I spent a little time over the weekend playing Ker Nethalas. It’s a solo-focused pen-and-paper dungeon crawler, thematically dark with a heavy emphasis on dice-chucking combat. There’s not a lot of story to the game. If you’re looking for the great narratives that systems like Ironsworn generate, you won’t find them wandering through the endless […]
Spring Cleaning: Tidying-Up Time for the Game Industry Read More »
The current monster title laid out on the table in my office is Folklore: The Affliction from Greenbriar Games. It’s typical of my solo gaming tastes – a messy cooperative fantasy adventure dripping with theme, with an often-vague ruleset and plenty of bookkeeping. As big fantasy board games go, there are better options out there
Balancing Act: Making Great Difficulty Levels in Video Games Read More »
By any metric – critical acclaim, viewership, or audience reaction – Amazon’s live-action Fallout series is an enormous success. Viewers, even those who weren’t previously familiar with the long-running game series, embraced the quirky fifties-inspired post-apocalyptic setting and Fallout’s signature mix of humor, over-the-top gore, and grim themes. The first season of the series is
Lessons from the Wasteland: Why Amazon’s Fallout is a Great Adaptation Read More »
One of the most important foundational elements of the design of many game genres is a clear definition of the player’s goals. When players understand the game’s goals, it adds context to the mechanics and gives purpose to the actions they’ll take during play. The best rulebooks for the myriad of board games on my
Neverending Stories: Designing Games Without Goals Read More »
The Game of the Moment, the one people in my circle have been talking about for the last week – both positively and negatively – is Dragon’s Dogma 2. A sequel to Capcom’s RPG cult classic, the game is currently hovering at a 57% Mixed rating on Steam. Customers have plenty of valid complaints. At
Rub the Right Way: Applying Friction in Game Design Read More »
Helldivers 2 continues to impress. Between the constantly changing events in the dynamic live war, the friendly community, and the engaging core gameplay, it feels like a game built to last. Helldivers 2 innovates in several areas, but the setting is not one of them. Like the original Helldivers, it’s a thinly veiled riff on
Trope or Nope: Innovation and Familiarity in Game Design Read More »
In 1453, the city of Constantinople fell to the Ottoman forces of Sultan Mehmed II. The end of the long siege marked the final chapter of the Byzantine Empire. But the writing had been on the wall for the Byzantines for at least a couple of centuries prior – ever since the devastating plundering of
Shadows of the Past: Great Games with Historical Themes Read More »
Best practices for marketing games have changed dramatically in the last few years. Avoiding coverage of tentpole triple-A titles is impossible during the run-up to their launch, but in an overcrowded marketplace, smaller games have to catch a viral wave to stand out from the pack. There’s an art to improving the chances of a
Good Times: The Cinematic Chaos of Helldivers 2 Read More »
When you curl up with a good novel, you expect the writer to take you on a journey. If the author’s any good, you won’t anticipate every plot beat. You’ll be surprised by the twists and turns of the story, and characters will do and say things you couldn’t have anticipated on page 1. The
Roads Not Taken: Building Better Narratives for Games, Part Two Read More »
I’m keeping it short this week. As the New Year began, I mentioned wanting to write less often about the industry’s problems. Last year was exhausting and I was determined to kick off 2024 with a more hopeful outlook. I still feel good about the long-term future of the game industry. A decade or two
Winter of our Discontent: The Game Industry’s Churn Continues Read More »