There’s a tendency I’ve noticed in myself and other designers to try to fix everything in a game by focusing on the core mechanics, the basic rules of the game. When I was working on the Kayn Somos expansion for Star Wars: Imperial Assault, my first instinct in designing my mission was to look for […]

It’s time for the epic conclusion with the final boss! We explore how the designers gave this fight depth and a process of evolving discovery, as well as creating a sense of paranoia with a few simple mechanics. A fitting climax to an extraordinary game. Why couldn’t the other bosses be this good?  

Games are processes. Designing processes interests me. Designing a security screening process for airports is similar to designing a game. It just has different design goals. Looking at complaints against America’s TSA security process reveals some design lessons. First off, a lot of people think the process is stupid. It’s inconvenient and repeatedly misses things. […]

Our fans have told us that they love our critique-a-card segment when we analyze the design of a single fan-made MTG card. Well how about a whole fan-made booster pack from a fan-made set?  How’s that for a holiday gift! You can find the whole wonderful episode here.

One of the hardest phrases for a lot of people, myself included, to say is “I was wrong”. Closely followed by, “I didn’t know that” or, “I don’t know”. I’ve often found myself making excuses or not wanting to admit a mistake, or even feeling a completely irrational sense of resentment when someone ends up […]

Mixed Martial Arts is a shuffle-building head to head fighting game. It’s a love letter to one of my favorite games growing up, Star Wars – Epic Duels. The rules can be taught in under 5 minutes (I usually teach them in less than 2) and games are lightning fast. There’s also a wealth of […]

We reach the final boss. On the way we execute the famous holy water run and dig into the wicked design of the final level. Explore how the designers added extensive gameplay by just shifting a few pixels on the screen. These guys are good.

One podcast wasn’t enough. Today we dig further into why High Difficulty is the sonic screwdriver of rpg adventure design and how to implement it successfully into a campaign. You can listen to it here.

A lot of designers, writers and artists I work with often have an impulse to do things differently. Differently than what? Differently than whatever is normally done of course. Why? Because it’s more creative! Imagine applying this thinking to fields where success and failure are more clear and objective. Why are you trying to cure this […]

Last weekend Reuben and I got a chance to interview the creator of the incredible Multiverse tool for MTG set creation, the man who discovered a way to perform computations MTG cards and the entity that finally proved why Phasing should return to standard… And it was all the same person! You can listen to the whole […]