Welcome to PaperWeightGames
Game Design, Development and Consultancy.
Click the icon to visit my discord where we can discuss your project and you can talk to the playtesters!
My achievements include the construction of a floating Lego fortress at age 8, a temporary role in the position of 'god' during my sessions of playing Populous: The Beginning, and by the age of 13 I had somewhat successfully governed several Lego and Playmobile cities, lead an army of small soldiers, and confused many, many players with convoluted rules for games I'd forgot to mention I'd completely made up myself.
Hi, I'm Aaron Beedle. I think about games. Look at me there, thinking.
I offer a range of online services involved in the process of creating tabletop games, organizing an international team of experienced playtesters, and helping clients reach their project goals.
(Left) Pass The Peasants, a 'take that' engine builder that can be played without teaching. This game represents my pursuit of highly engaging gameplay that almost anyone can rapidly sink into, and has always been taught from the hint cards, with no rulebook needed.
(Right) Kinswinds, the first game I completed over 1100 hours of development. Kinswinds uses a single deck of cards to abstract a society where you are rewarded for being somewhat ahead of the curve, but not too far. It demonstrates my fondness for exploring unusual social mechanics.
I enjoy 'gateway' games that gently introduce players to new types of gameplay experience, such as in Grudges Void (Right), where deep strategic gameplay involving conflict, diplomacy, a dynamic economy, and vastly different factions is delivered with a core gameplay system no more complex than the average party game.
I'm very fond of emergent narratives that leave players with a unique story to tell after each game.
(Left) Death Tracks, a card based dungeon crawler designed to provide numerous thematic resources for players to roleplay as villains, underdogs and power-mad alchemists, while still fully accommodating competitive semi-cooperative gameplay.
I try to build thematically convincing worlds that support the player's immersion and faith in the integrity of the game.
(Right) Wistul is a deckbreaker that simulates insanity, getting lost at sea, extinction, and guilt, all within a single deck of cards.
I harbour a fondness for that thing which distinguishes tabletop games from digital games; their ability to bring people together. In pursuit of this I often aim to combine high player interaction, player-generated narratives, and intuitive, easy-to-teach rules.
As a game designer...
If you'd care to join me for a brief re-telling of how I got here...
I'd been through a great caste of sega games, the profoundly eerie Shadow of the Beast (I still play a song from this game on my guitar) and Aleyssa Dragoon, the bizarre Toki: Ape Gone Spit and Robocod: James Pond.
It wasn't all good luck though. One of the very first playstation one games I bought was Carnage Heart. In short, spending 4 weeks of saved pocket money on a game about programming extremely complex battle droids was not an enjoyable experience for a 9 year old.
But mindless curiosity saw me right when I came across a series of fantastic games including Warzone 2100, Final Fantasy 7, Rampage 2, B-Movie, Lemmings, Croc - Legend of the Gobbos, Populous: The Beginning, and Rapid Racers.
From there both technology and my taste for computer games advanced. What is perhaps unique to my story is that despite my efforts, I never truly grew up. I struggled to form bonds with other people despite being an exceptionally social person. I created numerous games for people to play but no one was interested. I wanted people to spend time together. I was a lonely socialite trying to build tools to bring people together.
After developing arthritis and consequently failing to pass (or even attempt) my final exam to become a black belt in Tae Kwon Do, I decided to finally invest myself in one of my long term artistic passions: Game design.
In this capacity I combine several elements of humanity that I consider important. Social interaction, empathy, ambition and curiosity. I avoid rigid attempts to deliver a specific experience to a player, opting instead to present a 'bag of tools' players can experiment with to construct their own experience, expressing themselves through the way they play my games.
I believe that knowledge can only truly come from inside, not outside, and so I'm certainly one for learning from my mistakes, considering the voice of others without assuming anything is certain. It is a thorough and slow process of learning, as opposed to reading books and watching documentaries (though I've done my fair share of that too) but it means that when I advise someone I can do so with a high level of confidence in what I'm saying. I'm usually speaking from experience rather than retelling the experience of others.
More About Me
As a Poet
As a Poet
Poetry was one of the first forms of creative expression I explored, and since then I've returned to poetry many times as a means of documenting my experiences and observations. I don't expect that my poems will ever yield any reward, but I do consider poetry something I have a knack for. Click the link below to have a read!
My Fiction Writing:
My Fiction Writing:
A short comic idea about some confusion in hell.