Radiator Blog

NOVEMBER 3, 2021

Interesting approachability / accessibility UX here. Felt like they had to cut down 50% of their planned content, which is never easy. Still, overall this was a very impressive achievement for just 3 indie developers. The game tries to lampshade this in the NPC dialogue, but the level design is louder.

NPC 130

NPC Fighting Art Dev 130

Radiator Blog

MAY 5, 2021

It's probably not worth the hassle for a solo indie. The Enderal builders don't want the player to ruin their carefully arranged clutter, so we get absurd things like "empty" sausages or un-lootable plates of food, breaking Skyrim's UX patterns for pickups. So these are leftover placeholders that lead to cut content.

Open World 130

Open World NPC Cutscenes Terrain 130

Game Design Aspect

FEBRUARY 1, 2022

Juliana Loh Juliana Loh is an independent Producer/Artist whose background includes branded entertainment, UX and art direction. His latest book is Gaming SEL: Games as Transformational to Social and Emotional Learning (bit.ly/GamingSEL). GamingSEL). For more, please visit MatthewFarber.com.

Writing 52

Writing Educational Education UX 52

Ask a Game Dev

JANUARY 23, 2024

Small-team dev also tends to build more system-driven games because it's more dev-time-efficient than creating single-use narrative-driven content. The tradeoff is that system-driven content also requires significantly more UI to convey all of that information to the player.

Dev 52

Dev Build Content Feature 52

Game Design Aspect

JUNE 9, 2021

Juliana Loh Juliana Loh is an independent Producer/Artist whose background includes branded entertainment, UX and art direction. His latest book is Gaming SEL: Games as Transformational to Social and Emotional Learning (bit.ly/GamingSEL). GamingSEL). For more, please visit MatthewFarber.com.

Writing 52

Writing Educational Education Game Design 52

Greenheart Games

AUGUST 30, 2018

It was an intensely stressful and uncertain time full of the highs and lows of indie development. – Most recently, a major content and quality-of-life update introducing new topics, everyone’s favorite new console, a brand new game mode and several important UX improvements went live for free.

Simulation 52

Simulation Dev Prototyping Technology 52

Deconstructor of Fun

JULY 30, 2020

It’s gonna be the work, the creative work of millions of people who can each add their own elements to it through content creation and programing and design. And companies will be able to form to create content that builds out this world. And that there’s a big market of creators building content and earning a living from it.

Platformer 52

Platformer Data Point and Click Build 52