TheRetroArcade
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Joined: Feb 2026
Tanya X. Short, the designer of Boyfriend Dungeon and the upcoming Streets of Fortuna, talks TR-49 and surviving the pandemic with Tabletop Simulator.
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Welcome to Disk Cleanup, our regular weekend column delving into the PCs of PC gaming luminaries. Come back every weekend to read a new interview, digging into the important questions, like "how tidy is your desktop?" and "what game will you never uninstall?"
Tanya X. Short, CEO of Kitfox games, cannot recall the name of the first PC game she ever played. But she certainly remembers the experience of playing it. "It was a step crawler where I'd sit on my dad's lap. I must have been five or six," she says. "The thing I remember most is the sounds of the skeletons were so terrifying that I had to run and hide behind the couch."
Growing up playing games like Side Meier's Civilization and The Seven Cities of Gold, eventually Short joined the games industry as a narrative designer at Funcom. In 2013 she cofounded Kitfox Games, developing games like Moon Hunters, Boyfriend Dungeon, and the upcoming open-city "megasim" Streets of Fortuna. "It's one of those games you could spend your whole life building, and it'll never be completely complete. It's just an infinite box of fun to develop," she says.
Kitfox is also the publisher of Caves of Qud and Dwarf Fortress, which this year celebrates its 20th anniversary. "We're gonna be celebrating," Short says. "All year we're gonna be reminding people that Dwarf Fortress has been playable for 20 years. Kind of blows my mind."
Short briefly stopped the bearded party bus to guide me through the subterranean warren of her games library, which took us from the primordial soup of strategy gaming to the cutting edge of interactive fiction.
A developer and publisher, Tanya X. Short co-founded Kitfox Games in 2013, following a stint at Funcom as a narrative designer. Along with internally-developed games like Boyfriend Dungeon, Kitfox published the modern form of Dwarf Fortress, bringing it to Steam after almost two decades in development.
I just finished TR-49. It feels like a fresh take on the database game, where you're exposed to characters but they're secondary to the gameplay itself, which is just trawling a database. It feels very post Sam Barlow as a design, but it also feels very distinctly Inkle. There's a playfulness to it and a high concept to it that's ...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
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Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
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Every Friday
GamesRadar+
Your weekly update on everything you could ever want to know about the games you already love, games we know you're going to love in the near future, and tales from the communities that surround them.
Every Thursday
GTA 6 O'clock
Our special GTA 6 newsletter, with breaking news, insider info, and rumor analysis from the award-winning GTA 6 O'clock experts.
Every Friday
Knowledge
From the creators of Edge: A weekly videogame industry newsletter with analysis from expert writers, guidance from professionals, and insight into what's on the horizon.
Every Thursday
The Setup
Hardware nerds unite, sign up to our free tech newsletter for a weekly digest of the hottest new tech, the latest gadgets on the test bench, and much more.
Every Wednesday
Switch 2 Spotlight
Sign up to our new Switch 2 newsletter, where we bring you the latest talking points on Nintendo's new console each week, bring you up to date on the news, and recommend what games to play.
Every Saturday
The Watchlist
Subscribe for a weekly digest of the movie and TV news that matters, direct to your inbox. From first-look trailers, interviews, reviews and explainers, we've got you covered.
Once a month
SFX
Get sneak previews, exclusive competitions and details of special events each month!
Welcome to Disk Cleanup, our regular weekend column delving into the PCs of PC gaming luminaries. Come back every weekend to read a new interview, digging into the important questions, like "how tidy is your desktop?" and "what game will you never uninstall?"
Tanya X. Short, CEO of Kitfox games, cannot recall the name of the first PC game she ever played. But she certainly remembers the experience of playing it. "It was a step crawler where I'd sit on my dad's lap. I must have been five or six," she says. "The thing I remember most is the sounds of the skeletons were so terrifying that I had to run and hide behind the couch."
Growing up playing games like Side Meier's Civilization and The Seven Cities of Gold, eventually Short joined the games industry as a narrative designer at Funcom. In 2013 she cofounded Kitfox Games, developing games like Moon Hunters, Boyfriend Dungeon, and the upcoming open-city "megasim" Streets of Fortuna. "It's one of those games you could spend your whole life building, and it'll never be completely complete. It's just an infinite box of fun to develop," she says.
Kitfox is also the publisher of Caves of Qud and Dwarf Fortress, which this year celebrates its 20th anniversary. "We're gonna be celebrating," Short says. "All year we're gonna be reminding people that Dwarf Fortress has been playable for 20 years. Kind of blows my mind."
Short briefly stopped the bearded party bus to guide me through the subterranean warren of her games library, which took us from the primordial soup of strategy gaming to the cutting edge of interactive fiction.
A developer and publisher, Tanya X. Short co-founded Kitfox Games in 2013, following a stint at Funcom as a narrative designer. Along with internally-developed games like Boyfriend Dungeon, Kitfox published the modern form of Dwarf Fortress, bringing it to Steam after almost two decades in development.
I just finished TR-49. It feels like a fresh take on the database game, where you're exposed to characters but they're secondary to the gameplay itself, which is just trawling a database. It feels very post Sam Barlow as a design, but it also feels very distinctly Inkle. There's a playfulness to it and a high concept to it that's ...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?