A few months back I wrote this blog post about one of my biggest influences, Egoraptor. And since I’m currently drowning in finals, now feels like a good time for another short shout-out post. This time I wanted to share Mark Brown’s Game Maker’s Toolkit. I’ve mentioned his work a few times before in my rant about Mindtrap and in my blog post on genres, but given how much of an influence his work has been on me I wanted to take the time to give him the attention he deserves.
Read moreWhy You Should Focus on Odds, Not Results
What builds suspense in pretty much every element in life is when you care about something but are missing crucial information relating to it. And hey - it turns out every challenging game has unknown outcomes everywhere! You don't know if you’re fast enough to hit the ball. You don't know if your enemy has a trap card. You don't know if you’re going to roll something amazing or awful. You don’t know if your teammate is going to pull through or fail.
The problem is that you usually need to make decisions without being 100% sure what the outcome will be.
Read moreCaptain's Log: Rosalind
At first, I (AC) was opposed to Mitchell’s suggestion of adding a healer. This is because at this stage in development, we had a problem where everyone was being a pacifist most of time: essentially, people tended to sit in the corner and Overcharge by themselves until basically round 6. Boring! Despite my disinclination for specifically encouraging pacifism, I relucantly agreed to try - good game design does mean listening and testing, and I wanted to be a good designer. By round 2 I realized Rosalind’s true effect, and I was glad to have been corrected.
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