Dev Links: Shields Up
Today’s Developer Links include design tips for genres as diverse as story games, tower defense games, and… well, forum role-playing games, which aren’t exactly video games at all, but hey, why not? Also, how to make your games “juicy”. (And why.)
Video: Is Your Game ‘Juicy’ Enough? (Gamasutra)
“According to independent developers Martin Jonasson and Petri Purho (Jesus vs. Dinosaurs), the best way to make a satisfying game is to make it ‘juicy’ — the ‘juicier’ your game is, the more fun it will be to play. Now what exactly does that mean?…”
Story Based Games With Multiple Point Of View (Computer Games)
“The short video above is the introduction to my upcoming game Bionic Heart 2. What does it have to do with the title? Simple, because is a visual novel game that tells a story from multiple point of views (from now I’ll abbreviate it with PoV).”
Tower Defense Game Design (Cliffski.com)
“I recently spent some time looking at a bunch of tower defense games, and it saddened me to see how little innovation most people attempt in that genre, although I guess that is something pretty generally applicable to all genres, and most peoples first game. I might be lucky, in that I always have an urge to put some sort of ‘spin’ on any game I make, i am never happy to just do ‘a game in this genre’ and leave it at that. It’s worth remembering, as a game designers, that the player will always be asking themselves ‘why do I need to play this, when I can just go play the classic tower defense game X’. You really need to have an answer to that question.”
FRPGs (Independent Gaming)
“Now, I’ve been on the topics of forum games for a while, and I’ve been rather enjoying it. This week I would like to zoom into a particular type of game that crops up not just on forums but all over the place.”
A Data-Oriented, Data-Driven System for Vector Fields — Part 3 (AltDevBlogADay)
“In this post, I’ll finish my series on vector fields (see part 1 and part 2) by tying up some loose ends.”
All Under Control (Octodad Blog)
“The original Octodad sold itself on its control scheme meant to simulate the hardships an octopus would face if he were trying to pull off masquerading as a human. We meant to make it awkwardly difficult but since release have realized there were a ton of technical flaws that took away from this and made it needlessly frustrating. Essentially, we took a look at the controls and tried to find ways to reduce this unintentional frustration where the player felt cheated and focused on retaining the awkward and wacky controls that players did enjoy.”
Art Asset Overview #36 (Wolfire Blog)
“As we move forward into working on more specific scenarios, David has asked me to make some assets for them. This first group of camp assets is not totally complete, but is still enough to make a simple scene.”
Japanese Indie Games (Nyu Media) – Fairy Bloom Freesia, Ether Vapor Remaster, Eryi’s Action (Zeboyd Games)
“If you’re at our site, you’re probably familiar with Carpe Fulgur’s work in localizing great Japanese indie titles likeRecettear into English but they’re not the only game in town when it comes to bringing Japanese indie titles to a worldwide audience. The good folks at Nyu Media were kind enough to provide me with some review codes for some of the Japanese indie games they’ve brought out. Here are my impressions.”
