Logic Simplified

AUGUST 1, 2023

Have you ever designed a game? If yes, then what game design fundamentals do you prioritize in your own designs? Game design is incredibly complex and fascinating, with countless nuances and techniques to master. In this article, we'll explore some key building blocks of game design fundamentals.

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Brand Game Development

JANUARY 13, 2020

That is by no means a small amount to raise, but what’s interesting is that Spirit Island has remained on the Board Game Geek Hotness list off and on for almost three years. Clearly, there is much more to this game than what immediately meets the eye. Need help on your board game? You’re next, agriculture games!).

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Brand Game Development

OCTOBER 28, 2019

Last year, Everdell by Starling Games raised nearly half a million dollars on Kickstarter. It has remained a popular board game since, regularly topping out the Board Game Geek Hotness and showing up multiple times as a giveaway prize in Pangea contests. Everdell is a worker placement, tableau-building board game.

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Game Designer Game Design Fantasy Mechanics 130

Sirlin

JANUARY 10, 2016

There's a new episode of my Raw Game Design podcast up for my ($10+) patrons, here. That same podcast link also has links to all the other episodes of Raw Game Design too, btw. This is "raw game design" in the truest sense in that we are lost in the forest here. Which modes even exist? How are they arranged?

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Fighting Game Designer Game Design AI 52

PreMortem.Games

OCTOBER 11, 2023

Cocoon, the intricate puzzle adventure by Jeppe Carlsen , known as the lead gameplay designer of Limbo and Inside, launched to raving reviews after 6.5 The game immerses players in a captivating odyssey across worlds within worlds, beckoning them to master the art of world-leaping mechanics to uncover a cosmic mystery.

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GamesIndustry.biz

JUNE 22, 2023

Sign up for the GI Daily here to get the biggest news straight to your inbox BAFTA has unveiled the 2023 winners of its Young Game Designers (YGD) awards. In the ten to 14-year-old category, Max Whistlecraft won the Game Concept award with Polarity, a science-themed title; users can switch the polarities like a magnet to fight bosses.

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Game Designer Game Design Fighting Concepts 68

The Bottom Feeder

AUGUST 28, 2024

The Deck of Many Things is one of the greatest designs in all of gaming. I often complain about modern design being too over-balanced and tight-assed. There's too much control-freakery in modern games. So I want to sing the praises of the craziest of all designs. It's Russian Roulette in game form.

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Game Designer Game Design Fantasy Games 87

Radiator Blog

JUNE 2, 2023

I completed the main campaign in Redfall ( official site, Steam , also on Game Pass), a 4 player co-op open world shooter by Arkane Austin, who's mostly known for detailed single player story-filled action games. In this sense, playing a 75% finished game is more useful than playing a 100% finished game. But not really.

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Studios Co-op Open World Cutscenes 246

PreMortem.Games

OCTOBER 30, 2024

“What inspires me is the belief that I can make a great video game that will influence the player and make them reflect on their life, and hopefully make a change for the better.” When I read books, play video games or work on projects. For weeks, I thought about what I wanted to do and rediscovered my passion for video games.

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PreMortem.Games

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

“As I travel across Africa creating games, there’s something everyone seems to agree on…” says Bethlehem Anteneh , a trained architect, co-founder of SOSTLab and the moderator of the She Got Game panel at Africa Games Week (AGW). Think of a bar where 90% of the people are men.

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Game Development Game Developer Development Games 145

PreMortem.Games

JANUARY 22, 2025

This would make an interesting topic for a game, he thought. Napiecek had tried to break into the games industry for a while now, but no game company wanted to hire him. So, making a game about the refugee crisis could potentially establish him as a serious game writer. Of course, I was wrong.

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Scripting Writing Studios Fighting 20

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? Many of the rules in a game will come from the board, cards, etc.

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Balance Games Communications Mechanics 130

Ask a Game Dev

DECEMBER 19, 2024

Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on BlueSky Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr Frequent Questions: The FAQ Invincible moves are a high risk - high reward choice, which is what makes them interesting in gameplay.

