games
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Reigns is an interesting small title that misses just a bit to be great for me. Read more
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There is a practice I have noticed some AAA studios do –> Series of main releases with smaller releases of the same franchise in-between. As you can imagine developing games takes quite a bit of time and investment. A lot is betting on a single release, just imagine a game in development for three years Read more
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I recently wrote about how irreversible decisions can be a powerful tool in game design. One of the examples was XCOM and how it deals with permanent death of in-game characters. Today I would like to look at it from a bit more narrative driven point of view. We will encounter bit of a trouble Read more
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I think that irreversible decisions can be one of the most powerful tools you can use in your game design. But as we all know, with great power comes great responsibility. When there are decisions player has to make, that will have significant impact on the rest of the game –> it makes it very Read more
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No and yes. So let’s think about this for few minutes… What does it mean when something is hard to learn? Does it mean it takes long time to understand? Or that it’s quick but painful. How does painful learning even work? I think this whole question is very silly. I can understand trying to Read more
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Into the Breach is amazing. It’s right there on top as an example of fantastic system design. Chilling with Darkest Dungeon, Noita and mainly chess. That is a high praise indeed. Game designer comparing game to chess is like painter comparing painting to Mona Lisa or Last Supper. It means a lot. You can read Read more
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So… you have decided to learn game development and you even put some thought into it and understand that making your own project is a way to do it. What now? Read more
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Chess is amazing. It’s the purest and simplest example of beautiful systemic design. You see, what I appreciate about games is how deep and interesting systems they can create from simplest possible mechanics. Chess is a king and queen of this concept. Anyone can learn chess in few minutes, no matter the age. By learn Read more
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Surprisingly fitness turned out to be one of the most common use-cases for VR these days. Who would have thought? Certainly not me, nor Oculus or Meta. There is a lesson there, but I will just ignore it for now. I would like to talk a bit about fitness VR games and the state they Read more
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Loop hero is an interesting game in itself, but that’s not what we will talk about today. What’s interesting about Loop Hero is how it takes a genre trope, puts it on its head and then dances with it Cancan. It’s a very interesting way how to think about creating original game mechanics. For a Read more
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I would like to talk a bit about Steam reviews and how I find them often irritating. It’s bit of a pet peeve and honestly something I should just wave my hand about. Still, maybe someone reading this will think twice before writing a stupid review and that would be worth both of ours time. Read more
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I think Portal may be the best example of pacing in any game I have ever played. I will assume that everyone played or have at least heard about Portal, so I will describe the game only very briefly. It’s actually quite simple: You have a gun that can create Red and Blue portals on Read more
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There is something very interesting about Buckshot Roulette. Let me first introduce you to the game: It’s a short horror game, which is actually not scary at all, sorta “Russian Roulette-like” exercise in probability. Helpful, aren’t I? Let’s have a look at our typical game loop: Player sits in front of the dealer with a Read more
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I have played Dagon recently. You can think about it as a visual novel adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft’s short story. It’s a bit more interesting than that actually. Most visual novels tend to focus on the story and spam you with hordes of text, while the “visual” part of the game is changing only Read more
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