PreMortem.Games

JUNE 26, 2025

We looked into different time-based mechanics and created a small prototype, but then realized how complicated it will be to really turn it into a game. But, as Schön recalls, they enjoyed the world, story and mechanics so much that they simply could not stop working on it. “So That ambition required a careful balancing act.

Prototyping 104

Prototyping Mechanics Cutscenes Balance 104

PreMortem.Games

FEBRUARY 10, 2025

“The balancing of the game between two players,” Olczyk explains. We throw ideas around, different puzzle mechanics, narrative elements and unique interactions,” Olczyk says. ” The solution was the comic book art style, which not only makes the game visually engaging but also complements the detective theme.

Puzzle 138

Puzzle Mechanics Communications Studios 138

GamesIndustry.biz

JULY 11, 2025

The basic puzzle formula of matching squares by colour is at the core of it, but a new Burst mechanic lets players charge up a bar then build a monstrously high combo by adding blocks to a growing square dropped into the grid. Its an addition that gives the formula a little extra adrenaline rush.

Puzzle 119

Puzzle Entertainment Art Point and Click 119

iXie gaming

MAY 29, 2025

Or that one perfectly timed PvP patch that brought balance (and chaos) back to your favorite shooter. Time-to-Kill (TTK) & Combat Data: For PvP-heavy games, balance is everything. The art lies in timing, and the science lies in roadmap design. Trust is the new retention mechanic. Now flip that. Its foundational.

Data 52

Data Balance Content Quality Assurance 52

iXie gaming

MARCH 28, 2025

Behind every immersive world lies a meticulously crafted game art pipeline, a process where raw ideas evolve into interactive, polished assets. Game art isnt just about making things look good. Lets break down the seven critical phases of the game art pipeline and explore how studios bring stunning, optimized visuals to life.

Concepts 52

Concepts Art Texture Asset 52

iXie gaming

MARCH 2, 2025

Many developers leverage art production services to create bespoke assets that enhance visual storytelling while maintaining performance efficiency. to deliver fluid animation, layered environments, and tight control mechanics. is a playground for creative expression, balancing modern mechanics with timeless design principles.

Art 52

Art Game Designer Game Design Hitbox 52

Played with Fire

APRIL 2, 2025

Studies have demonstrated significant improvements in reaction times through VR training: Simple and Complex Reaction Times: Research on mixed martial arts (MMA) athletes found that VR-based coordination training significantly improved both simple and complex reaction speeds.

Esports 52

Esports Educational Education Balance 52

Game Refinery

MARCH 20, 2025

Once acquired, players could use these characters in battles but also interact with them through messages and other in-game social mechanics. Some of these could be obtained by playing through the event, while others required in-app purchases, so there was a balance in trying to keep all players relatively happy.

Animation 130

Animation Animation Mobile Gaming Mobile 130

Logic Simplified

JULY 9, 2025

Your spawning system should strike a balance - enough unpredictability to stay interesting, but not so wild that it ruins the game flow. Ramp things up gradually, introduce new mechanics bit by bit, and be smart about move limits. RNG: The Art of Controlled Chaos Randomness is baked into Match 3 games.

Tile 59

Tile Game Developer Game Development Development 59

PreMortem.Games

FEBRUARY 24, 2025

According to Carlos Casals , 3D Artist and Co-founder of Ticking Clock Games, “We were throwing around all sorts of mechanics and game genres, but we kept coming back to one image; a flying ship.” ” In terms of the 2D art, the team was fortunate to find an artist that clicked. It just felt like the right fit.”

Point and Click 104

Point and Click Games Feature Balance 104

iXie gaming

JULY 11, 2025

Stylized art flips the script. Understanding Stylization Stylized art breaks from realism to deliver emotion, symbolism, and storytelling through abstraction. By contrast, realistic art aims to mirror life, leveraging high-fidelity rendering, lifelike textures, and accurate lighting models. Why Choose Stylized Art?

Art 52

Art Texture Render Games 52

PreMortem.Games

DECEMBER 16, 2024

RimWorld is balanced around sitting on a single map, with everything easily accessible. “Ricky has his own unique art style that he brought into the process.” That’s when I formed the idea of building a new colony sim from the ground up, centered around the idea of exploration and travel.

Dev 104

Dev Development Feature Prototyping 104

Brand Game Development

APRIL 28, 2017

Core Engine: If you strip out all the mechanics that put obstacles in your players’ path, what’s left? The core engine is the bare minimum set of mechanics you need to have a functioning game. Mechanics: Games are not very good until you have constraints that make it hard for players to achieve the objective.

