what the moose makes
Some of it is games. Some of it is software. Some of it is a tree we are growing one tile at a time.
All of it ships under the same moose. The moose is metaphorical. The standards are not. Nothing goes out under this name unless it would be something to point at proudly, which turns out to be a higher bar than it sounds.
the name
Pamplemousse means grapefruit. Moose means moose.
That is the entire etymology. Put them together and you get a citrus-loving ungulate with a controller in one hand and a spreadsheet in the other, which turns out to be a fairly accurate self-portrait.
The grapefruit is metaphorical. The moose is, regrettably, also metaphorical. The work is real.
what we make
Two arms, two tools, one moose.
The studio designs games. The arts arm makes things. The two tools are software products that earn their own keep.
pillar one
Pamplemoose Games
Tabletop and digital game design under the studio that started all of this. Mechanics, systems, balance, and playtesting work for studios who want a designer in the room and not another deck of templates.
“A force multiplier and a true collaborator.”
pillar two
Pamplemoose Arts
The hand-built creative work, under a different banner from the studio. Currently a one-project arm. The project is Yggdrawsil, an infinite collaborative art canvas built on a hand-drawn world tree. Claim a tile, draw your piece, grow the tree. The opposite of efficient. That is the point.
tool one
Tracklix
Affiliate-link audits and a clean dashboard for the people who actually get paid by their links. Free checker on the front page.
18 links scanned
tool two
SiftId
A calibrated startup-idea tracker. Log an idea, get a brutally honest 1–9 viability score and two sentences about why. Most ideas score a 5. That is the entire point.
Most live in the middle
the moose
Mostly one guy. Mostly Wisconsin. Mostly fine.
Pamplemoose is the work of Zack Howe, a game designer and non-technical founder operating mostly out of Wisconsin and mostly out of his own head. Some of the work is tabletop. Some is software. Some is writing that has no business being in the same portfolio as the rest of it. All of it ships under one rule.
The rule: every output should be something Zack would be proud to show somebody whose opinion he respects. No dark patterns. No manufactured urgency. No spam. No misleading products. No promotion of anything he wouldn’t use himself. If a feature would make a user feel stupid or trapped, it doesn’t ship. That sounds like a low bar until you try to clear it.
Goals, stacked in order: take care of the family, build a platform for some real change, give most of the wealth away. Whether any individual product gets there is an open question. The portfolio is the bet.