Blog Archives
Cohesive Game Experience, Part II
In this three-part video series, we’re continuing to talk about cohesive game experience: what is it, why is it important, and how to achieve it.
Thanks for watching! Feel free to leave any comments below! 🙂
And if you’d like, consider supporting my work on Patreon! Thank you very much!
Cohesive Game Experience, Part I
In this three-part video series, we’re going to talk about cohesive game experience: what is it, why is it important, and how to achieve it.
Thanks for watching! Feel free to leave any comments below! 🙂
And if you’d like, consider supporting my work on Patreon! Thank you very much!
Of Telltale Formula and Game of Thrones
In this video we’ll talk about the so called Telltale formula coined by The Walking Dead, how it should adapt to apply to Game of Thrones franchise, and why Game of Thrones should not allow to retry failed game segments.
Thanks for watching! Feel free to leave any comments below! 🙂
And if you’d like, consider supporting my work on Patreon! Thank you very much!
Why Dark Souls Should Have an Easy Mode
We’re going to talk about the nature of difficulty levels and difficulty scaling, and how that should apply to hardcore games like Dark Souls.
Thanks for watching! Feel free to leave any comments below! 🙂
And if you’d like, consider supporting my work on Patreon! Thank you very much!
Characterization Through Mechanics
In this video, we’ll talk about the importance of mechanics in adding depth and personality to characters in games on example of Thomas Was Alone and few other games, and what things we need to take into account when adding or reusing mechanics in the games we make.
Thanks for watching! Feel free to leave any comments below! 🙂
And if you’d like, consider supporting my work on Patreon! Thank you very much!
Relationship Between the Player and the Game Through Controls
In this video, I look at Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, The Last Guardian and Tearaway Unfolded to talk about how they use controls to elicit feelings and create strong emotional bonds.
Thanks for watching!
The 4 Types of Randomness in Hearthstone
Card games, trading and collectible including, always have had certain randomness to them – at least because the deck is always shuffled so you never know in which order you’ll draw your cards. Hearthstone, being a fully digital card game, tries to expand upon what kind of random effects one can achieve while playing. Some people are happy with these experiments, some are not. But let’s take a look from design perspective at the different kind of randomness in Hearthstone and how they can be perceived by players.
Video Games need to stop HAVING to be fun
I was playing This War of Mine lately, and what I do when I want to write a blog analysis of a game, is I first check online what posts there are already so to know if there’s a particular topic that wasn’t explored (I first wanted to talk about context of mechanics using This War of Mine as an example, but there already is a great post about it on Gamasutra by the game’s lead designer). But seeing some of the feedback and discussions around This War of Mine have inspired me to talk about a more general subject, one that I touch pretty regularly in conversations with other developers, and consider to be very important. Video games need to stop HAVING to be fun.
The Risk/Reward Loop of The Swindle
If you’re interested in learning about risk/reward mechanics and how they affect player psychology, you should definitely check out The Swindle. It’s a procedurally generated heist game and is pretty much fully based on risk/reward loops. In this post I’m going to explore why The Swindle is so good at this.
Azkend 2 and Match-3 Games on Consoles
Recently in a new PS+ free games update I saw a game that I didn’t know anything about, called Azkend 2. As it turns out, it’s a match-3 game (with a mix of hidden object to it), and I’ve got to say… if we want the match-3 genre to become popular on consoles, as it is on PCs and mobile, we need to fully rethink and repurpose match-3 mechanics there.
I’ve worked on match-3 games for almost 2 years, so I hope I’ve learned enough to say that the most important part of any game of the genre, and why it’s so popular, is that it just feels good to play. And I’m not talking about animations and effects and chain reaction mechanics, although it certainly is a part of enjoyment (and of course good level design plays a huge part as well). I’m talking about how it feels good just to do the basic actions of the game. Sluggish controls are the main reason I disliked Azkend 2, no amount of effects or pretty graphics or level design quality would have saved that, and I have a feeling that had I played it on a tablet or PC (the game is released on both), I’d have more enjoyment out of the game.
Stanislav Costiuc 