Sleep
“I don’t know. Why do things happen as they do in dreams?” Things are a bit confused. Things start blending together. I’ve been sleeping a lot. I remember at one point I was hanging out at one of the community…
Category Essays
Discomfort Zone
Art in general and games in particular have an uncomfortable relationship with discomfort. People don’t like being made uncomfortable– at least, not when it’s called by that name. Really, though, discomfort tends to come hand-in-hand with novelty. Anything that’s new…
Pursuit
I’ve always been interested in the idea of a horror game where the player is the monster. Though not generally regarded as a horror game per se, in the party game Werewolf the players each take on the role of…
Recommended Viewing for Game Designers
Inception The plot of Inception revolves around a group of specialists who invade people’s dreams to steal ideas– or, in this case, to plant an idea. This is a story entirely about crafting a world for an audience in such…
Trapped in Amber
In the Chronicles of Amber novels (at least the early ones), the premise is that there is one real world, called Amber, at the center of existence. Some people with special ties to Amber can walk through the shadow worlds…
Untitled
As I continue developing my personal game project, a little worry keeps on nibbling at the back of my mind– and, at this point, it’s probably had enough time to chew away a substantial portion of my brain stem, which…
Song of Myself
I imagine it to be raining. The drops tap against the panes of glass and I can imagine the cold wet outside and I savor my imaginary cold-weather melancholy. I have an affinity for the melancholic: It reaffirms my instincts…
Adaptive Difficulty
Adaptive difficulty is a game design concept that held a great deal of traction for a little while but has seemingly fallen out of favor recently. “The player should be challenged at all times,” is the ideal, “but never actually…
Cave Stories
Cave Story was an important game for me. It was playing Cave Story, 6 or 7 years ago, that made me realize that I still liked games– that, in that respect at least, it wasn’t me that had changed, but…
Folding Space
Recently, games-wise, I’ve been taking a bit of a break from my usual artsy and the pretentious indie fare to play a bit of Poker. Poker Night at the Inventory that is– what, did you think I had the money…