Game Design

Buying a few tonnes of marble turns out to be the easy part. Now you have to drive it home on an ox cart, down a road that once looked like a beach.

We finally sat down and played it like a stranger would. The verdict: lovely engineering, not much game, and about as cosy as a Rembrandt. So we changed course.

Thirty-three commissions, one enormous spreadsheet, a farmer and his turnip, and the honest truth about how many of them you can actually play yet.

A slightly late one, thanks to a graphics card with opinions. How the game knows what you were meant to carve, the guide colours, and a scoring system that may be a bit too strict.

Point chisels, claw chisels, rasps, rifflers and polishing pads. Seventeen tools, how hard and at what angle you hit, and why polishing is weirdly satisfying.