This February, the Kickstarter campaign for “The Daily Weather, a solo wallet game designed by Ian Tarter ’26, began. As of Feb. 9, the Kickstarter has raised $21,005 with 1,373 contributors. The game will be published by Button Shy Games, a small, family-owned game publisher based in New Jersey.
“I’ve been passionate about making board games for a long time,” said Tarter, who is a Cognitive Science major at Carleton. “Why people play games is something I’m very personally interested in.”
Tarter was inspired by Wordle, The New York Times’ daily word-guessing game, and by a game in the Carleton Economics department when developing The Daily Weather.
“There was a puzzle setting, and the premise of it was that you could solve it by covering up the spaces, except for the current day,” said Tarter.
Described on the Kickstarter page as a “relaxing, yet thinky solo game,” The Daily Weather consists of using cards with the current date and season to set up a unique puzzle per day themed as a daily weather forecast. By overlapping the cards, players can solve the puzzle.
Tarter began designing The Daily Weather last year and submitted the game to a Button Shy contest.
Button Shy Games is known for producing card-based games sold in wallet packs that can fit inside a pocket.
“They have opportunities to submit game pitches to them,” said Tarter. “[The Daily Weather] placed in the top three, and it got published.”
According to Tarter, the publication process was quick and compressed.
“I signed the contract in November [2025], and when I first got the game signed, the publisher, Jason, was already working on the art,” said Tarter. “Then we got into play testing the following month, and now it’s February, and it just got released. So it’s been a pretty short three months.”
Tarter worked with Jason Tagmire, the main designer and publisher at Button Shy, and Manon Mergnat, a French illustrator who drew the game’s cards.
“The whole development cycle of making the art, refining the rules, playtesting and the public release… has been incredible. It’s been fun,” Tarter said.
Tarter gained inspiration for The Daily Weather from his courses and experience as a Cognitive Science major. As a senior, he is currently working on his Integrated Comprehensive Exercise (Comps), an experience that has allowed him to develop his academic interest in games.
“I’m doing my Comps on games,” Tarter said. “A big thing I am thinking about is affordances, which is an idea in Cognitive Science that refers to how the physical properties of objects let you do things.”
Tarter said that he feels the importance of games and gaming is often ignored in academic settings. During his studies in Cognitive Science at Carleton, Tarter discussed the role of games with Jay McKinney, Assistant Professor of Cognitive Science.
“[Games are] such a major part of our recreational life, but [they’ve] been rarely talked about,” Tarter said. “[McKinney] really encouraged me to think more deeply about the role that games play in our lives.”
“I use games in my teaching as a cognitive scientist and a philosopher,” said McKinney, adding that games “motivate us” in a way that “is not mechanical, […] it’s exploratory, it’s fun, it’s interactive. I think that whatever cognition is, it’s being captured by the set of rules that games give us.”
Tarter and McKinney are both interested in the work of C. Thi Nguyen, a philosopher who developed the concept of aesthetic striving play. Tarter utilized the concept of aesthetic striving play in the development of The Daily Weather.
“We both love the philosopher Thi Nguyen, [who] has a book on art and agency in games,” McKinney said. “[He’s] looking at play and what motivates us to play – why we do it.”
“There’s something going on in our everyday lives, in our experience of the world around us, that games have a way of sampling and capturing and making us encounter,” added McKinney. “We [Tarter and McKinney] have talked quite a bit about everyday experiences and how games don’t have to be really complicated to be fun.”
Tarter emphasised how much his interest in the science of gaming influenced his design process.
“Thinking more deeply about the role that games play in our life has led me to pursue a solitary game that fits with the rhythm of everyday life, where you want to find a place to fit [the game] in because there’s a new puzzle waiting for you,” said Tarter.
While Tarter’s game reflects his academic interest in the cognitive science behind gaming, his work on The Daily Weather is entirely extracurricular. McKinney mentioned that they were surprised at his ability to balance his schoolwork and game development.
“I only learned about the specifics of his game whenever he was casually like, ‘oh yeah, my Kickstarter just dropped,’ and I’m like, ‘Ian, you’re Compsing right now!’ He’s doing one impossible thing, which is launching a successful Kickstarter, and also working on a Comps,” McKinney said.
