Brand Game Development

OCTOBER 23, 2017

I’ll also be writing responses for Will. Will: I know for me personally, projects are a big concept. To give a good example, I suck at writing rules and they don’t really interest me. You help balance out each others’ weaknesses. Focusing on the experience over specific mechanics is really, really important.

Prototyping 130

Prototyping Playtesting Games Game Design 130

Brand Game Development

DECEMBER 11, 2017

Game rules are how we regulate the mechanics of our games so that they are consistent with the messages we want to send to players. This guide comes in four parts: What are some guidelines for writing good rules? What are some guidelines for writing good rules? Brandon: What are some guidelines for writing good rules?

Mechanics 130

Mechanics Concepts Writing Games 130

PreMortem.Games

MARCH 1, 2024

It was a very tranquil concept at first, though we found our prototype didn’t offer enough things for the player to do.” For stuff like gameplay balance and feature implementation we have equal input and chime up if there’s something we feel strongly about.

Studios 104

Studios Prototyping Visual Scripting Art 104

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that are never quite worth taking advantage of, items that haven’t lived up to their potential, or were later superseded by other options but remained unchanged, or even long-term experiments that were included at some point but never updated/expanded/removed.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

Balance 52

Balance Mechanics Beta Prototyping 52

Grid Sage Games

MAY 8, 2022

Recently a player asked me a question regarding my game balance philosophy, and while I can often respond to queries by pointing to some previous article, despite all my writing and no doubt occasionally touching on related topics, I had yet to explicitly do any sort of summary of the philosophy behind my gamedev work. Difficulty.

Game Design 52

Game Design Game Designer Balance Games 52

AWS Games

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

AWS provides tools such as AWS EC2 Auto Scaling and Elastic Load Balancing to automate horizontal scaling and distribute traffic across multiple resources. Additionally, proactive capacity redistribution introduces further delay in restoring balanced backend systems.

Platformer 60

Platformer Balance Data Mechanics 60

Brand Game Development

JULY 17, 2017

The following excerpt is from Games Speak through Mechanics, Not Rules (Dev Diary: 04/28/17). If you strip out all the mechanics that put obstacles in your players’ path, what’s left? The core engine is the bare minimum set of mechanics you need to have a functioning game. That’s a mechanic. Chess tells a story.

Communications 130

Communications Game Developer Game Development Development 130

Deconstructor of Fun

FEBRUARY 24, 2020

And games haven't been the most value-driven industry in my opinion (referring to the abuse of addictive mechanics in games for profit, massive company layoffs to meet financial targets and the pressure on teams to deliver, leading to crunch and toxic behaviours, etc.). Do you have a concept in mind?” These are valid questions.

Studios 52

Studios Build Puzzle Concepts 52

Grid Sage Games

NOVEMBER 16, 2023

Cogmind generally has fewer such direct escape options, but teleport mechanics are out there, if an advanced tech not usually available until the late game. As a general concept teleportation technology exists in quite a few varieties throughout the world of Cogmind, though the player only has access to some of them.

Mechanics 52

Mechanics Concepts Balance Terrain 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MAY 20, 2020

The match 3 success trifecta generally consists of: a fun core match mechanic a good metagame with a clean sense of progression a new feature or innovation that brings something different to the space. HDP chose a “collapse” mechanic as their core (similar to Lily’s Garden, Toy Blast, or Toon Blast). The game responds quickly to input.

Puzzle 52

Puzzle Mechanics Content Data 52

Grid Sage Games

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

Items in Rogue may also be cursed and therefore non-removable except via special means, though that is a tangential mechanic tied more to the identification minigame rather than item randomization itself.) Find a Mechanic who may be hanging around a Repair Station. Cogmind’s Strictly Static Items. Low on treads or armor?

Data 52

Data Terrain Balance Mechanics 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. Some concepts: More enemies could show up?

Beta 52

Beta Content Balance Mechanics 52

Deconstructor of Fun

DECEMBER 12, 2021

Sky Mavis was valued at $3B; keep in mind that Sky Mavis owns 21% of the fully diluted AXS token supply, which once fully unlocked will be worth over $7 billion based on prices at the time of this writing. On the other hand, Axie Infinity mashes familiar turn-based gameplay with a Hearthstone-like card battler mechanic.

Mechanics 52

Mechanics Balance Games Game Design 52

Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 17, 2022

The second Clash game was Clash Mini, which entered soft launch around three months from writing this article. One of the main problems in Clash Mini is the strong similarity with Clash Royale , the other Supercell auto battler whose gameplay and unit mechanics are very similar.

Content 52

Content Mechanics Point and Click Mobile 52

Designer Notes

AUGUST 10, 2021

The big change that always gets mentioned when going from Civ 4 to Civ 5 is one-unit-per-tile (1UPT), which is interesting as 1UPT is purely a mechanical – as opposed to thematic – change. 1UPT, on the other hand, helps balance some of the extremities of the Orders system by making it more difficult to kill a unit via stacking.

Tile 40

Tile Point and Click AI Mechanics 40

Deconstructor of Fun

NOVEMBER 3, 2023

The game's complexity, especially for new players, is a significant challenge, with an overwhelming number of game mechanics introduced rapidly. And it doesn’t stop there, the game doesn’t let you sit with any new concept for a reasonable amount of time, the third, fourth and fifth battle only throw more your way (see screenshot below).

Mobile 113

Mobile Mobile Mobile Gaming Concepts 113

Deconstructor of Fun

NOVEMBER 2, 2023

The game's complexity, especially for new players, is a significant challenge, with an overwhelming number of game mechanics introduced rapidly. And it doesn’t stop there, the game doesn’t let you sit with any new concept for a reasonable amount of time, the third, fourth and fifth battle only throw more your way (see screenshot below).

Mobile 52

Mobile Mobile Mobile Gaming Concepts 52

Deconstructor of Fun

NOVEMBER 10, 2020

So this is this tough balance between being really super fast and building something really small and iterative and getting data soon and deciding what to do. Now it's moved to concepting. And they were about to build a game around the concept of Amazon of Atlantis until one of the engineers said, Guys, you've got it all wrong.

Games 52

Games Point and Click Engine Engineering 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MARCH 22, 2021

Royal Match Royal Match is a perfect example of finding success through improvements - not step-change innovation - cherry-picking the strongest mechanics from the best games to create a new top game. Even though Candy Crush Saga had roaring success with the match-3 switcher, King was not the first company to create the mechanic.

Puzzle 69

Puzzle Mobile Mobile Mechanics 69

Brand Game Development

JANUARY 29, 2018

Why writing rules is different than other kinds of writing How to structure a rule book Making rule books clear and concise Your player’s first experience and your rule book Dealing with rule book skimmers Parting advice. Brandon: Both in consulting and in creating books, you’ve done quite a bit of writing.

Writing 130

Writing Games Mechanics Balance 130

Radiator Blog

DECEMBER 12, 2022

Here I depart from Brokeback and take a note from God's Own Country, writing two characters with different ethnicities and upbringings: Jose is a middle class suburban Latino west coaster, and Bud is a white working class rural hill guy. Balancing the weight of each system was difficult. It already feels so fraught to me.

Pixel 52

Pixel Film Art NPC 52

Radiator Blog

JUNE 30, 2022

For balance purposes, I limit the number of voyeurs in the maze, otherwise it can enter a deadlock where there's only voyeurs but no one for them to watch. Violence is usually the first thing to prototype in an action game, but here it surprised me how much work it took to hack violence into an existing system that had no concept of it.

Code 52

Code Educational Education Prototyping 52