Ask a Game Dev

DECEMBER 24, 2024

How long should one match in my fighting game take? If there is a worldwide quest that requires all players to collect and refine bolts of silk cloth to hand in to an NPC, how much cloth should that NPC require to make the quest last for at least two weeks with the average number of players per server?

Game Designer 52

Game Designer Game Design NPC Games 52

Radiator Blog

OCTOBER 13, 2022

The high visual polish and stellar production values adorn a solid but predictable gameplay loop: you fight through dungeons with random rooms / enemies, collect resources, and bring them back to your hub to build up your village and its inhabitants. The cult of the game industry is most powerful of all. But also veganism?

Indy 130

Indy Film Games Point and Click 130

Yobob Games

AUGUST 12, 2022

The ideas give a new design tool for me to work with and it expands on the farming genre games. Usually game developers don’t give a lot of thought into stamina bars and how it can affect the characters and game design. Even adding another bar makes the game more complex. See what I’m saying?

Game Designer 52

Game Designer Game Design Games NPC 52

The Bottom Feeder

MAY 11, 2022

It's such a big, unique, popular game that not picking it apart a bit is game-writer malpractice. Even if you hate From Software games, and many do, if you care about game design as an art, it's worth a good look. Fortunately, as long as the rest of the game is good, people will only complain. And honestly?

Balance 52

Balance Fighting Art Software 52

Keith Burgun

JULY 29, 2022

Here’s a handful of good examples: Final Fantasy VII : you’re part of a terrorist organization that is doing a bombing mission to try and fight back against an evil empire. Setting that up properly is an effort in storytelling, a discipline all its own distinct from game design.

Fantasy 52

Fantasy AAA Concepts Games 52

Deconstructor of Fun

MAY 15, 2022

Lost Ark outshines other MMO games because each element mentioned above is polished to the next level. Balancing relies heavily on gear, maps are crowded with question marks, Boss fights feature repetitive mechanisms. Though, all of these foibles could be found in other games as well.

Cutscenes 52

Cutscenes Art Content Mechanics 52

Radiator Blog

NOVEMBER 3, 2021

The game plays with this a little: there's a treasure door that opens only during the fail state. (A A hostile NPC statue wakes up, which means you can lure it away from the door.) And as the Vestal, she administers the local election, and in this ancient Roman city only the male NPC citizens are allowed to vote.

NPC 130

NPC Fighting Art Dev 130