The Bottom Feeder

JUNE 12, 2024

Baldur’s Gate 3 Has Mountains of Stuff Over the years, I've tended to make my game designs cleaner. One of the best articles ever written about game design is about Magic: The Gathering. I found fights in BG3 where it became really hard to target the high-up enemies. That is my personal aesthetic.

Fighting 89

Fighting Puzzle Writing Terrain 89

The Bottom Feeder

OCTOBER 18, 2023

At some point in the last several decades of video games, everything became a role-playing game. Turns out, if your game design is a little lacking, all you need to do is spackle on a bit of "Make bars fill up to make numbers get bigger to make bars fill up." The trick is making sure the fighting part is engaging.

Games 75

Games Art Fighting Fantasy 75

Designer Notes

SEPTEMBER 6, 2023

Hi everyone, I’m Soren Johnson, and welcome to You Have No Idea How Hard It Is To Run A Sweatshop Here are the published games that I’ve worked on over my career, some of which I will touch on over the next hour. Or on a game with 1 winner and 99 losers. Or on a turn-based game that plays by itself.

Mechanics 80

Mechanics Game Designer Game Design Build 80

Keith Burgun

SEPTEMBER 17, 2024

Between that and the fact that I’m a game designer, and one who is also working on my own RPG, I feel like I’m in a pretty good position to give some thoughts on this latest entry in a way that might be helpful to other Final Fantasy fans. That’s it. That’s about it!

Fantasy 105

Fantasy Fighting Terrain Art 105

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.

Indy 52

Indy Film Games Point and Click 52

Grid Sage Games

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

Being able to backtrack is generally going to be more realistic in the RPG sense--of course your character should be able to go back and pick up that item they left behind, or fight that enemy that scared you away before. In a game setting, though, this can be quite an annoyance from a design perspective (harder to balance!)

Point and Click 52

Point and Click Mechanics Feature Open World 52

Grid Sage Games

MARCH 10, 2022

So I reimagined them yet again, taking into account their unique targeting mechanics and what that means when fighting other bots. This is a pretty good example of the heavy influence interface limitations can have on game design. The biggest change there was simply yet more significant damage buffs. Trap Extractor demo.

Balance 52

Balance Mechanics Beta Prototyping 52