Mechanics 130

Mechanics Communications Games Engineering 130

Brand Game Development

JULY 14, 2017

When I talk about game design itself, I often talk about the relentless play-testing , balancing , and different levels of communication that you must master so that your game is understood and enjoyed. But what about art? I don’t necessarily mean art as in pretty pictures, beautiful graphics, and appealing boxes.

Art 130

Art Dev Mechanics Game Developer 130

Game Refinery

MAY 4, 2023

In the past, hybridization was mainly seen in 4X strategy games that merged with puzzle and idle RPG mechanics , but in recent months this phenomenon has spread to titles of all shapes and sizes across the market – not just the hybrid-casual genre. Mechanically, the mode is relatively similar to Blizzard’s Hearthstone.

Mobile Gaming 296

Mobile Gaming Mobile Mobile Mechanics 296

Logic Simplified

AUGUST 8, 2023

Since most of us are unaware of the process of creating a game, we usually confuse game design and game art as being the same. In this blog, we will discuss the difference between game art vs game design and how each plays a unique role in game development. What is the difference between game art vs game design?

Game Designer 86

Game Designer Game Design Art Prop 86

Brand Game Development

JULY 17, 2017

The following excerpt is from Games Speak through Mechanics, Not Rules (Dev Diary: 04/28/17). If you strip out all the mechanics that put obstacles in your players’ path, what’s left? The core engine is the bare minimum set of mechanics you need to have a functioning game. That’s a mechanic. Chess tells a story.

Communications 130

Communications Game Developer Game Development Development 130

PreMortem.Games

JANUARY 15, 2024

With my artistic background, I focused less on programming and mechanics, and more on storytelling and visuals.” The game’s graphics showcase a distinctive fusion of modern 3D visuals with a nostalgic pixel-art look. I opted for low poly 3D models with realistic textures, which I pixelated to harmonise with the pixel art style.

Pixel 138

Pixel Point and Click Art Games 138

PreMortem.Games

OCTOBER 25, 2024

It’s a brutal journey of persistence, frustration, and constant restarts, where the stakes are as emotional as they are mechanical. Internal debate The development of Ascending Inferno wasn’t just about embracing punishing mechanics though. Left: the original concept art for the logo, right: the final logo. experience.

Studios 118

Studios Indy Mechanics Games 118

Grid Sage Games

NOVEMBER 14, 2023

Beta 11 was a huge milestone in Cogmind development, having completed a comprehensive review of all items and their stats and mechanics in order to rebalance where necessary, a process I wrote about in detail last year. As part of this drive, for months I’ve been creating over 100 new items, most of them including new mechanics.

Balance 52

Balance Mechanics Beta Alpha 52

Grid Sage Games

NOVEMBER 16, 2023

Cogmind generally has fewer such direct escape options, but teleport mechanics are out there, if an advanced tech not usually available until the late game. How about we add one, maybe using this new type of charging mechanism (described towards the end). Controlled Teleporting?

Mechanics 52

Mechanics Concepts Balance Terrain 52

PreMortem.Games

SEPTEMBER 25, 2024

With my artistic background, I focused less on programming and mechanics, and more on storytelling and visuals.” The game’s graphics showcase a distinctive fusion of modern 3D visuals with a nostalgic pixel-art look. I opted for low poly 3D models with realistic textures, which I pixelated to harmonise with the pixel art style.

Pixel 104

Pixel Point and Click Art Balance 104

Brand Game Development

DECEMBER 11, 2017

Game rules are how we regulate the mechanics of our games so that they are consistent with the messages we want to send to players. Sean: Guidelines for writing good rules really boils down to learning the art of instruction and communication. I’d say the main tool set for understanding and wielding that art form is empathy.

Mechanics 130

Mechanics Writing Concepts Games 130

PreMortem.Games

SEPTEMBER 13, 2024

Combining these elements with sim mechanics meant we could come up with some exciting, innovative gameplay.” But it took some tweaking to get the right balance. Wu emphasizes the importance of creating a game that strikes a balance between realism and player enjoyment. It showed that players preferred a less hardcore approach.

Studios 104

Studios Balance Content Mechanics 104

PreMortem.Games

APRIL 17, 2023

But the morale and quality of life it can bring can be quite motivating, balancing & inspiring – if not all the above.” And I see it as the ultimate compilation of art(s) – light, sound, visuals, narrative, mechanics, psychology – a crafted or distilled experience. Balance your mental health.

