Radiator Blog

FEBRUARY 4, 2024

In 2017, Valve quietly removed Aztec from the current CS:GO / CS2 mapcycle, and it has since been permanently replaced by its more balanced modern successor Ancient. With her masterful use of patterns and implication, I think Emily Dickinson would've been an excellent level designer with strong insights about competitive map balance.

Fighting 234

Fighting Texture Playtesting Balance 234

Grid Sage Games

NOVEMBER 14, 2023

Balancing Levers The idea of “post-balance” from this article’s title doesn’t mean no balance. On the contrary, as you probably know, Cogmind is big on balance , an emphasis achieved initially through adherence to carefully designed patterns and formulas.

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Balance Mechanics Beta Alpha 52

Brand Game Development

SEPTEMBER 24, 2019

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. Making Balanced & Clear Rules. Playtest a Ton. Rules vs. Rulebooks.

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Balance Games Communications Mechanics 130

PreMortem.Games

APRIL 19, 2024

One of my close friends, Ches Denison, joined me working 5-10 hours a week as a playtester, game designer, and just a general jack-of-all-trades-guy. Once playtesting began in early 2023, player feedback further refined my vision. Plus, maintaining a healthy work-life balance is the most important thing you can do as a game dev.

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Playtesting Games Mobile Mobile 129

PreMortem.Games

SEPTEMBER 13, 2024

But it took some tweaking to get the right balance. The team of White Star Studios closely monitored the results of early playtest sessions. 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.

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Studios Content Balance Playtesting 104

PreMortem.Games

JUNE 24, 2024

We’ll soon be conducting first playtests with the horse-loving target audience to make sure riding controls and animations hold up to scrutiny.” “At the moment, we’re focusing on getting the feeling and controls of the horse riding itself right, which can be quite complex.

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Open World Simulation Games Playtesting 156

PreMortem.Games

MAY 24, 2023

But it took some tweaking to get the right balance. The team of White Star Studios closely monitored the results of early playtest sessions. 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 Content Balance Playtesting 104

PreMortem.Games

JULY 1, 2024

This time around we’re putting a lot more time and resources into playtesting and catching problems early.” Evan Anthony: “I’m proud of the subtleties of the landscape rendering like the way the reflection is balanced with translucency allowing you to see underneath the surface and have lots of nice depth and parallax.”

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Art Graphics Games Puzzle 138

PreMortem.Games

MAY 19, 2023

To strike a balance, the team aimed to automate as much of the body movements as possible while retaining the meaningful choices that players make while climbing. But we probed and playtested, and we pulled through without changing course to a climbing-inspired arcade game”, says Boogaard.

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Indy Dev Studios Playtesting 104

Brand Game Development

MARCH 29, 2021

Finding the balance is difficult, and I think many creatives lean too much into the former category. Now look, some parts of game design – like playtesting or accessibility testing – can be tedious. Here’s a goal that stands the test of time better than most: focus on becoming a board game designer.

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Game Design Game Designer Games Playtesting 130

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.

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Game Developer Game Development Development Balance 52

Logic Simplified

SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

Playtesting Playtesting involves testing a game with real players to assess its design, functionality, and entertainment value. Create the right balance of challenge and reward throughout the game. They help the players understand the storyline, rules and goals of the game.

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Mechanics Games Playtesting Prototyping 64

Radiator Blog

MARCH 16, 2023

They still need to balance this pre-production with finishing the studio's other projects too. What's the balance? Again, what's the balance here? Zak argues the demo should focus on gameplay instead of art anyway, because they need to seek more funding and a publisher wouldn't have any concerns about DF's art pedigree.

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Art Concepts Dev Studios 147

Brand Game Development

JUNE 20, 2019

After several months of brainstorming and playtesting, we settled on the mechanics of Cover Your Kingdom. This also increased emotional response and provided some balancing mechanisms that prevented the formation of massive piles. We added, balanced, and optimized new mechanics one by one. Action Cards. Two Actions Per Turn.

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Asset Mechanics Games Balance 130

Sirlin

OCTOBER 20, 2015

Though you might as well wait until next week because there will be a balance update within a week. Within a couple days, I plan to post a big update to the Codex print-and-play version (for $25+ patrons) that has dozens of balance changes based on the last month of playtesting.

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Fantasy Fighting Balance Concepts 52

PreMortem.Games

JULY 8, 2024

It’s been a struggle balancing my master’s with all the business stuff, especially now that we were in these accelerators,” he says. Sithlu credits his family and team as his biggest support, with his brother being a key playtester. It’s difficult, I’m not gonna lie.

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Studios Educational Education Point and Click 129

PreMortem.Games

SEPTEMBER 28, 2023

All this before there’s ever any playtesting done. And generally I maintained a pretty healthy work life balance for the most part of it. “Having full control over the entire project and its creative direction counts as a pitfall too. When working in a team ideas bounce around, feedback is given etc.

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Dev Puzzle Prototyping Development 104

Grid Sage Games

MARCH 10, 2022

Some roguelikes don’t strive for balance, but maintaining balance has always been important to me for Cogmind, since it fits better with my vision for this type of game, heavy on tough, complex, and consequential decision-making at multiple strategic and tactical levels. Alien Artifacts. Exiles Prototypes.

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Balance Mechanics Beta Prototyping 52

Keith Burgun

SEPTEMBER 6, 2022

I think all that development is paying off, and now we have a good 4 or 5 months to get some fine tuning / balance stuff right, which feels pretty good to me. We currently have a very nice Tabletop Simulator module with the rulebook and everything.

