Better Mousetraps
I think if there’s one idea I’d seek to dismantle, it’s the idea that there’s a single correct way to do something. I believe that this approach creates problems for two reasons: First, similarity of approach tends to lead to…
Tag Games as Art
Dreaming Alone
I love single-player games. Don’t get me wrong, I like all sorts of multiplayer games as well, and I enjoy cooperation and competition as much as anyone, but what really excites me about the medium of games is the possibility…
Roads
We are surrounded in spirals by the paths we never took. Every choice ever made was a branching point, and just under the surface of our lives lie the possibilities of countless other lives we might have lived. This is…
Leaders
The conceit of strategy games is an interesting one. Most strategy games place you as the general of an army, or some other authority figure, and tasks you with managing an army or other complex system and directing it towards…
Subsystems
Last week I wrote about how no two people walk away from a piece of art with the same conception of what they just saw. I mostly couched that in terms of older media like visual art and film, but…
Static
If we are alone, and we are dissatisfied, we can change the scene – either by traveling or adapting the world to suit ourselves. If we are with a few other people, it is usually still possible to convince them…
Mundane
To play a game is to perform a series of tasks it asks of you. Most of the time, these tasks are some sort of challenge of dexterity, cognition, perception, or some combination thereof. There are also, though, a number…
Trust
Game design is a trust exercise. The player has to be able to trust that the game designer’s decisions make sense, that when they take an action within the system the resultant reaction will make sense and be predictable. “Predictable”…
Sekiro: Intimacy and Immortality
I finished my playthrough of Sekiro a couple of weeks ago, and I’ve had some time to sit and reflect on the experience. If you aren’t familiar with Sekiro, it’s the newest game by From Software, developers of the Dark…
The Return
For those who may be unfamiliar with The Return of the Obra Dinn, it’s a first-person adventure game by Lucas Pope (the developer of Papers, Please – a game which I keep intending to play but putting off, probably at…