Deconstructor of Fun

OCTOBER 10, 2021

I spend most of my waking hours thinking about game mechanics and how they will make players feel. Fighting Power Creep with Scarcity As the Lead Designer on Legendary: Game of Heroes , I invested a lot of time on our first few hundred heroes. Fighting Purchase Regret with Ownership. In my heart, I am a game designer.

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Asset Games Fighting Mobile 52

Deconstructor of Fun

JULY 20, 2020

Riot’s Team Fight Tactics (TFT) was launched quickly to catch the emerging auto-chess genre that was gaining popularity as a mod on Twitch. Till date Team Fight Tactics has reached bit over 11M installs. Riot has succeeded in building a brand that players trust. After four months TFT has $.43 43 Revenue per Download.

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Fighting Games Mechanics Balance 52

Grid Sage Games

MARCH 10, 2022

Mechanics that are never quite worth taking advantage of, items that haven’t lived up to their potential, or were later superseded by other options but remained unchanged, or even long-term experiments that were included at some point but never updated/expanded/removed. Categorical Approach.

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Balance Mechanics Beta Prototyping 52

PreMortem.Games

MARCH 1, 2024

We never want the player to feel too powerful, playing more of an underdog role, thus our heroes fight back and repel the pirates with water based weaponry and equipment normally used for farming irrigation. Fortunately with so much water all around the player is never too far from a refill to keep the fight going.”

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Studios Prototyping Visual Scripting Art 104

Radiator Blog

MAY 5, 2021

It is much better than the boring shot reverse-shot cutscene stuff going on in AAA RPGs these days, and makes Skyrim's "sit" mechanic more meaningful. Destroy the player's expectation that relationship mechanic = main cast member. It's not uncommon to walk between towns and fight like 6 different packs of wolves. Money sink.

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Open World NPC Cutscenes Terrain 52

Game Daily

MARCH 10, 2023

But Omega Royale, which began development three years ago, will be a ten-player fight to the death, in which players individually take on waves of enemies, but must also send baddy boosts against human players. More sophisticated games soon emerged that featured deck-building and MOBA elements. It’s like any deck-building game.

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Co-op Mechanics Balance Build 52

Deconstructor of Fun

FEBRUARY 12, 2024

This is a balance play to ensure players are completing the pass at a speed necessary to maximize player attention while reducing economic inflation from free pass rewards. That’s because these new tiered purchase options include an old fan favorite, luck mechanics! Thus driving on player engagement and stickiness.

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Mechanics Content Feature Mobile 59

Deconstructor of Fun

APRIL 25, 2022

Submit your most up-to-date playable build, pitch deck, and gameplay video. The game won over millions of gamers with the adorable Cookie characters and a perfect mashup of RPG and Build & Harvest mechanics. Build & Harvest Mode in Cookie Run: Kingdom. Create an account 2. Two key words - cuteness and mashup.

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Baking Simulation Build Animation 52

PreMortem.Games

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

That’s when I formed the idea of building a new colony sim from the ground up, centered around the idea of exploration and travel.” RimWorld is balanced around sitting on a single map, with everything easily accessible. It looked really exciting to me”, he says. Exceedingly difficult The team first built the game in Unity.

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Dev Development Prototyping Feature 115

Grid Sage Games

OCTOBER 2, 2022

The entire mechanic revolves around a single new utility: the Scrap Engine. Although in both cases the results are indeed based on the inputs, the process is not deterministic, so it’s not a pure “crafting” mechanic in that sense. A new utility is born. Constructs can be power sources, propulsion, or weapons.

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Engine Engineering Mechanics Balance 52

The Bottom Feeder

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

Is that new mechanic fun? That fight really stomped me." "Do So I went onto Twitch and YouTube and watched how Serious Gamerz did the hard fights. The fights were just too fast and chaotic for anything else, especially against the tough bosses. Then they went back to standard tactics and concentrating on the fight.

