September, 2015

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Doing Your Job In Metal Gear Solid V

Tom Francis

This post is part of a series. I mention abilities and tools but no story spoilers. A lot of the time, MGS V is just a very good stealth game. You have lots of tools to distract, evade or take down your enemies, and they’re all very satisfying to use – just like Deus Ex 3. Its levels are encampments dotted seamlessly around a huge open world – just like Far Cries 2-4.

Agent 52
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The New Pandante and Flash Duel Are Now Available

Sirlin

Pandante 2nd Edition and a new printing of Flash Duel are now generally available. P andante 2nd Edition The new Flash Duel These games were part of my fourth Kickstarter and the rewards have now all been delivered to backers—a MONTH ahead of schedule. Four out of four kickstarters on time! Anyway, you can now get your hands on these games if you missed the kickstarter.

Editing 52
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Happy Birthday Monkey Island

Grumpy Gamer

I guess Monkey Island turns 25 this month. It's hard to tell. Unlike today, you didn't push a button and unleash your game to billions of people. It was a slow process of sending "gold master" floppies off to manufacturing, which was often overseas, then waiting for them to be shipped to stores and the first of the teaming masses to buy the game. Of course, when that happened, you rarely heard about it.

Bug 52
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MDA

Game Design Advice

Lana Polansky recently wrote a very interesting piece about how we categorize games which includes an examination of the popular MDA game design framework. MDA stands for “Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics”, it’s the organizing principle of Marc LeBlanc’s GDC game design workshop which I’ve been a part of for many years and was written up in 2004 as a white paper by Robin Hunicke, LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek.

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Help us write a FLOSS manual for Godot!

Mircosoft Game Dev

Do you love FLOSS Manuals? Do you love France in the summer? Come help us do a Booksprint for Godot Engine next week! As you may know Ariel is spending some time in Hamburg, and since he's so close to France, the people from Floss Manuals FR invited him to do a Booksprint with them for Godot Engine! If you'd like to help, come down to Rennes, France next weekend to hang out!

Writing 40
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Natural Numbers In Game Design

Tom Francis

In maths, ‘natural numbers’ are the ones you might use to count observable, whole things: eg. there are six people here. Anything that doesn’t work in place of ‘six’ there, like 3.4 or -2, is not natural. They’re kind of ‘numbers you can see’ I’d like to use the term in game design to mean specifically that: numbers you can see.

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Codex Early Access Deadline

Sirlin

This Friday, September 25 at 10pm Pacific Time is the deadline to sign up for all the physical cards to get early access to Codex. You'll get the base set and all expansions so you can help with the last stage of development of the game. 1) Sign up at as a patron at the $25 level for at least one month on my Patreon. 2) Once you're a patron, you'll see the instructions on Patreon on how to buy the Codex starter set + all 6 factions for $99.99 + shipping. ($165 value, so this is a limited time th

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Codex Design: Combat and the Patrol Zone

Sirlin

This is the 3rd in a series of design articles about Codex. In case you missed the first two: #1 Codex Design: Cards and Gold As Resources #2 Codex Design: Heroes and Tech Buildings. Codex is asynchronous. That means someday you’ll be able to play the online version without your opponent having to be online at the same time as you. You can get through your entire turn without having to wait for your opponent, then they can take their turn without you having to be there either.

Build 52
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Codex Design: Heroes and Tech Buildings

Sirlin

It’s generally good in a competitive game when there’s a lot of interaction. In other words, if your opponent is up to something, it’s good if you can do something about that. In Codex, your vulnerabilities are on the table and you have to defend them. If you want to cast any spells, you need a hero in play to cast them—and your heroes can be attacked.

Build 52
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Sirlin on Game Design, Ep 12: Easy Special Moves

Sirlin

We discuss "easy special moves" in fighting games. We can pretty quickly say why they are a good or bad idea, but the bigger issue is trying to clarify what the term means to help others avoid muddled discussions on this topic. What is a game with "easy special moves" actually trying to do? Moves being easy—in and of itself—tells you nothing about whether the techniques and combos in a game are easy to do or not.