Game design
Articles on game design: from procedural generation of cover for NPCs to level-design techniques that guide the player without leading them by the hand.
- Game design
Why Pharaoh remains the best game in the series
Why the original Pharaoh (1999) runs deeper than Zeus and the A New Era remake: labor-seeker recruiters vs a global worker pool, taxing poor houses, mission structure, 20 housing levels and migration logic, the random-turn "Egyptian stupidity" of service walkers — with code recovered in the Akhenaten remake.
- Game design
Blackbox gameplay
Black box gameplay in strategy games and city-builders: why the Caesar/Pharaoh/Zeus series hid numbers and mechanics, probos and deos, sandbox vs. scripted missions, the cognitive limit of 12 pairs, why the combinatorics of mechanics matter more than the amount of content, and why "broken" (not perfect) balance keeps players for years — using Age of Empires II as an example.
- Game design
Ready Player One
The history of video games: from arcade machines and mainframe games to Computer Space, Atari and Pong, Galaxian and Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, the birth of consoles, the Atari 2600, the 1983 crash, Nintendo, Sega and the PC era.
- Game design
Catch the player, paying or not…
Dark monetization patterns in games: daily rewards, premium currency, loot boxes, power creep, time gates and the comprehensive MINDSPACE framework — how studios play on player psychology.
- Game design
What can we learn from the old BioShock: Infinite?
Game design lessons from BioShock: Infinite: the principle of clarity, fixed and emergent narrative, the illusion of choice and Ken Levine's layered storytelling — and how a linear shooter breaks the fifth wall.
- Game design
For a fistful of achievements
The psychology of collection mechanics in games: domination, socialization, the unfinished-set effect and envy; types of collections by availability; achievements and gear as collections.
- Game design
The last of Deus Ex
A look at the levels of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided — the Dawn Engine, the black-and-gold visual style, attention to detail, variability vs. story, and the combinatorics of immersive-sim mechanics.
- Game design
Corridors tell no tales
How architecture and level design tell a story, using BioShock as the example: corridors and shadows, visual magnets, frozen story, geometry tuned to enemy traits, and a bit of feng shui.
- Game design
I miss the mechanics of old games
A grumble about lost mechanics of old games: clear goals, systemic design, behavior-base levels, enemy levels, learning through interaction, reward and punishment, karma and invisible walls.
- Game design
The Red Barrel Problem
What a "red barrel" is in game design: how exploding barrels became a shooter cliché and why inherited mechanics pile up questions yet end up unused by players.
- Game design
Should players be hand-held?
Level-design techniques from Witcher 3, Zelda and Metro Exodus — guiding players without leading them by the hand.
- Game design
Procedural generation of cover in games
Automatically generating cover points for NPCs from level geometry: navmesh edge traversal, raypicks, candidate culling and runtime cover evaluation. Examples from 4A Engine.