No, you won’t. Not if you know the trick. The Blast Mask’s description hides a huge secret. Much of “retro game magic” comes from designs that follow this pattern. Bombs are an important exploration tool in Majora’s Mask. You use them to blow open secret areas. It’s annoying when you run out of bombs, which […]
In one project, I had an early story moment warn players to NOT read any books they came across – they contain only Lies. After we added that to the opening, the number of books players read in the game tripled. We started using this for other tutorials too. I called them “Reverse-Tutorials” because they […]
Ratatouille is a wonderful movie about creative work, yet people miss the central message. It’s NOT, “Anyone can cook.” Chef Gusteau’s full line: “Anyone can cook, but only the fearless can be great!” My favorite moment in the movie isn’t the critic’s reaction. It’s this exchange between the chefs Colette and Linguini. β’ ππΌπΉπ²πππ²: I know […]
Why do players who skip 30-second cutscenes in most games hungrily watch 2 hour videos explaining the lore of Hollow Knight or Elden Ring? Itβs not that those 30-second cutscenes are terribly written either. Simple: “Soulsborne Storytelling” isnβt Storytelling. Its Archaeology. Think of the player as an archaeologist exploring the ruins of a lost empire. […]
About 6 years ago I ran more than 57 tabletop RPG sessions in 3 months – while working full time as a senior game designer. Nearly all of it was original content. My goal was to challenge myself to learn how to design and iterate faster. By improving the speed at which we can make […]
At Riot Games one of the designers reporting to me asked me a perfect question. “You’re the newest designer on the team… How do you keep getting new features on the roadmap?” I was surprised. I figured the other designers just liked the status quo. Nope, apparently they’d been trying to pitch a lot of […]
Last week, I had just 8 hours to design a combat system for a client. I’m fast, but that wasn’t enough time to design a core gameplay system. However… It was π£π’π³π¦ππΊ enough time to design 3 of them! Surprisingly, and there’s some science on this, designing 3 solutions often takes less time and mental […]
The Yu-Gi-Oh! trading cardgame’s world championships were a beautiful disaster. I’ve never seen anything like this. To understand what just happened, I need to explain what banning a card truly means to a trading cardgame, and what it implies about what’s going on the dev processes behind the scenes. Banning a card from competitive play […]
Got a complex game? Have you tried turning the tutorial into a π«ππ°ππ«π? Curiosity is one of the strongest drivers of human motivation. It can even override rationality and survival instincts. If you put a sign on a door that says “whatever you do, DO NOT OPEN THIS DOOR” we all know people are going […]
When I run into a difficult design choice, where multiple options look good for my goals, I ask myself 3 questions: 1. How important is it we get this decision right? If a decision can be easily changed later, or is a choice between multiple good, workable options, might as well just pick something and […]
