Filling In
Things don’t happen the way we remember them. We smooth out the rough edges, add new elements in where they seem like they should be. After a certain point, memory stops being history and becomes our story, a narrative with…
Category Playing Games
Disparity
I liked playing through Dark Souls 3, but something seemed off about the experience to me. Immediately after starting the game, in the menu, the silence of the Dark Souls menu and the spooky music of the menu in Dark…
Downstream
This week I did an experiment: I streamed playing a game for two hours every day, 8am-10am PST. Originally I’d intended to stream Dark Souls 3, but it turns out my computer can’t run it. I thought my computer would…
Undertale: Reflections
In this post I take a more in-depth look at the design of Undertale. If you haven’t played the game yet I’d strongly recommend doing so before reading, since I pretty much spoil the entire story, and also just generally…
Undertales
I played Undertale and I’m not sure if I’m going to actually be able to write about it. It’s a remarkable game, but I don’t know what to remark. I guess I’ll try, even though I’m sure people have written a…
Core Souls
From Software (yes, that’s the actual name of the company) seemingly came out of nowhere in 2009 with the sleeper hit Demon’s Souls, which was followed in 2011 by its better known and hugely successful successor Dark Souls. Well, it…
Frustration
What role should frustration have in the player’s experience of a game? It’s a tricky question. For a while game designers assumed the answer was ‘none’, that frustration was an inherently unpleasant experience with nothing to offer, that it stood…
Simple Appeal
Sometimes it’s embarrassing how simple our tastes really are. You know, we can write essays about why we love what we love, what works and doesn’t, about the delicate structure of ideas that play against each other in this particular…
Things Unseen
It’s interesting how much goes into a game that the player never sees. Old versions, unused content, hidden details of construction, or simply paths the player never takes. As we play the game, this stuff is invisible – sometimes we find…
Dropsy
For a while now, I’ve thought of the point and click adventure as a more-or-less static genre. We understand the design, its conventions, what it can achieve and how. And yet, while sticking close alongside those conventions, Dropsy turns the…