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Series · 3 parts · 18 min read
Building Empire Builder
How Empire Builder: Digital came to be.
- Part 1 Getting Empire Builder off the ground How two developers who could never find time to play a board game ended up building the digital version, and what we got wrong about "the rules are already written." Oct 7, 2026 · 5 min read
- Part 2 Multiplayer for a board game Why no off-the-shelf networking solution fit a digital board game, how we ended up rolling our own messaging on top of PlayFab, and why the messes were worth making. Oct 14, 2026 · 6 min read
- Part 3 Two years to find a path A* was the obvious choice for Empire Builder's pathfinding. Making it trustworthy took the better part of two years, a river that cost players millions, and a lesson about who owns what on a two-person team. Oct 21, 2026 · 7 min read