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Fighting Games Balance Writing 90

Radiator Blog

AUGUST 12, 2022

I liked the idea of climbing / descending a big weird tree, and building it in Quake would be a big challenge, so that's what I prototyped first. I wanted to emphasize the tree's influence on the landscape, and it felt less artificial than building walls or random cliffs. It wasn't really fun to fight on the actual tree branches.

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Prototyping Fantasy Fighting Terrain 52

Game Refinery

OCTOBER 26, 2023

The ever-changing nature of the mobile market means that new monetization mechanics are constantly emerging and evolving. One of the most popular monetization mechanics is the subscription-based battle pass , which was introduced via Valve’s DOTA 2 in 2013 but popularized by the worldwide phenomenon, Fortnite.

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Mobile Gaming Mobile Mobile Co-op 82

Deconstructor of Fun

SEPTEMBER 28, 2020

This analysis is written by Taras Koshelev (Lead Game Designer at My.Games Venture Capital) who focused on game mechanics and loops and Michail Katkoff (Founder of Savage Game Studios) who covered the market and marketability. After carefully composing a balanced team of fighters, the player takes their party of stalwart heroes into battle.

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Puzzle Tile Mechanics Build 52

Deconstructor of Fun

JUNE 3, 2019

This deconstruction will cover: The game’s core loop Why having chosen a basic match-3 mechanic was a safe bet What other games have tried The game’s features and to which kinds of players it caters How time-limited offers and events are run successfully. The Matchers Gonna Match E&P’s core gameplay is carefully designed and balanced.

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Puzzle Build Feature Balance 52

Deconstructor of Fun

APRIL 15, 2024

The gameplay heavily relies on RNG-based mechanics and incentivizes long sessions, resembling an RPG-themed slot machine. However, there are notable areas for improvement such as refining gacha mechanics, optimizing ad placements, and enhancing social features to foster long-term retention and revenue growth.

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Point and Click Mechanics Feature Content 97

Sirlin

JULY 25, 2019

I’m aware that this is a subjective claim, that people will be skeptical, and rightly so because so many other fighting have done a questionable job with “accessibility.” User Interface for Friend Matches This is the kind of innovation that isn’t new to the world, but it IS new to fighting games. Has it been done in a fighting game?

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Fantasy Feature Fighting Point and Click 52

Deconstructor of Fun

DECEMBER 5, 2021

Go in, loot, fight players and/or AIs, survive and extract’ is the formula pioneered by DayZ , and later honed by Escape From Tarkov , which gets the heart pumping even after thousands of play sessions. You begin the game with a rusty, war-torn house that is slowly turning into a much more pleasant building with every level.

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Console Mobile Mobile PC 59

Grid Sage Games

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

The interesting part is that you can see all these statues on the way in, foreshadowing potentially difficult bottlenecks on the way out (assuming you can’t directly confront and outright destroy all the living statues, a decent assumption for many builds). Not universally so, to be sure, but grind tends to be more of a roguelite thing.

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Point and Click Mechanics Open World Feature 52

Grid Sage Games

JULY 17, 2022

I’m reminded of Beta 11’s spicing up the main complex with Heavies and Cargo Convoys , though in this case it’s not just adding one or two new mechanics but instead about turning Garrisons into proper branch maps in terms of content distribution… Encounter Architecture.

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Beta Content Balance Mechanics 52

Radiator Blog

NOVEMBER 10, 2021

This fighting game health mechanic is too fussy and unreliable for a busy shooter. So to survive fights for the first half of the game, you have to trust the level designers to leave enough health consumables around, Doom / Quake style. no mind control) only 5 powers (+1 PvP only power). Limited regen (e.g.

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Fighting NPC Puzzle AI 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MAY 15, 2022

Balancing relies heavily on gear, maps are crowded with question marks, Boss fights feature repetitive mechanisms. Battle: Simplified skill point system and amazing visual effects The core of the skill system relates to balancing and mechanisms. In the later game, raid mechanisms become quite rich.

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Cutscenes Art Content Mechanics 52

Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 17, 2020

Over the past year, Hypercasual saw massive diversification in terms of core mechanic design. But with an increasing number of hypercasual games fighting for the same audience with often very similar visuals, gameplay motivations and marketing tactics, IPMs are bound to suffer and therefore indicating market saturation.