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Playtesting Writing Graphics Fighting 52

AWS Games

NOVEMBER 22, 2022

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! Let’s have a look at a production pipeline for a game studio would look like with Flaneer: As you can see in this diagram, Flaneer offers dedicated playtest stations to be shared to thousands of users.

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Animation Animation Render Studios 59

Big Games

DECEMBER 5, 2023

Regular software updates, including game-balancing patches and new downloadable content (DLC), keep the game fresh and engaging. Balancing creativity with project constraints is tricky. Playtesters are vital in finding bugs, glitches, and potential issues. Developers celebrate the success as sales pour in.

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Game Developer Game Development Development Bug 52

iXie gaming

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Test Your Game and Deploy Performing thorough playtesting is crucial in NFT game development. Consider testing the game mechanics, overall balance, and user interactions to ensure a seamless experience for players. Use specific smart contracts or minting tools to develop the NFTs. It helps you refine the gameplay experience.

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Game Developer Game Development Development Asset 52

Grid Sage Games

NOVEMBER 16, 2023

There are some other nuances in there which I won’t get into, but anyway, “rough” yeah? :) I can see some people having a lot of fun with this thing, and I imagine it could get tweaked a bit after playtesting, but there are a good number of levers to tweak with this one.

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Mechanics Concepts Balance Terrain 52

Grid Sage Games

JULY 17, 2022

In playtesting so far this (among other benefits we’ll get to later) is already clearly tempting players who would otherwise always prefer regular branches over infiltrating a Garrison. Of course this change comes with significant balance repercussions, which we’ll cover when we get to discussing that topic further below.

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Beta Content Balance Mechanics 52

Keith Burgun

JANUARY 4, 2023

We’ve only playtested it about 5-6 times – each time it was a blast , despite the balance being all wonked up – so I don’t want to get too deep into the details right now. That later evolved into… something that really isn’t like anything else I’ve seen. I’m really excited!

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Mechanics Game Designer Game Design Playtesting 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MARCH 14, 2023

Diversify revenue model Cilingir urged game-makers with games skewed heavily toward either ad or IAP-based monetisation to balance their revenue mix. He stressed that games should hold true to the brand’s values, citing Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes as a perfect product-market fit.

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Games Cross platform Mobile Mobile 59

PreMortem.Games

DECEMBER 24, 2024

Still, Nowell strives to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Playtesting Patrik Nagy , a 20-year-old software development student from Hungary, began working on simple games at age 12, driven by a passion for programming and game development. No amount of playtesting is ever enough, he says. I want to work smart, not hard.

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Development Dev Horror Playtesting 197

AWS Games

JULY 26, 2022

However, once the game attracts more players, we may want to modify our matchmaking to provide our players with a more balanced and fun play experience. With FlexMatch in place, doing this will be pretty straightforward! You are now ready to play MegaFrogRace!

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Build Console Code Games 69

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. As certain decks become dominant, players can quickly create counter decks to keep the game balanced and interesting.

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Feature Tile Mechanics Mobile 95

PreMortem.Games

JANUARY 3, 2024

Compelling gameplay loop Balancing the creation of assets, the Mojsovski brothers share that the assets are a mix of marketplace acquisitions and in-house development. “Talk with the players and do lots of playtesting. They will then not see that part of the facility during this playthrough. “I say it’s 50/50.

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Horror Build Playtesting Animation 211

PreMortem.Games

MARCH 30, 2023

We had three very different games that we spent around two weeks on each, developing them up to a point where we could playtest them with other people”, says Mason. ” “First impressions are very important, so when playtesting we wanted to see how long it took players to understand how the minigame worked”, he continues.

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Playtesting Prototyping Games Mechanics 104

PreMortem.Games

MARCH 20, 2023

We had three very different games that we spent around two weeks on each, developing them up to a point where we could playtest them with other people”, says Mason. ” “First impressions are very important, so when playtesting we wanted to see how long it took players to understand how the minigame worked”, he continues.

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Playtesting Prototyping Mechanics Games 104

Brand Game Development

OCTOBER 23, 2017

Sarah: It was also in 2013 that we met Ben and were playtesters for his game Tower , which he launched on Kickstarter early in 2014. Along with handling all the business, Ben has playtested and helped develop our designs. You help balance out each others’ weaknesses. Will was also lead story writer for Tower.

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Prototyping Games Playtesting Game Designer 130

Tom Francis

MAY 27, 2023

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. The Dark Horse also lets you trample (move options may be used as attacks), the Pale Horse is more nimble (move to any unoccupied space in range 2).

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Playtesting Tile Balance Code 52

Game Analytics

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

Playtesting is crucial at this point. If we know from playtesting that players generally really enjoy specific features, but we see from analytics that players aren’t engaging with them, perhaps it’s a good idea to make them more accessible in our next game. We added a light, but it didn’t help.

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Dev Playtesting Fantasy Render 91

Rindoku

OCTOBER 7, 2016

Balancing the difficulty for a wide range of players will be a b h. Fix the problems we identified during the playtest. I’m pretty sure we’ll be doing some more playtests in the near future. You’d be wondering if it worked if I hadn’t already spoiled the answer. Yeah… no luck. Teaching is in order. How many levels?

Point and Click 52

Point and Click Dev Demo 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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Engine Engineering Mechanics Balance 52