What would (more) achievements in Zelda look like?

I have been wondering about why Nintendo haven't implemented a good achievement system to the Switch and the Switch2 consoles, similar to what their primary competitors Microsoft and Sony did for their respective consoles a long time ago. Microsoft with the Xbox 360 has been quite successful integrating that in the emerging online experience. Especially … Continue reading What would (more) achievements in Zelda look like? →

Difficulty sliders don’t work

I've been looking at difficulty settings in games for quite a while now. Different games solve the problem of keeping difficulty entertaining for their players in different ways and clearly there is also a lot of nuance of what difficulty means for games of different genres and different styles and the audiences that game designers … Continue reading Difficulty sliders don’t work →

C&C – AI progression over time

When we look at the progression of AI, specifically in the Command and Conquer franchise, we can see that across very few years a lot has happened to make the computer-based opponents more intelligent and more challenging, to better equip them with faster, strategic unit production, tactical attack waves and base building. All such that … Continue reading C&C – AI progression over time →

Difficulty in games – and how Breath of the wild does it well

Designing your game for the right difficulty level is a challenge. We've all been at the point where we've played a game that was either too easy or too difficult. And especially in the beginning, when we don't know what to expect from a game and when we haven't grasped all the dynamics and mechanics … Continue reading Difficulty in games – and how Breath of the wild does it well →

The savegame mechanic in Resident Evil

In the earlier blog post about how the save game mechanic and influences the immersion and the gameplay, we had dissected various save game implementations. If we are looking at the Resident Evil implementation of saving and loading games, we will realize that the development team found a very interesting way of incorporating the save … Continue reading The savegame mechanic in Resident Evil →