"I'm done. This is a waste of time."

That's what I told myself at the beginning of 2018. Two years earlier I launched my own productivity tool. In some ways it was way ahead of its time, but in other ways it suffered from fatal flaws. It was going nowhere and better tools were launching.

At the same time every developer was scoffing at anyone making another task, note, or productivity app (which continues to this day)...they are a dime a dozen.

So I moved on. But as the next several years went by, I just couldn't shake the notion that every tool out there suffered from some kind of fundamental flaw. I couldn't put my finger on what it was, but they all felt off.

As I grew more frustrated with existing tools, I decided once again to build my own. I started prototyping in 2024, but what I had come up with suffered from the same, ambiguous fundamental flaw.

One evening I was writing on my white board mapping out some new ideas, but still unsatisfied. I set the marker down and turned around.

That's when revelation struck.

Back in 2017-2018 when my frustrations with my own failed product peaked, I started a new project, something completely different: a tabletop role-playing / board game.

At first it was print-only, but over time the scope grew to the point where playtesting it with printed pieces became inefficient, so I started building a digital playtest app.

And Dreamstate Legends was born.

Since the game dealt with numerious pieces, I implemented a zoomable, draggable board to drag pieces around.

That moment I turned around, instead of seeing map tiles and game pieces on the board, I saw documents, notes, and work content on the board.

And that's when I understood the fundamental flaw: I couldn't see my work. And that's when the pieces started coming together.

Chevas A.F. Balloun

Opal Operator

@Chevas