, uh, maybe if I dial up this bit, that could be X, Y, Z.

How did designing the mystery evolve over the course of making the game? Was there ever a canon answer to what's really going on, or was this player reactive design always the core intent?