About Us

 

Gladden Design was founded in 2018 by Tom and Sarah Brinton.

Our goal is to create products that gladden the heart and please the eye. We love the idea that a product can be both genuinely fun and genuinely beautiful. We keep chasing that ideal with every project we create.

Analog Play

Our first Paper App was a nutrition tracker, which helped us discover how much we enjoyed designing tools on paper. In 2021, we released Paper Apps™ DUNGEON, which went semi-viral and was much more successful on Kickstarter than we could have hoped. From that point on, we knew that Tom's background as a video game designer could combine with good old pencil and paper to create something entirely new.

Paper Apps support what we call Analog Play, screen-free games and toys that are just as fun for adults as they are for kids. They’re simple, portable, and most importantly: fun.

Giving Games Away

We are also committed to giving games away by sending free copies to people who could use them most, including those who are sick, incarcerated, struggling financially, or otherwise going through a difficult season.

Play is powerful. It doesn’t fix everything, but we believe it can make hard times a little easier.

Designed by Humans

We don’t use AI to generate our games or puzzles.

Instead, we use hand-crafted procedural generation to make every single notebook we sell totally unique. That means we write the rules and code ourselves to generate fresh levels for each book. It’s part math, part craftsmanship, and a whole lot of playtesting.

So while the levels in each of our games are endlessly varied, they’re still deeply intentional and designed by humans (hello 👋).

Looking Ahead

We plan to keep releasing new games and toys for you and your family. Thank you for being here and supporting Analog Play.

Have a question? Contact us