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Dev Fighting Games Game Designer 49

The Bottom Feeder

DECEMBER 17, 2024

Stirring Up Mess On Twitter Vogel's 1st Law of Video Game Visibility: "No matter how passionate an online 'controversy' about a game is, 99% of its players will never even know about it." 2nd Law: "Outside of 1 or 2 monster hits a year, no indie game will ever be heard of by more than 1% of gamers." It's a tough game.

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AI Indy Games Agent 79

The Bottom Feeder

MARCH 12, 2025

I finally got around to playing Hades, the megahit roguelike from Supergiant Games. It takes me a long time to build up the energy to pour in the number of hours a game like this requires. It's a 2020-vintage roguelike, which means: A bunch of rooms with fights. Seriously, study this game.

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Indy Writing Fantasy Fighting 68

Brand Game Development

JUNE 24, 2019

The latest game from Pangea Games is launching on Kickstarter. Tasty Humans is a 30-60 minute, tile-laying, pattern-building game for 1-4 players. As you and your fellow monsters toss around the village king, you attract a steady buffet of adventurers who try – poorly – to put up a fight!

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Tile Writing Fantasy Fighting 130

Keith Burgun

OCTOBER 19, 2022

Over the last six months, I guess partially because I was doing a bit of traveling, but also partially because I got a Retroid handheld and a Steam Deck (both of which are phenomenal, game-changers for game-playing, for me at least), I’ve been on this crazy Final Fantasy kick. Let me know what you think!

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Fantasy Game Designer Game Design Games 52

PreMortem.Games

MARCH 17, 2023

This would make a great topic for a game, he thought. Napiecek had tried to break into the games industry for a while now, but no game company wanted to hire him. So, making a game about the refugee crisis could potentially establish him as a serious game writer. Not without the relevant experience at least. “I

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Scripting Writing Studios Fighting 211

Radiator Blog

NOVEMBER 10, 2021

This is similar to my tactics games writeup and Enderal (huge Skyrim mod) writeup where I spoil some interesting game designer / systems design things. I don't discuss much of the game narrative. I assume general game design knowledge but minimal Deathloop-specific knowledge.

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Brand Game Development

NOVEMBER 20, 2017

Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the third of a 19-part suite on board game design and development. Need help on your board game? Game mechanics are how we bring the core engine of a game to life.

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Mechanics Games Game Design Game Designer 130

Ask a Game Dev

AUGUST 5, 2024

I think you have the wrong idea about what game designers do. We're not project leads that pitch entire games, we're [ content creators ] that build the bits of specific content in games - the spells, the monsters, the fights, the classes, the races, the quests, the environments, the stats, the companions, and so on.

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Game Designer Game Design Fighting Racing 52

PreMortem.Games

NOVEMBER 13, 2023

A community manager and new game designer. A game filled with cute armoured babies on a brave mission to save their daycare from a goblin invasion. Now, she’s navigating the world of game development, where each day brings new challenges and exciting discoveries. One of those games was Street Fighter.

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Code Prototyping Engineering Engine 166

The Knights of Unity

FEBRUARY 12, 2021

In the previous part of the post, we’ve introduced you to the most important reasons to create a game design document in your project, using three examples: personal project, internal project, and commission work. Game overview. In our template, the section devoted to this part is called Game overview. Core game loop.

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Game Designer Game Design Games Mechanics 52

PreMortem.Games

OCTOBER 23, 2024

Gamathon 24 brought together video game developers, animators, comic artists, XR developers, and tech enthusiasts, all determined not just to survive, but to truly thrive. It began with an online workshop by Joey Ansah, on fight choreography for video games. And Africacomicade was at the forefront, leading by example.

