Character Profiles Part of my current job involves creating the character profiles for my client’s project. Now, I can’t go into the specific details of what I’m doing (for obvious reasons), but I thought I would reflect on how important it is to do this work. Although I’ve already discussed characters, in an earlier column, …
Obstacles of Desire One of my favourite obstacles in a game was in Beneath a Steel Sky. Though I worked on this game, I didn’t contribute to the gameplay design; so I think it’s okay for me to feel this way. One of the reasons I enjoyed my eleven years with Revolution was that I …
Puzzling Through the Obstacles One of the criticisms levelled at Adventure Games these days is that they can feel a little old fashioned. I’m increasingly of the opinion that this is because they contain these things we refer to as “puzzles”. This term can then create the wrong idea in people’s heads as to what …
Shall we interface? Have you ever picked up your joypad or approached your keyboard and found that you struggled to play the game that’s in the machine because the interface felt wrong? Have you ever given up on a game simply because you were fighting the interface more than playing the game? When the interface …
Level 17 Made Me Cry This may seem like I’m being a little slow on the uptake, but I wanted to finish off my two-part piece on mechanics design before writing this. Besides, it’s always best to ruminate on these things for a little while before launching into commentary. Reacting too swiftly to news, people’s …
Gameplay Mechanics part 2 So, it’s a week later and we’ve called the design team together to discuss the results of the brainstorming session. We’ve all typed up our thoughts or scribbled notes in the margins of the brainstorming list. The project is in the early stages, so we’re all really excited about it. We …
Gameplay Mechanics About eight years ago, I was sent a game design handwritten on two sheets of A4 paper with one very small map drawn in pencil. Most of the writing described a story, rather than gameplay, but it was clear that the guy who sent it thought that we’d just take it and implement …
Motivation and Conflict Like many other aspects of game development, motivation is two-pronged. Not only do you need to consider the motivation of what drives the player character through the game’s story, you also need to consider how to keep the player motivated to continue playing the game. All games, whether they have a story …
Dialogue? What dialogue?Part Three That this subject had stretched itself to a third column shows the importance I feel that dialogue plays in story and character driven games. As I touched on briefly last time, if vital game information is revealed through dialogue, conversations should not be separated out from the overall gameplay. This means …
Dialogue? What dialogue?Part Two There are many games where dialogue is an important part of the gameplay experience, yet it’s often handled in a way that strikes me as being far too convenient. Supporting characters almost fall over themselves in their eagerness to give the player the information he needs to progress. The following lines …
I’m going to blast them all onto the blog in one go. You have been warned! 🙂 Dialogue? What dialogue?Part One Not a simple subject even at the best of times, I realised as I was writing this that what I wanted to touch on could only be done by spreading it over two columns. …
I’ve really been lax in updating these and it’s been nearly a year since I posted the last one, which was the tenth in the series. So thanks to Erwan for giving me a nudge on this. I’ve also been through the older posts and attached labels to them so that you can find them …