Category Archives: Game Dev

Broken Age – Act I: Trust Between Puzzle-maker and Puzzle-solver

I played the first act of Broken Age this morning and I want to highlight a well designed puzzle in each character’s chapter. Vella: In the clouds (Meriloft), Vella’s goal is to get back down to the ground, and it becomes obvious that the only way to do this is to make one of theContinue reading “Broken Age – Act I: Trust Between Puzzle-maker and Puzzle-solver”

How I attended GDC for 7 days for less than $1000

The 2020 Game Developer’s Conference begins March 16th! There are many hot topic articles on why and how you should attend the conference (or even if you should), and I’m gonna add my experience with budgeting for the trip to your list of helpful reads as you prep yourself for an exciting and stressful week.Continue reading “How I attended GDC for 7 days for less than $1000”

Game Critique: Microsoft Studio Stacker card game

I usually like to talk about parts of games that are well designed, or how they could even be made better with simple improvements. But today, I’m going to critique one that I do not believe accomplished its design goals. I will also provide my solutions for the issues. Just before GDC 2019, Microsoft announcedContinue reading “Game Critique: Microsoft Studio Stacker card game”

Games for School

I provide child care for a few families in my area, and recently one of the 5th grade kids was doing homework through a game. He told me it was algebra, and it mostly looked like fractions using sides of a die. It seemed that the goal was to drag a static die to theContinue reading “Games for School”

The Shortest Look at Mechanics and Difficulty of Super Mario 64 (1996, Nintendo 64)

Super Mario 64 is one of the first video games I ever played. I remember the holiday season my brother got a Nintendo 64, along with games like Cruis’n World, GoldenEye 007, and Super Mario 64. I’m pretty sure I played on the system more than he did… The core mechanics of Super Mario 64 areContinue reading “The Shortest Look at Mechanics and Difficulty of Super Mario 64 (1996, Nintendo 64)”

Writing for tabletop RPGs

For Gen Con 2018, I was tasked with writing a guided mode for our game Apocrypha. Guided mode is very similar to any tabletop role playing game, just with the cards, and a guide leads the saints through the story by giving them omens when they take a turn (turn order is by player choice,Continue reading “Writing for tabletop RPGs”

Design Challenge: Dragon Age II Level Design Spec Sheet

I decided to do a level design challenge last month in which I had to modify a level in an existing game and here’s what I came up with. The attached image is how I would present my work to a team! I wanted the bulk of it to be easy to comprehend and beContinue reading “Design Challenge: Dragon Age II Level Design Spec Sheet”