PreMortem.Games

MARCH 6, 2025

Traditionally set in modern-day Germany, the new game transports players to 13th century Mongolia. Alice Ruppert , a leading authority on equestrian games with her website The Mane Quest and a producer on the game, spent most of 2023 working on its inception and concept, laying the foundation for a game that faithfully portrays horses.

Simulation 104

Simulation Open World Playtesting Animation 104

PreMortem.Games

MARCH 15, 2024

In Guntouchables by Danish indie developer Game Swing , enemies randomly power up from the upgrades that a team of four players can’t lift out of the levels. This leads to some unexpected and quite frankly, explosive situations as the game progresses. Game Swing was founded in 2013 by five Danish game design students.

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Co-op Playtesting Balance Art 138

Brand Game Development

SEPTEMBER 24, 2019

This week while working on my current board game design, a lot of things have come into focus. Now it’s time to start tweaking board game rules. This is where board game design often becomes very tricky. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.

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Balance Games Communications Mechanics 130

PreMortem.Games

JUNE 24, 2024

Traditionally set in modern-day Germany, the new game transports players to 13th century Mongolia. Alice Ruppert , a leading authority on equestrian games with her website The Mane Quest and a producer on the game, spent most of 2023 working on its inception and concept, laying the foundation for a game that faithfully portrays horses.

Simulation 156

Simulation Open World Games Playtesting 156

PreMortem.Games

APRIL 19, 2024

Pretty impressive for a largely solo-developed game. “At At this stage the game is more like a cross between Factorio and Cosmoteer ”, explains Ryding. Hence the premise of the game is that you are a Von Neumann probe, sent to consume all the resources in the Universe and build the ultimate (final) factory.

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Playtesting Games Mobile Mobile 129

PreMortem.Games

MARCH 30, 2023

The debut game Dredge from New Zealand-based indie studio Black Salt Games oozes atmosphere and manages to combine multiple genres into one haunting adventure. Also, it makes working on the game extra interesting, because we’re trying to create a unique mixture of components that players haven’t seen before.

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Playtesting Prototyping Games Mechanics 104

PreMortem.Games

JULY 1, 2024

Their first game, Genesis Noir, was already a moving work of art. The sheer confidence of steering clear of the beaten track and creating something truly original, comes from experience gained outside the world of video game development. This gave the studio a bit of an outsider perspective.

Art 138

Art Graphics Games Puzzle 138

PreMortem.Games

MARCH 20, 2023

The debut game Dredge from New Zealand-based indie studio Black Salt Games oozes atmosphere and manages to combine multiple genres into one haunting adventure. Also, it makes working on the game extra interesting, because we’re trying to create a unique mixture of components that players haven’t seen before.

Playtesting 104

Playtesting Prototyping Mechanics Games 104

Radiator Blog

FEBRUARY 4, 2024

Taught By Thirst is a new Mesoamerican themed single player Quake map that I made for Remix Jam , a 3 week community level design event where we all adapted multiplayer maps from other games for Quake. Like a lot of Counter-Strike Source, it often feels more like a game engine tech demo rather than something for humans to play.

Fighting 234

Fighting Texture Playtesting Balance 234

Grid Sage Games

NOVEMBER 14, 2023

Good ideas do come spontaneously, albeit inspired by random discussions among players, reactions to various situations in game, even playing other games and consuming various non-game media. Balancing Levers The idea of “post-balance” from this article’s title doesn’t mean no balance.

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Balance Mechanics Beta Alpha 52

Brand Game Development

OCTOBER 23, 2017

I’ve talked about the benefits and challenges of working alone in the board game industry. Yet I’m a bit of an odd beast in the board game development world since most people prefer to work in teams. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators.

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Prototyping Games Playtesting Game Design 130

Brand Game Development

MARCH 29, 2021

From time to time, I see board game creators on social media who have been working on the same design day-in, day-out for years on end. The first are people making a board game as a labor of love, who know they’re taking their sweet time on it, and they’re OK with it. Need help on your board game?

