1) When designing a new game, where do you start? Is it with the theme/design or with the maths/mechanics? Does it differ from game to game?

It does differ from game to game, although we follow some standard procedures for all new projects, which will start with a draft of the main specifications for the game.

If we are looking to make a brand new game, we will generally start with a theme, the features and some suitable design ideas. The maths will just be a general overview at this stage as we will dive much deeper into this later in the process.

Sometimes we look to re-skin popular games, or make only small changes, and in this case we already have a great starting point with the maths and can concentrate more on new themes and designs.