DON'T Perfectly Balance Your Game (Here's WHY) YouTube video by Game Design Skills

"Should a game be balanced perfectly?"

No. Here's why:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Exh...

#gamedesign #balance

He has a future as a tooltip writer.

At GDC I sat down with two students for 40 minutes so they could ask me any questions they had about the game industry. It was very helpful for them, for which I'm glad.

They then asked me why I took the time to sit down with them in that busy week. It's because folks did that for me 15 years ago.

Heading to GDC - who else will be there?

Going live to talk about how to get hired as a game designer…

www.linkedin.com/events/74266...

www.game-icons.net might help for this :)

speaking of cool cheap effects: the shadow from the ceiling fan in Robo Recall is not a real shadow or even a light function or even a decal, it's a rotating translucent mesh

Twitch Twitch is the world

"Couldn't have played that baby any better."

Learn more about these quotes and more:
@strangescaffold.bsky.social

www.twitch.tv/doomerdinger...

a screenshot of two tumblr posts. the first: aralintheobsessive Jan 16 if you want butterflies, you need to live with caterpillars. iam not being metaphorical, i work in a garden center, stop buying plants 'to bring in the bees and butterflies and then immediately poisoning every caterpillar that dares to consume a single leaf you will not get butterflies if you kill all the things that turn into butterflies! what are you doing! (end of post) below it, a response from afroartinc: As a poet, I also want my viewers to take this rather beautiful allegory into account.

what are you doing!

Caves of Qud on the Nintendo Switch

What a good boy. @strangescaffold.bsky.social

Despite this amazing positivity, I still managed to lose it all~

It is a well conceived exploration of a post seven apocalypse Seattle, where a player can be either a cyborg or a mutant, and then venture through the procedurally generated world history for clues to ancient treasures to be used to help save or condemn the world.

Yes. If you haven’t yet sipped pure water from the fungal blooms of a salt marshes, dodged the flume flier of the ancient bears, or had to read from the corpus cholis, you are not yet complete on your gamer ascension.

Sip from the fountain of the future, only to inflame my thirst to short the lives of under exploited aliens? Nay!!

I would love to know what the rest of the team is enjoying this year :D

@strangescaffold.bsky.social
What have you done. There is no joy in games. Only bleak darkness left.

Elden Ring. Witch Hand. Dispatch. Their times have passed.

Every day, another day of neglect. When will you allow us to trade the space babies? You must release fun back into the universe.

Consistently Make Gameplay Feel More Satisfying and Visceral And explain your design decisions when working with a team or during job interviews.

Player experience is comprised of numerous techniques that are hard to learn in isolation. This bootcamp will teach you how to improve your game for audience, balance and gameplay

gamedesignskills.com/courses/poli...

Too many legs.

Wow!

Just had an incredible first session with the new Mastering Game Mechanics cohort at the Funsmith Club.

Everyone from industry designers on concord to first-time designers who just want to level up were there!

QUD crushed the genre~

YAAAAS DANNI~~~~~ I was watching it on stream :)

Nice, looking for stuff with action game quality animation work, but not humanoid

Anyone know some other asset packs with non-humanoid monster animations in addition to ones by Protofactor?

How do great gameplay loops keep players hooked? 🎮 I chat with @xelnath.bsky.social (League of Legends, World of Warcraft) about balancing rewards and punishments to craft unforgettable gaming experiences.

🎧 Listen: bit.ly/alex-brazie-...

#GameDesign #GameplayLoops #AlexanderBrazie

Mastering Environmental Storytelling in Video Game Development A comprehensive guide to environmental storytelling in games - how to combine level design, art, and atmosphere to craft rich and immersive narrative worlds without relying on dialogue or cutscenes.

Here’s the full Environmental Storytelling guide: gamedesignskills.com/game-design/...

1. Great case studies:
The Last of Us (abandoned objects tell stories of survival)
Dark Souls (social collapse seen everywhere)
Gone Home (intimate family story told environmentally)
BioShock (visibly failed utopia)
The Witcher 3 (environmental details hint at past conflicts)

2. Use “designer hugs” (highly emotive, micro-story scenes) to create a more believable, immersive narrative by going beyond the core plot. (Ex: In Dragon Age, one corpse covers a smaller one holding a bloody teddy bear)

3. Hidden plot and historical lore fragments left for players to uncover make them feel like a detective actively participating in the story. (Ex: The hidden graffiti telling you what’s really going on in Portal)

4. Main 5 types of environmental storytelling:
Embedded (hidden stories in ruins, objects, etc.)
Emergent (stories emerge from player + system interaction)
Spatial (architectural storytelling)
Interactive (touch/examine objects to reveal story)
Atmospheric (lighting, sound, etc.)