Designer Notes

SEPTEMBER 6, 2023

Hi everyone, I’m Soren Johnson, and welcome to You Have No Idea How Hard It Is To Run A Sweatshop Here are the published games that I’ve worked on over my career, some of which I will touch on over the next hour. I’d like to talk about some of these examples today and examine how best to build meaning in our games.

Mechanics 75

Mechanics Game Design Game Designer Build 75

Radiator Blog

OCTOBER 13, 2022

The high visual polish and stellar production values adorn a solid but predictable gameplay loop: you fight through dungeons with random rooms / enemies, collect resources, and bring them back to your hub to build up your village and its inhabitants. The cult of the game industry is most powerful of all.

Indy 52

Indy Film Games Puzzle 52

The Bottom Feeder

OCTOBER 18, 2023

At some point in the last several decades of video games, everything became a role-playing game. Turns out, if your game design is a little lacking, all you need to do is spackle on a bit of "Make bars fill up to make numbers get bigger to make bars fill up." The trick is making sure the fighting part is engaging.

Games 75

Games Fantasy Fighting Art 75

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that are never quite worth taking advantage of, items that haven’t lived up to their potential, or were later superseded by other options but remained unchanged, or even long-term experiments that were included at some point but never updated/expanded/removed.

Balance 52

Balance Mechanics Beta Prototyping 52

Grid Sage Games

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

Being able to backtrack is generally going to be more realistic in the RPG sense--of course your character should be able to go back and pick up that item they left behind, or fight that enemy that scared you away before. In a game setting, though, this can be quite an annoyance from a design perspective (harder to balance!)

Point and Click 52

Point and Click Mechanics Open World Feature 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MAY 15, 2022

Balancing relies heavily on gear, maps are crowded with question marks, Boss fights feature repetitive mechanisms. Though, all of these foibles could be found in other games as well. Battle: Simplified skill point system and amazing visual effects The core of the skill system relates to balancing and mechanisms.

Cutscenes 52

Cutscenes Art Content 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. Failing that (gets blasted in a fight?

Beta 52

Beta Content Balance Mechanics 52