Steve Pavlina often mentions a computer game he wrote in 1999 called Dweep. He talks about it mainly because of some important lessons he learned from writing it. I finally got around to playing it recently, and instantly became a huge fan.

I found two posts of Steve’s that tell the story of how he created Dweep: Self-Discipline: Hard Work and What I Learned From Going Bankrupt in My 20s That Proves to Be Immensely Valuable in My 30s.

You can read those posts for the details, but I’ll give you a summary of what happened.

He landed a deal with a game publisher, but they inexplicably stopped communicating, then stopped paying, then pulled out of the deal, then filed a frivolous lawsuit against him (then got caught in an accounting scandal, being fined millions of dollars by the SEC). The next year he got a deal with a more honest publisher, but they got into financial trouble and had to pull out.

The end result was that Steve had turned his life savings of $20,000 into $150,000 of debt. He and his wife Erin got kicked out of their apartment for not paying their rent, and they had to declare bankruptcy.

But before giving up, Steve wanted to make one last game, one he’d really be proud of.

Of course, he was broke, so he couldn’t compete with the flashy graphics of high budget games. Instead, he decided to make a game that was truly original and very well designed. He spent a whole 4 months just working on the design of his game. This is the step that most people skipped, choosing instead to copy an existing game. After that, it only took 2 more months to do everything else. He got the whole thing done for no money.

Dweep won the Shareware Game of the Year award in 2000. Steve was interviewed in the New York Times, and his company became profitable for the first time.

You can download the trial version of Dweep here. (It’s always a good idea to run downloads through your antivirus program.) If you like puzzle games, you’ll really appreciate how well designed this is. I was quickly hooked.

Unfortunately, Dweep has since been discontinued, so the full version isn’t available for sale anymore (though it must be out there somewhere). The most similar game I know of is Adventures of Lolo, which you can play for free at that link.

Both games will challenge your logical abilities and prevent you from getting any work done today. Dweep has a tighter design, but Lolo has more action. If you’re into puzzle games, give them a go. If you get stuck, I can provide support in the comments.

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