Radiator Blog

APRIL 1, 2022

Within broader game design culture, the theme also invokes an awkward aspect of cultural appropriation and reduction. On the other hand, why shouldn't our fantasy settings involve Mesoamerican and Andean influences? The massing was inspired by this "Forgotten Temple" concept art by Jonas Ellermann (above).

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Rampant Games

NOVEMBER 7, 2022

Thanks to a crazy head engineer with a god complex, ten thousand players are now playing an ultra-realistic fantasy game in a virtual world with real-world stakes. So author Reki Kawahara drew on his familiarity with the games of the day and their systems to create what he thought would be a super-cool virtual reality game.

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Keith Burgun

APRIL 10, 2023

As I’ve gone through the Final Fantasy series recently , it’s notable that the games used to have secrets, and now, they pretty much don’t anymore. Somewhere in the late 90s, and certainly by the mid 2000s, it was decided that secrets are bad and games shouldn’t have them. They are findable.

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Keith Burgun

JULY 29, 2022

So what we end up with, over time, is a “tradition”, or traditions within a blanket term like “RPG” There are so-called “ARPGs” like Diablo, JRPGs like Final Fantasy, CRPGs like Ultima, tactical RPGs like Fire Emblem, and so on. Over the years, I have loved games in all of these categories.

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Radiator Blog

JUNE 2, 2023

In this sense, playing a 75% finished game is more useful than playing a 100% finished game. So this post will focus on my read of the general game design and player experience. The player never quite experiences these ideas in the game itself. Similarly, you can see where the core game design wanted to hit.

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Raph Koster

SEPTEMBER 1, 2022

So simulationism was born as a way to make fantasy worlds richer, more immersive… in a sense, to “make the ride better.” Not that I coined them, of course; the concepts were very much in the air. It’s stuff that single-player game designers know how to do. Breadcrumbs, dialogue trees, cutscenes, progression paths.

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Radiator Blog

NOVEMBER 10, 2021

This is similar to my tactics games writeup and Enderal (huge Skyrim mod) writeup where I spoil some interesting game designer / systems design things. I don't discuss much of the game narrative. I assume general game design knowledge but minimal Deathloop-specific knowledge.

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