It’s that time of year! Since my daughter has been 7 years-old, I make an elaborate puzzle-based scavenger hunt for her birthday party. It’s still covid-19 times, so everything was planned to be outdoors. Due to this, I had fewer hiding places than I normally would, so I used a number of small wooden chests […]
For the past few years, I’ve been designing scavenger hunt parties for my daughter’s birthday party. This was originally born out of her love for Gravity Falls and all the secret codes throughout that show. So far I’ve made parties for Gravity Falls, Warriors (the cat books, not the colorful gangs), and Yo-kai Watch. This […]
For the past few years, I have designed and created an elaborate scavenger hunt for my daughter’s birthday. As I started this year’s, I realized I never documented last year’s Yo-Kai Watch Scavenger Hunt! The Set Up My girlfriend’s sister is an amazing cake artist, so I know what I wanted to do – a Yo-kai […]
Note: Input queueing is a basic technique of controls, which may seems like it doesn’t warrant a write-up, but it’s come up in three separate projects over the past few months, so I felt compelled to write up an article I can easily point to for an explanation. Introduction What constitutes “good controls” in a […]
Party Time My daughter turned 9 this past week and she wanted a Gravity Falls themed birthday party. For some unknown reason, we continue to torture ourselves by hosting the birthday party at our house. At least this gives me the opportunity to make a Gravity Falls-style puzzle game for my birthday girl. If you […]
Hiring a Game Designer? A question came up on Reddit/r/gamedev the other day, “How do you go about hiring a game designer?” This can be a difficult process. An artist can have a portfolio that clearly defines their skills but a designer’s work is intertwined with all aspects of a game’s execution. It be difficult to tease […]
Random-mess I am not a fan of randomness in games. I try to keep it to a minimum as a designer and as a player, it’s a turn off for me. The idea of grinding for a loot drop will wear me out real fast. I’m looking at you Let It Die! I’ve had debates with […]
Intro One of the first game design books I ever read was Chris Crawford on Game Design. It’s a great beginner design book and introduced me to the concept of “verbs” in game design. Crawford suggested that the more verbs a game has, the better the game. A game is great when you can run […]
I have recently gone back to our MOBA, Adventure Time Battle Party and it reminded me about how I wanted to write up a post about the AI. There were a number of important lessons we learned and I wanted to share them. Ground Rules We didn’t have much time to pursue, what I […]
The Problem A solid ranking system is required for a healthy, competitive online game. You want same-skill players to be facing each other – you want your newbies playing and your veterans playing veterans. A good skill system will allow high-skilled players to quickly rise in the ranks and only face like-skilled opponents. You want these good […]