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Esports Games Animation Animation 104

Sirlin

FEBRUARY 16, 2016

I have a free podcast series on game design, here. In this latest Raw Game Design episode, I discuss how we might use advanced AIs in the Fantasy Strike fighting game, if we had access to some pretty great AI tech. I also have a second podcast that's just for my Patreon supporters.

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Game Designer Game Design Fantasy AI 40

Brand Game Development

JUNE 11, 2018

Board game conventions have a certain mystique to them. As such, board game developers often find their own interest in conventions piqued. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. We’re giving away a copy on the Pangea Games Facebook.

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Sirlin

NOVEMBER 15, 2016

Fantasy Strike is our new fighting game. We cover the high concept about making a fighting game more accessible from top to bottom than anything else we've seen, the specific game mechanics we chose to accomplish that, and the resulting dynamics of how it plays. Fantasy Strike is our new fighting game.

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Fantasy Game Designer Game Design Fighting 40

Ask a Game Dev

AUGUST 1, 2023

What you're describing is the dissonance between having a normal human (with all of the common context that carries with it, like "people often die when they are shot at all") as the final boss and the expectation of a final boss fight being a prolonged, memorable, and epic battle that tests the things you've learned so far.

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Fighting FPS Dev Concepts 52

PreMortem.Games

SEPTEMBER 17, 2024

Cocoon, the intricate puzzle adventure by Jeppe Carlsen , known as the lead gameplay designer of Limbo and Inside, launched to raving reviews after 6.5 The game immerses players in a captivating odyssey across worlds within worlds, beckoning them to master the art of world-leaping mechanics to uncover a cosmic mystery.

Puzzle 104

Puzzle Prototyping Art Communications 104

Brand Game Development

MARCH 16, 2018

Dev Diary posts are made to teach game development through specific examples from my latest project: Highways & Byways. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. You need to make a great game. Just here for Highway s & Byways updates?

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Dev Games Localization Fighting 130

The Bottom Feeder

JUNE 12, 2024

It was a bold choice to ship this game with only one romance option. I wanted to write a third and final article about Baldur's Gate 3 (BG3 for short), a really great game that most people have moved on from, but I want to talk about the most important part of any RPG: LOOT. It's a distraction that pads out an already enormous game.

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The Bottom Feeder

FEBRUARY 22, 2023

It's an OK game. I'm a nobody on the outside, looking at a giant development monolith and trying to figure out how this game could possibly have ended up where it did. Standard Disclaimer This game is a huge success in every way, and I am an ant. Though God help any foolish reviewer who tries to give an AAA game less than 9/10.)

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Brand Game Development

DECEMBER 18, 2017

Board game development is a very individual process. Every single developer has different methods for creating their games. This article is the seventh of a 19-part suite on board game design and development. Need help on your board game? How can you tell stories through games? Why is storytelling important?

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Brand Game Development

DECEMBER 19, 2016

Even still, ignorance is a reliable shield from the emotional strain of the trials and tribulations of starting a business or beginning game development. Need help on your board game? Join my community of over 2,000 game developers, artists, and passionate creators. The ignorant aren’t stressed out about the “unknown unknowns.”.

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Fighting Game Design Game Designer Dev 100

Keith Burgun

DECEMBER 30, 2023

One of the principles that has been important to me over the years, which I have talked about a lot, is the idea that strategy games should always be moving toward their conclusion. In a way, this extends from the basic Clockwork Game Design model. As an example, let’s think quickly about fighting games.

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Fighting Mechanics Games Game Design 59

Sirlin

SEPTEMBER 2, 2015

We discuss "easy special moves" in fighting games. 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. What is a game with "easy special moves" actually trying to do?

Game Designer 40

Game Designer Game Design Fantasy Fighting 40

Radiator Blog

OCTOBER 13, 2022

SPOILER WARNING: I keep specific story spoilers vague, but I do have to talk about what happens in the games somehow. Still, you can argue that it's a stunning achievement just to be able to debate these questions in a video game. Can't wait for the full frontal in the next game!) Well, I don't know anything about that.

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