Same philosophy as the printers and telescopes: every project has a job, nothing exists without a purpose, and the 80-20 principle runs through all of it.
Retroverse Studios — Indie Games
Retroverse Studios is my indie game label, focused on retro-style and pixel-art games. Current projects:
- Reality Reigns — A swipe-based decision game inspired by Reigns, but completely data-driven and configurable. Swap the theme file and it becomes space, fantasy, cyberpunk, or even an educational scenario. The engine stays the same; the content is modular.
- Atari 2600 Tribute Series — Four games paying homage to the Atari 2600 era, including a clone of Simon Was Alone. Built as a love letter to the hardware that started it all.
- LanePlay — A tenpin bowling simulator where you enter your real scores and compete against current PBA players. Their stats drive simulated performances, so you’re always playing against realistic competition.
The common thread: small scope, clear mechanics, and systems that punch above their weight through smart design rather than massive budgets.
EdTech Tools — A Teaching Suite
I build software tools for education. Rather than one monolithic platform, each tool solves a specific problem:
Curriculum Creator, Feed Forward, Talk Buddy, Study Buddy, Career Compass, Cite Sight, The AI Exchanger, and The AI Skills Passport.
They share a philosophy: give educators and students focused tools that do one thing well. No feature bloat, no enterprise pricing, no six-month onboarding process. The 80-20 principle applied to educational software — the features that matter most, without the ones that don’t.
Open Source — Libraries, Packages, and Containers
Python libraries on PyPI, npm packages, and Docker Hub containers. Some support the edtech tools directly — shared utilities, deployment scaffolding, common patterns extracted into reusable packages. Others are standalone open-source projects built for the community.
The goal is the same either way: solve a specific problem, document it clearly, and ship it.
The 80-20 Take
Software is the one area where the 80-20 principle applies to both money and scope. Every project starts with the same question: what’s the smallest thing I can build that delivers the most value? A data-driven game engine that powers dozens of themes. A teaching tool that does one job without a settings page longer than the feature list. A library that saves ten minutes on every project for the next five years.
Build small. Ship often. Let the work compound.