PreMortem.Games

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

Although two games have significant differences in core mechanics, we found out, as a part of our Travel Town deconstruction, that the main reason for its take-off is a unique approach to LiveOps and monetization. The weekend events in the game also certainly have room for improvement. It adds randomness to each attempt to complete the level.

Data 104

Data Mechanics Games Demo 104

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

Interesting Choices

NOVEMBER 30, 2018

And while overall I've been overjoyed with the response, I've seen a few comments from people who dislike the inclusion of the disaster tiles in the game, and I realized that I haven't ever sat down to write out my thoughts for why I included the mechanic despite knowing that those tiles would be controversial. Risk/Reward.

Tile 52

Tile Build Prototyping Games 52

Brand Game Development

AUGUST 5, 2019

It’s a puzzle-solving, tile placement board game for 1-4 players where you play as a fantasy monster who’s hungry for villagers. To sell in this awfully noisy, competitive board gaming environment, you have to have mechanics and art that people really enjoy. On the note of mechanics, we were really lucky.

Art 130

Art Games Tile Mechanics 130

Brand Game Development

NOVEMBER 20, 2017

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

Mechanics Games Game Design Game Designer 130

Deconstructor of Fun

MAY 23, 2023

For a quick and general introduction of the game, it’s a player vs player only CCG game, which limits your cards to only 10 per deck, each game is less than 4 minutes, and it uses a very simple poker-like betting mechanic to keep things interesting. However, Marvel Snap has simplified this mechanic to make it even more accessible.

Tile 95

Tile Mechanics Feature Mobile 95

Brand Game Development

SEPTEMBER 4, 2017

All these games together will teach you a wide variety of mechanics. Don’t study the mechanics of this game. As a game dev, you need to play games like Catan and Pandemic to understand how to make game mechanics, but you also need to play games like Codenames to understand player behavior. They’re cheap.

Dev 130

Dev Games Mechanics Concepts 130

Brand Game Development

JUNE 25, 2019

Pattern building board games are really popular among the hobby board gaming crowd. Board Game Geek cites Azul , Sagrada , A Feast for Odin , and Quadropolis as pattern building board games. There is no satisfactory “10 steps to create a pattern building board game” guide out there. There are many, many more as well.

Tile 130

Tile Build Puzzle Fantasy 130

Nvidia

NOVEMBER 8, 2021

The payload registers are the mechanism NVIDIA OptiX offers for passing arbitrary data along with a ray, from the caller that traces a ray, and back. This payload mechanism is very lightweight, similar to passing arguments to a function. Improved customization and performance NVIDIA OptiX 7.4 Image Courtesy © 2021 Koke Nunez.

Ray Tracing 52

Ray Tracing Render Feature Animation 52

Interesting Choices

OCTOBER 5, 2011

I'm also playing around with adding more "build around me" tiles that come early in the game, so that players can have a direction and get especially excited about tiles that they might be able to pick up later. Maybe I'll get a chance to playtest it at IndieCade and see if people have some ideas.

Game Design 40

Game Design Game Designer Playtesting Tile 40

Brand Game Development

NOVEMBER 19, 2018

That means card games, dice games, miniature games, and tile-based games also fall under the purview of what is frequently called “board games.” Marketing is about building relationships with people and you need lots of time to do this right. This is a very persistent colloquialism within the board game community. Fundraising.

Games 130

Games Art Media Game Design 130

Brand Game Development

NOVEMBER 6, 2017

This communication happens on five levels: the core engine of the game, mechanics, rules, the internal narrative or “theme”, and the external narrative or “community and marketing.” The core engine is the bare minimum set of mechanics and concepts you need to have a functioning (but not necessarily fun) game.

Engine 130

Engine Engineering Mechanics Games 130

Brand Game Development

JULY 8, 2019

Of all the mechanics in the board game world, variable player powers remain a fan favorite. Games with this mechanic range from Gloomhaven to Terraforming Mars to 7 Wonders. He, after all, created the pattern building game that we call Tasty Humans , so it makes for a great case study! So how do we implement them?

Tile 130

Tile Games Mechanics Puzzle 130

Designer Notes

AUGUST 24, 2021

Further, just as Orders make each move more interesting, giving a yield stockpile cost to actions that were free before, like building a Temple with Stone or training a Swordsman with Iron, makes them also more interesting, giving the player a reason to choose different options depending on the current situation.

