What's New

18 September 2026

You Don't Suck at Maths

The single most common thing people say after trying Rigid Digit is some version of "I just suck at maths." Which is, first, probably not true. And second, even if it were: so what? That's sort of the whole point. You're not meant to already be good at this. You're meant to get better at it by playing.

Being an indie game developer is hard. Getting anyone to actually play what you made is harder. The market for games in general is about as saturated as it gets, but the market for the kind of game I actually want to make, and the kind of person who'd actually want to play it, feels wide open.

There probably are real ways to make Rigid Digit easier to pick up for someone who's nervous about it. There's just a fine line between helpful and patronising, and I'd rather land on the wrong side of not-helpful-enough than cross it.

Confession: I love numbers and maths, but I'm genuinely not very good at either. I wouldn't say I suck, but I'm on a slow, ongoing journey to get better, same as anyone. I didn't build this game from a place of natural talent. Honestly, part of why I built it was to give myself an excuse to get a bit better too.

I built Rigid Digit together with my daughter Tui, who's 9, partly to nurture her own curiosity about numbers. Turns out she's more of a natural at it than I am. Things click for her that still don't click for me. Oh, to still have a brain that can just absorb it all like that.

Rigid Digit scratches a different itch than something like Wordle. Hopefully it's building, or rebuilding, different mental muscles too. There's real pleasure in giving our brains a satisfying workout, and I think a genuinely challenging game does more for that than people give it credit for.

There's a stigma around maths I don't think gets questioned enough, that it's boring, and that you're either a genius at it or you suck, nothing in between. I ran the numbers. The maths says that's not true.

Ever told yourself you suck at maths? I'd love to hear about it in the comments below.