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Mechanics Platformer Studios Data 52

Deconstructor of Fun

DECEMBER 12, 2021

Executive Summary Sky Mavis’ mission is far more about spurring economic opportunity through play rather than about building an amazing game. Essentially, the goal is to build an Axie Infinity Universe with more ways to earn and spend tokens (and therefore generate more ongoing revenue). Some concerns are easier to solve than others.

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Mechanics Balance Games Game Design 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MARCH 27, 2019

But it can also be a challenge as previous iterations from an over a decade ago build unrealistic expectations and place the bar very high. Rather, the biggest problem, in our opinion, is that the game doesn’t build a great real-time PvP experience that could rival Clash Royale. Having such a nostalgy hungry fanbase is a great asset.

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Mobile Mobile Mobile Gaming Build 52

Sirlin

SEPTEMBER 3, 2015

In case you missed the first two: #1 Codex Design: Cards and Gold As Resources #2 Codex Design: Heroes and Tech Buildings. You can have any of your units or heroes directly attack anything with hit points—any unit, hero, or building of the opponent’s. There's a delicate balance in Codex between rushing down and teching up.

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Build Mechanics Feature Fighting 52

Deconstructor of Fun

SEPTEMBER 19, 2022

This means that the player has to carefully build up big combinations on the board, at the right time, to max out the damage output. The usage of spells, tactics, and magic items : Mechanics reminiscent of classic puzzle game boosters, but with more limited uses. And the meta component outside the main puzzle gameplay is more limited.

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Puzzle Mechanics Content Dev 52

Deconstructor of Fun

APRIL 2, 2022

Understanding players and marketability have also become more important, leading to larger companies increasingly building content fortresses – in which they acquire a user and move them between games in their portfolio. This has led to a resurgence in the value of IP in the market, as it is now harder to get new users.

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Mobile Mobile Balance Mobile Gaming 52

Keith Burgun

JANUARY 27, 2023

I mean, you spend a LOT of time fighting in this game. In JRPGs, when the battles are fun, it’s actually usually that the party-building / character configuration mechanics are good. One last thing about the combat: it is very poorly balanced. And the battles kind of suck. Let’s talk about that.

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Writing Fantasy Fighting Cutscenes 52

Brand Game Development

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

Tasty Humans is a 30-60 minute, tile-laying, pattern-building game for 1-4 players. As you and your fellow monsters toss around the village king, you attract a steady buffet of adventurers who try – poorly – to put up a fight! No downtime, renewed fun in each game and perfect balance regardless of the number of players.

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Tile Point and Click Games Art 130

Deconstructor of Fun

NOVEMBER 25, 2019

However, Tencent loves to make its internal developers fight over the same prize, even if it means making the same game twice. Both titles featured PUBG’s signature battle royale gameplay and mechanics ported to the mobile format, though the two studios had different approaches. TiMi’s port of PUBG was called PUBG: Army Attack.

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Mobile Mobile FPS Console 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MAY 4, 2020

This game packs some of the best balanced, nerve- wracking, strategic gameplay on a mobile device. The game achieves this by gradually increasing upgrade costs (and can get away with it since most upgrades feel meaningful) and by releasing new town halls, unlocking new levels of buildings and units (plus new ones).

Puzzle 52

Puzzle Mobile Mobile Mobile Gaming 52

Deconstructor of Fun

AUGUST 27, 2019

A well balanced revenue market share split across the East and West. Normal levels (node 1 and 3) are combined with an angel offer (2) and further support in node 4 before the boss fight. Another angel encounter here would not only feel repetitive, but would also break the difficulty flow leading up to the boss fight.

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Balance Content Mechanics Mobile 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MARCH 4, 2019

All of which results in a near slots experience that makes the most of addictive slots player psychology , while using casual versions of proven F2P mid-core mechanics to capitalise on feelings of Loss Aversion and Skinner Box driven habit forming. Most definitely, “Spins” drive all core loop engagement. Attacks and Raids - PvP Gameplay.

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UX Mechanics Build Point and Click 52