Writing 40

Writing Build Tile Mechanics 40

Interesting Choices

FEBRUARY 25, 2015

Not long after that I started working on a game (then called City Draft) that would be strongly inspired by a few key influences: 7 Wonders for the mechanics and structure, Carcassonne for the idea of placing tiles in a grid, and SimCity for the theme. Science is purely all or nothing. Few viable paths to victory.

Build 40

Build Tile Point and Click Games 40

Brand Game Development

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

Tasty Humans is a 30-60 minute, tile-laying, pattern-building game for 1-4 players. Betrayal at House on the Hill quickly builds suspense and excitement as players explore a haunted mansion of their own design, encountering spirits and frightening omens that foretell their fate. Are you excited? Let’s get started.

Tile 130

Tile Point and Click Games Art 130

Deconstructor of Fun

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

Together with Mishka, they discuss the highs and lows of Spyke Games, shining a spotlight on their latest sensation, Tile Busters. Rina attributes the success of Tile Busters, their second and most successful game to date, to an experiment gone right. Even if it is not your preferred genre choice. I couldn’t agree more.

Tile 65

Tile Co-op Games Puzzle 65

Deconstructor of Fun

OCTOBER 27, 2020

In many ways, Township has been the cornerstone for Playrix’s success as a title that allowed the company to build experience in live ops, analytics, and user acquisition. When it comes to the city building aspect, houses and community buildings have the biggest impact as they are needed to increase population and population cap.

Co-op 52

Co-op Puzzle Games Mechanics 52

The Liquid Fire

JANUARY 17, 2024

In that project, we had some unique challenges thanks to a non-square board where tiles were optional. In addition we had to consider tile heights – and whether or not a unit could jump as high as needed. In contrast, the pathfinding in this lesson will be for a 2D square board with no missing tiles.

Tile 52

Tile Terrain Scripting Asset 52

Designer Notes

APRIL 1, 2023

I found a solution from deck-building games like Dominion – what if we treated all the techs like cards instead? The system is certainly more complicated than a traditional tech tree, but it helps a lot that many players are already familiar with deck-building mechanics because of their popularity.

Tile 77

Tile Build Point and Click Technology 77

Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 10, 2021

Facebook Gaming helps developers and publishers to build, grow and monetize their games. This increase, sliced by subgenre, was driven mostly by Tile Blast and Puzzle & Decorate. Gone are the days where a reasonable attempt at a core mechanic and a saga map were all you needed for 6 figure revenue.

Puzzle 52

Puzzle Mobile Mobile Advertising 52

Deconstructor of Fun

SEPTEMBER 28, 2020

This analysis is written by Taras Koshelev (Lead Game Designer at My.Games Venture Capital) who focused on game mechanics and loops and Michail Katkoff (Founder of Savage Game Studios) who covered the market and marketability. Gates, which are an ultimate obstacle covering the whole battlefield from tile damage. Core Gameplay.

Puzzle 52

Puzzle Tile Mechanics Build 52

Designer Notes

AUGUST 31, 2021

With that preamble done and due praise given, it is all the more remarkable that one bad game mechanic has been preserved from version to version, tweaked perhaps, adjusted at times, but still as clumsy, fiddly, and unnecessary in 2021 as it was in 1991 – the system of placing citizens on tiles.

Tile 40

Tile Terrain Game Design Game Designer 40

Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 8, 2024

Cosmetics have included multiple new collection mechanisms that grant rewards when acquiring enough of a specific type. They also have included skins sets (collections of similar themed-skins) and a timed chest (piggy chest), which is upgraded through a building decoration system. Source: data.ai

Tile 69

Tile Mechanics Balance Content 69

PreMortem.Games

NOVEMBER 15, 2023

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.” Without it, rendering the 800.000 tiles that compromise the game map became problematic, so the team had to spend a week on optimizing that. It looked really exciting to me”, he says.

Dev 118

Dev Development Prototyping Feature 118

The Liquid Fire

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

We will also provide a tile based room for them to fight in. I want the combatants that are lower on the tile map to appear above the combatants higher on the tile map so that they appear closer. At a minimum this would make unit testing easier, but it could also add flexibility to the way that we build the game.