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Game Design Game Designer Games Playtesting 130

PreMortem.Games

SEPTEMBER 13, 2024

White Star Studio, a small and ambitious game development studio based in Shenzen, China, has captured the essence of ancient China in their game Thriving City. When the team first decided to make a sim management style game, they quickly settled on a city building sim. “We But it took some tweaking to get the right balance.

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Studios Content Balance Mechanics 104

PreMortem.Games

MAY 24, 2023

White Star Studio, a small and ambitious game development studio based in Shenzen, China, has captured the essence of ancient China in their game Thriving City. When the team first decided to make a sim management style game, they quickly settled on a city building sim. “We But it took some tweaking to get the right balance.

Studios 104

Studios Balance Content Playtesting 104

Brand Game Development

JUNE 20, 2019

In fact, I’ve even said: “ don’t build a board game, build a business.” Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. Allow me to introduce you to Jeff Beck of Grandpa Beck’s Games. Check it out and see what you think!

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Asset Mechanics Games Balance 130

Tom Francis

MAY 27, 2023

What follows is how my first game of this iteration of Scavenger Chess played out… The board: littered with precious items and horsies. Board setup is random with some attempt at balance, plus a balancing rule: One player chooses which corner to start in, then the other player takes the first turn. Bugle is strong, though.

Playtesting 52

Playtesting Tile Balance Code 52

PreMortem.Games

MAY 19, 2023

Wikkl Works , a Netherlands-based game studio, is working hard on the climbing game New Heights. By using photogrammetry the game offers real life locations like famous rock faces or even well known landmarks. Then we got the idea to scan real world cliffs and mountains into the game using photogrammetry.

Indy 104

Indy Dev Studios Playtesting 104

Logic Simplified

SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

Let’s begin by understanding the concept of levels in a video game. What drives a video game, and what factors control its engagement? In a game, new motives, challenges, and concepts are added to the game world, while ensuring they increase the degree of difficulty at every level. What is Level Design?

Mechanics 60

Mechanics Games Playtesting Concepts 60

Game Dev Unchained

MAY 21, 2024

It’s about capturing the essence of what made the original game special and reinterpreting it for today’s audience.” “It’s about capturing the essence of what made the original game special and reinterpreting it for today’s audience.”

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Game Developer Game Development Development Balance 52

Radiator Blog

MARCH 16, 2023

Last month, game industry documentary makers 2 Player Productions debuted a massive 32-part YouTube game dev doc series Double Fine PsychOdyssey , chronicling the development of Psychonauts 2 from its earliest glimmers of pre-production in 2015 to its final release in 2021.

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Art Concepts Dev Studios 147

PreMortem.Games

JULY 8, 2024

His turning point came in 2019 at Comic Con Africa, where he discovered a Game Design degree at Wits University’s stand. “I However, it still took a nudge from a dreadful experience in an Applied Mathematics class to propel him to switch from Computer Science to Game Design. I was really naughty and I loved games.

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Studios Education Educational Point and Click 129

Game Analytics

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

It’s about allowing players to lose themselves in more than just a game, but a new world. This goal is always top-of-mind for Schell Games. In this interview, we spoke to Schell Games’ Vice President of Product, Charlie Amis, to learn their story. This isn’t as true or a high priority in PC and console games.

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Dev Playtesting Fantasy Render 91

PreMortem.Games

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

When Jonathan Barbosa Dijkstra lost his job, just before the pandemic hit, he decided to give his dream of making a game by himself a proper go. I would love to be part of a small team where you’ve got your peers and still have a big impact on the game.” For me, and for others I’m sure, making your own games is ‘the dream’.

Dev 104

Dev Puzzle Prototyping Development 104

Sirlin

OCTOBER 20, 2015

Codex is a new take on customizable card games. Though you might as well wait until next week because there will be a balance update within a week. Finally, we discuss what Geiger's moves will be in the Fantasy Strike fighting game. Here's a rundown of what I've been doing over on my Patreon lately.

Fantasy 52

Fantasy Fighting Balance Concepts 52

Big Games

DECEMBER 5, 2023

Game development isn’t as smooth and glamorous as many newbies imagine. Yet, those professionals in mobile game development services know how to tackle these challenges. But the chaos and the desire to create visually stunning and immersive games fuels their determination. Every aspect of the game undergoes examination.

