Game Design

Solvability In Games

What does it mean to say that one game is “more solvable” than another? Is there a relationship between solvability (of any sort) and the point at which players get bored of games? Solvability I should start out by making it clear that in game design, we are not usually concerned with true or mathematical …

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Arcs in Strategy Games

It is common to hear players talk about “tactics” and “strategy” in games. In this case, the colloquial understanding of these terms happens to be pretty useful, in that it maps well to something that actually goes on in playing strategy games. With that said, it’s worth taking a moment to clarify these terms: “Tactics” …

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Push the Lane!

I’ve been working on this game since late 2015. It started as an abstract dragging-stuff mobile game like Threes, then become more of a single player turn-based League of Legends, and now has become a strategy/tactics game that doesn’t resemble anything in particular. Here’s a rundown. Theme It’s an American Gladiators or Nickelodeon’s Guts! type …

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Clockwork Criteria: 6 Guidelines for Ideal Strategy Game Design

What are the criteria that make something a good “Clockwork Game”? The Clockwork Game Design model is something I have been working on for the last five years or so. It is specifically an effort to figure out how to make the most elegant and effective strategy games possible. There are certainly practical reasons why …

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Riot is thinking about input/output randomness in League of Legends

For the past five years or so, I’ve been talking about the input/output randomness concepts, and why they’re so important for game design. While I wasn’t the one who coined the terms—that honor goes to the great fellows at the Ludology Podcast—some Googling around shows that no one has talked about the concepts, or developed …

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