Sprite 52

Sprite Demo Animation Animation 52

Brand Game Development

OCTOBER 19, 2020

Terraforming Mars: Board & Deck Building Game. Maybe this is standard for engine-building games, but it was a new concept to me. (It’s My husband is a bit more into game mechanics and the nitty gritty (can’t you tell I’m pleased I married a game developer? Ok, enough chit chat. Let’s roll out and explore Mars!

Point and Click 130

Point and Click Games Concepts Mechanics 130

Brand Game Development

JUNE 10, 2019

What strikes me about this game is not the gameplay mechanics themselves. This is in addition to your standard board game fare: cards, tiles, and so on. In the case of this game, which somehow only retails for $31.49 , you build an entire train. No, what shocks me is that it’s only $19.99. Why is this shocking?

Games 130

Games Prop Game Developer Game Development 130

Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 17, 2022

One of the main problems in Clash Mini is the strong similarity with Clash Royale , the other Supercell auto battler whose gameplay and unit mechanics are very similar. This is an existential threat to Clash Mini since the lack of innovation in-unit mechanics was among the top reasons why Rush Wars failed to captivate players.

Content 52

Content Mechanics Point and Click Mobile 52

Mircosoft Game Dev

SEPTEMBER 15, 2022

with 17 alpha builds distributed in 2022, and continuous development effort since 2019. The ugly reality of software development is that legacy code builds up really quick and keeping it up to date, ready for new challenges that arise several years down the line takes a lot of effort. It has been a long road to Godot 4.0

Beta 52

Beta Engine Engineering Animation 52

Brand Game Development

AUGUST 26, 2019

You have to very slowly build your reputation. A puzzle-solving, tile placement board game for 1-4 players.” Know how to describe mechanics that are in your game and see who it appeals to. It’s no use selling a game with “take that” mechanics to him, then, is it? Marketing is a slow dance.

Advertising 130

Advertising Games Media Concepts 130

Brand Game Development

JANUARY 2, 2018

With various other developers, I’ve talked about all the different parts that go into making a board game: the core engine , the mechanics , rules , and storytelling / internal narrative. Drapple is an abstract, tile-laying gardening game. Observance is a game of stargazing, engine building, and time management.

Playtesting 130

Playtesting Games Advertising Prototyping 130

Brand Game Development

JANUARY 15, 2018

I like it when games offer a visual cue as to probability (like Catan’s number tiles), and when arithmetic operations come with physical tokens that you can manipulate instead of doing straight up arithmetic. Memory is best supported by just making sure that every part of the game state has some kind of physical token to represent it.

Development 130

Development Communications Games Game Design 130

Deconstructor of Fun

JUNE 20, 2019

Newcomer Lily’s Garden (Tactile Games, Jan 2019) even uses a different core-game (tile-blast instead of match-3) with the same visual progression and narrative driven progression. The red chair or the blue chair? Participating in events and visiting a friend’s mansion unlocks more decorative options. A brilliant addition.

Puzzle 52

Puzzle Studios Tile Mechanics 52

Designer Notes

OCTOBER 14, 2021

Simulations can be great games, but they tend not to be a good format for turn-based games with transparent game mechanics. It worked extremely well from a mechanical perspective, which is all we needed for early MP testing before the game even had characters, families, and events. The trick is knowing where symmetry is important.

AI 40

AI Simulation Mechanics Mobile Gaming 40

Deconstructor of Fun

JANUARY 14, 2020

Tile Blast games, defined largely by Peak Games, continued smooth sailing. Peak is stable and controls its sub-genre of tile blasting. Rovio’s Angry Birds Dream Blast was a great fresh take combining tile blasting and physical puzzle. Bubble Shooters also continued to decline in terms of revenue despite growth of downloads.

Puzzle 52

Puzzle Games Tile Mobile 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MAY 4, 2020

The game achieves this by gradually increasing upgrade costs (and can get away with it since most upgrades feel meaningful) and by releasing new town halls, unlocking new levels of buildings and units (plus new ones). Hay Day Pop is Fishdom meet Hay Day with a tile blast mechanic. By all accounts, it is a good game.

Puzzle 52

Puzzle Mobile Mobile Mobile Gaming 52