Game Developer 197

Game Developer Game Development Development Games 197

PreMortem.Games

JULY 1, 2024

Their first game, Genesis Noir, was already a moving work of art. This field of visual art emphasizes abstraction and graphic design to compress storytelling into quick digestible and fun chunks.” Now, with the follow-up, Nirvana Noir , the New York-based indie studio Feral Cat Den is crafting audio-visual poetry in motion. he says.

Art 138

Art Graphics Games Puzzle 138

Radiator Blog

MARCH 16, 2023

Each level also had unique mechanics and art styles that all tied into a cohesive whole. Meanwhile, VR dev continues, as artists learn Unreal 4's art pipeline and do lookdev to figure out how to update the Psychonauts art style from 2005 to 2015. This "what's the purpose of combat?"

Art 147

Art Concepts Dev Studios 147

PreMortem.Games

MAY 24, 2023

Combining these elements with sim mechanics meant we could come up with some exciting, innovative gameplay.” But it took some tweaking to get the right balance. Wu emphasizes the importance of creating a game that strikes a balance between realism and player enjoyment. It showed that players preferred a less hardcore approach.

Studios 104

Studios Balance Content Playtesting 104

Brand Game Development

NOVEMBER 24, 2017

Once the core engine and mechanics are in place, board games can be dragged down by easy-to-fix but hard-to-identify issues. Art is never finished, just shipped. I’d racked up a few plays on version I-3 of Highways & Byways , but changing Event Card discard rules is a big mechanic change, so I reset the count to zero.

Point and Click 130

Point and Click Games Dev Mechanics 130

Moonmana

AUGUST 15, 2022

Today due to applying top-notch technologies and modern approaches in game development, games can be a real work of art. Talking about sci-fi 3D art, we should point out the current crazy popularity of this genre. Losing the balance of good storytelling and credible science. . Diving into the fantasy trap too deep. .

Art 52

Art Fantasy Games Concepts 52

iXie gaming

MAY 24, 2023

As AI continues to advance, the future of art and AI in game development holds tremendous promise. In this article, we’ll explore the evolving relationship between art production and AI, discussing their potential impact on the gaming industry.

AI 52

AI Art Simulation Games 52

PreMortem.Games

MARCH 1, 2024

A large majority of the art was created from scratch, but Hartley admits having used a few asset packs to help speed up development. “I I feel there’s nothing worse than seeing an art asset in another game that’s identical to the one you’re using. “I

Studios 104

Studios Prototyping Visual Scripting Art 104

Brand Game Development

AUGUST 11, 2017

Between 7 Subtle Player Behaviors You Should Notice When Play-Testing and The Art of the Play Test: Designing Tests and Keeping Records , you might think that’s all I’ve got on my mind. The board art was then recycled for the Byway cards, which reference specific places on the board. Period, point blank.

Point and Click 100

Point and Click Games Art Communications 100

PreMortem.Games

FEBRUARY 2, 2024

In this greyboxing phase I usually put a few people to play and observe if the results were positive and if the flow of the level worked as planned, and only then finish with the art.” For this, the more cartoonish art style of the world and characters seemed like a good option to achieve this result.” Beware of mutant scope.

Dev 163

Dev Advertising Internet Development 163

Logic Simplified

AUGUST 14, 2023

A playtest is a method to see what works in terms of gameplay mechanics. Game app developers can learn much about how players will respond to the game’s mechanics, controls, level design and other elements through playtesting. These insights can help to fine-tune numerous game elements like flow, pacing, UI, difficulty balance, etc.

Playtesting 92

Playtesting Game Designer Game Design Games 92

Game Dev Unchained

MAY 21, 2024

’ Through our discussion, I gained a profound appreciation for the delicate balance required to honor the original’s spirit while introducing innovative gameplay mechanics that captivate a new generation of gamers. This balance was achieved through a combination of careful planning and creative experimentation.

Game Developer 52

Game Developer Game Development Development Balance 52

Logic Simplified

SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

Level design is a part of video game design that focuses specifically on designing game levels (an area or stage a player must complete before moving on to the next one) while keeping in mind the architecture, layout, video game mechanics , and pace to keep the players invested in the game. Define the gameplay mechanics.

Mechanics 64

Mechanics Games Playtesting Concepts 64