Alternate Roots
I’ve been feeling a little unenthusiastic about writing these posts recently. By “recently” I mean that I’ve been feeling it gradually over the last few years, and more acutely over the last few weeks. There are a few reasons for…
Category Essays
Uneven Balance
One of the most hazardous unquestioned assumptions of game design is that a game should be balanced. Don’t get me wrong, it certainly can be an issue if one tool is too strong, or many tools too weak, particularly in…
The Great Unknown
I find randomness a fascinating topic. Core to many game designs, a hint of randomization can cause the possibility space to explode in many directions, create a sense of mystery and possibility, and convert simple puzzles with straightforward solutions into…
Wildfrost
After Slay the Spire released into Early Access in 2017 and was one of the best-designed games ever made, a wave of roguelike deckbuilders inevitably followed. Most of these were, I would say, pretty uninteresting — Slay the Spire excels…
Juice, Crunch, and Clarity
I recently saw this video explaining easy ways to make your game feel “juicy”. I don’t know if I’d heard this specific term used before, but it meant exactly what I would have assumed it to mean: Adding a bunch…
Hospitable Hostility
“What do my science fiction stories have in common with pornography? Fantasies of an impossibly hospitable world, I’m told.” -Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. One of the most interesting and useful angles with which to examine any art is that of what…
Control Freaking
One of the moments I enjoy most in a game is that just before a combat encounter happens. In these moments I plan my approach, my position, look at the lay of the land, look at how the enemy is…
Living Failures
The way games treat failure has shifted significantly over the years. The earliest commercial games were coin-operated, so in this case the loss of the coins used to play the game in the first place provided a self-evident punishment for…
The Meta-Game
Some game design decisions are hard boundaries — if you jump off a cliff you die, if you try to walk from A to C you will be blocked by a wall, and so forth. Just as often, though, design…
Making Tracks
As you may have noticed, posts have slowed down. Well, stopped. There are a few reasons for this – my writing habits have been interrupted by getting distracted by holidays and other projects, by my usual writing space being temporarily…