Game Design

If You Choose Not to Decide, You Still Have Made a Choice........ So often producers, programmers, artists, and designers fail t ...

Chapter 4 Game Analysis:Centipede ................ Chapter 4 Game Analysis:Centipede .................. Designed by Ed Logg with ...

It bears mentioning that when I refer to the classic arcade game, I do not mean to imply that all classic arcade games are class ...

gaming genres. Despite the wild variety of gameplay that can be found in classic arcade games, one can still look back on these ...

publishers no longer wanted players to play a single game forever. Instead they want players to finish the games they have and b ...

No Story: Classic arcade games almost universally eschewed the notion of trying to “tell a story” of any sort, just as many mod ...

Input...................................... One of the great advantages to working on a game for the arcades is that the designe ...

shoot the mushroom four times, thus destroying it. But at the top of the screen, where players cannot maneuver the ship, destroy ...

the play-field if less than a certain number of mushrooms are on the bottom half of the screen. This way, if players destroy all ...

Escalating Tension.............................. A big part of the success ofCentipedeis how it escalates tension over the lengt ...

wave as the extra centipede head generator did, but also from wave to wave, since the mushrooms never go away unless players sho ...

The player’s death also provides a brief respite from the tension. When the player’s ship is destroyed, the wave starts over and ...

individual fully understands every last nuance of the game, the final product is much more likely to come out with a clearness o ...

Chapter 5 Focus ........................... Chapter 5 Focus............................. “Feel the flow... To become one with th ...

Sometimes in the middle of a project it is easy to get sidetracked — sidetracked by technological obstacles that are thrown in y ...

by firmly establishing the vision of the game early on will you have any chance of seeing it carried out. If you do not have too ...

case. You may be one of several designers on the project. You may even be one of seven and you were just hired last week, so you ...

attractions operating smoothly. The player’s main source of conflict will be the weather itself. Throughout, the tone will be li ...

is an exhilarating...” instead of “Winter Carnival Whirlwindwill be an exhilarating...” This lends your game a more concrete exi ...

someone else’s understanding. When members of your team read, “It’s likeTomb Raider,” they are probably reminded of some differe ...