Remove Balance Remove Concepts Remove Mechanics
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Games Speak through Mechanics, Not Rules

Brand Game Development

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
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How to Design the Mechanics of Your Board Game

Brand Game Development

The core engine is what’s left when you strip a game of mechanics and obstacles. The core engine is the bare minimum set of mechanics and concepts you need to have a functioning (but not necessarily fun) game. Game mechanics are how we bring the core engine of a game to life. What are game mechanics?

Mechanics 130
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How To Play-Test the Rules of Your Board Game

Brand Game Development

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. Short-term mechanic testing. Brandon: At the short-term mechanic testing stages, you’re really just using rules to help underlying mechanics manifest themselves! Private testing.

Mechanics 130
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How to Make Board Game Rules

Brand Game Development

As I said last week , “rules regulate the way mechanics are implemented. A mechanic is the concept behind the game and the rule is the way that it’s handled to ensure balance.” ” Rules are really tricky to do right because you have to serve two purposes: balance the game and communicate clearly.

Balance 130
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In Vampire Hunters you need all of your six hands and a dozen guns to survive

PreMortem.Games

We absolutely love coming up with new ideas and experimenting with crazy concepts.” The key idea was to use the gameplay mechanics from Vampire Survivors in a different genre. “We However, after testing this concept, we thought, ‘Why not add another hand?’ We believed that an old-school FPS would be a perfect fit. The solution?

Concepts 104
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“Post-Balance” Cogmind Item Expansion

Grid Sage Games

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
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Rival guilds and a dragon landlord all contribute to the rowdy charm of Dungeon Inn

PreMortem.Games

The concept evolved from there, eventually centering on an inn caught between two rival guilds of adventurers. From mechanics to level design and even the story and visuals, the team has worked to align everything with this focus. Difficulty Balancing Balancing the games difficulty has proven to be quite difficult.

Balance 129