In my playthrough of The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past, I realized how underappreciated the first 45 minutes of the game really are. You may call it tutorial, you may call it starting sequence that leads you into the game: it's the beginning of the story, at which Link wakes up in … Continue reading The well-made tutorial of Zelda: A Link to the past
Tag: game design
In-Game Help in Zelda: A Link to the Past: Game hints in A Link to the Past
One of the things that I've recognized in my latest playthrough of Zelda: A Link to the Past is, that it also has a built-in help system. You might remember that particular design choice not as a hint system, but as the eldest from Kakariko, that you meet early in the game, and then later … Continue reading In-Game Help in Zelda: A Link to the Past: Game hints in A Link to the Past
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
Game AI: Pathfinding
Looking at the source code for Command & Conquer Tiberian Dawn, pathfinding for units has an interesting algorithm. And that algorithm is, I would consider, fairly well balanced between how intelligent the units should find their paths versus how much compute and memory resources the game had at its disposal, when it was released in … Continue reading Game AI: Pathfinding
Savegames III – Zelda
If we are looking at games and how they implement the savegame mechanic to support their immersion and their creation of the game world, we need to talk about the first part in the Zelda series that was released on the NES console. In 1986, the first Zelda game was released on the then Famicom … Continue reading Savegames III – Zelda
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
My map is the largest
I'm a little bit surprised by the ongoing conversation that you Ubisoft have sparked with their announcement about Star Wars outlaws where the planets size seemed to increase and increase and that they should be larger than anything that we've seen before. While this seems to be an attempt to position the game especially well … Continue reading My map is the largest
Combining timelines in Railroad Tycoon
Railroad Tycoon is trying to stretch two interesting concepts together that you can’t really marry together, because they work on two scales, magnitudes, if you will. In Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon, you’re trying to grow your railroad business, connecting cities, fuel economies in cities and regions and you’re trying to be faster than your competition, … Continue reading Combining timelines in Railroad Tycoon
Monetization, freemium, DLCs
Monetization in games has changed quite a bit over the years - and over time. The reasons are multi-fold - games changed a lot, game formats changed, the devices you consume these games on. Specifically on mobile devices, how long and often you play, changed, too. And clearly with the internet everywhere, paying and payment … Continue reading Monetization, freemium, DLCs
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