The first few mintues of your game make a crazy amount of difference. Getting Over It worked because people knew what they were getting into. In the opening dev explains the point of the game and what’s about to happen. He tells you that this is a game about the frustration of starting over. You’re […]
“Modder’s Law – The more meticulously hand-crafted the game, world, and lore, the more fun it is to make an absolute mess of it.” Replacing Skyrim’s dragons with Thomas the Tank Engine is fun because it’s ridiculous. Players like the feeling of getting away with something, doing things in ways other than the devs expected. […]
“If you were turning on one cheat to make your game much easier to beat, what would it be? This tells you a lot more about your game than anything else.” Heard this from a YouTuber called Surnex, and got me thinking. In reality there’s a lot of ways to cheese the idea behind this […]
Here’s how we solved a huge problem that led to players feeling dumb, frustrated, and mad at themselves… When they should have been mad at us. Faeria is a unique strategy cardgame where players build the board they play on each match. Most of your focus is on the cards you’re playing, but you also […]
Among the game devs that I mentor, it’s never the seniors that ask me the headache-causing questions. It’s the college students. Often they’re sending me some thought-provoking article or paper on the “nature of games as a medium”. These pieces get so far away from how I view design in general and art as a […]
Having great ideas is nice, it just doesn’t matter unless you can sell them to the decision-makers. As you gain skills as a designer, you’re more likely to know better than the people you report to. Often you’ll be reporting to someone who hasn’t thought deeply about your problem space, or isn’t a designer at […]
Dan Felder 