Spaceball was the project that pulled me into two disciplines I’d never really tackled before: real-time online networking and the craft of balancing a competitive card game. Building a multiplayer TCG from scratch meant wiring up client-server play, keeping game state in sync, and untangling all the messy edge cases that show up the moment two people play live.

More than anything it was a joyful playground for learning, equal parts engineering puzzle and design experiment. Every system was something new to figure out, and the endless tuning taught me first-hand how much balance shapes whether a game actually feels fair and fun.