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Game Developer Game Development Development Bug 52

iXie gaming

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Getting started with your first NFT game development venture can be interesting. But is the NFT game development market worth entering? The global play-to-earn (P2E) NFT games market is predicted to reach $3.6 So, yes – NFT game development is worth it. But what are NFT games? But what are NFT games?

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Game Developer Game Development Development Asset 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MARCH 14, 2023

Last week in Istanbul, Google and Deconstructor of Fun brought together a thousand-strong group of high-level mobile game execs to talk about the future of the business. His data and insights were based on US data as a proxy for the western market, and focused on platform privacy, or the “Apple global mobile game recession”.

Games 59

Games Cross platform Mobile Mobile 59

Grid Sage Games

MARCH 10, 2022

Cogmind began its life as a 7DRL , and a portion of items designed back when the game was overall a very different environment didn’t evolve at the same pace. Beta 11 added six new artifacts though, with even cooler (but balanced :P) effects, so that makes up for it ;). That would be bad :P. Alien Artifacts.

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Balance Mechanics Beta Prototyping 52

Keith Burgun

SEPTEMBER 6, 2022

In any case, this game started out in late 2021 as a sequel to Dragon Bridge, my first card game. Over the last 10-11 months, and over 100 different numbered versions of the game, the game has evolved into… really, its own thing, and that’s why the title no longer reflects its Dragon Bridge origins.

Playtesting 52

Playtesting Writing Graphics Fighting 52

AWS Games

JULY 26, 2022

Session-based multiplayer games are a popular form of online game, as they provide players with a quick, engaging experience that they can jump into at any time. However, building a scalable and reliable session-based online multiplayer game is not easy, since there are many components that need to be developed.

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Build Console Games Code 67

AWS Games

NOVEMBER 22, 2022

One simple number to keep in mind is 6 months: this is how long it took one game studio to build the same infrastructure on AWS that they could have achieved with Flaneer in a day. AWS Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) and AWS NICE DCV to let you stream your software in the best conditions, up to 4 screens in 4K! Why is it cool?

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Animation Animation Render Studios 59

Rindoku

OCTOBER 7, 2016

Showing your game to strangers for the first time can be a little nerve wracking. What we learned about the game. The feedback about the game was better than we could have hoped. People liked the game but there was also useful feedback (and observation) of where we can improve. Color me excited! In no particular order: 1.

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Point and Click Dev Demo Playtesting 52

Designer Notes

SEPTEMBER 7, 2023

I gave a talk on games and meaning at GDC 2023, which is now available on YouTube: However, I fully scripted the talk ahead of time, so I decided it would be worth taking the time to post the slides online, in three parts to have mercy on your browser. What does this mean for video games? So, why am I talking about DIPS?

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Simulation Agent Game Design Game Designer 78

Keith Burgun

JANUARY 4, 2023

Back in September, I introduced people to my upcoming card game, Spellstorm. Let me quickly explain how the game worked in broad strokes, and then I can explain the main problem. ” A lot of the basic MOVE/BUMP dynamics were inherited from my 2019 card game, Dragon Bridge. What Spellstorm Was. The Problems.

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Mechanics Game Design Game Designer Playtesting 52

Grid Sage Games

OCTOBER 2, 2022

I was really unsure any of this would work at all, since internally it’s quite complex and therefore hard to gauge what outcomes are possible and whether they’d really fit into Cogmind, which has a pretty strong focus on design balance. The first iteration simply averaged together the stats of all the input items.

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Engineering Engine Mechanics Balance 52

Grid Sage Games

JULY 17, 2022

In the time since Garrisons were added, however, a combination of relevant changes to the game started putting pressure on their original design: Many more full branch maps were added, along with factions, each with their own enticing reasons to visit them compared to the weaker incentives for entering a Garrison.

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Beta Content Balance Mechanics 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MAY 23, 2023

At that point, Second Dinner revealed that their first project just so happens to be a licensed Marvel IP, which the team has been working on for six months already and is currently beginning to playtest. Fastforward to September of 2022 and the game, Marvel Snap, is finally out globally after a considerable amount of time in soft launch.

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Feature Mechanics Tile Mobile 95