I Like Games

This post is a little underdeveloped, but it outlines why I decided to start a blog. There's this great GDC talk, " You Have No Idea How Hard It Is To Run a Sweatshop ", and it has this slide which I really enjoyed: The talk covers the folly of games attempting to create meaning through theme only to have players discover the underlying mechanisms of games and, over time, seeing the theme as only pretty makeup over core mechanics and calculations. And I suppose what appealed to me about this is that I feel the general process for analyzing games does exactly this, intentionally. As game makers, we try think about games in terms of these mechanics which might lead to a good user experience. Coyote time makes platformers feel more responsive, pop-up tooltips bring information efficiently to players, camera shake makes hits feel more responsive, etc.. We try to learn lessons from the games we play that seem generally applicable, easily reproducible. But very little of the an...

I first saw Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders in an Olexa video . I purchased it after watching just a couple minutes. Physics-based mechanics with slightly janky controls, but a lot of opportunity for skill expression? I knew I would love it, and I do. When I say janky controls… When you press right on the joystick, the little guy tries their best, but it’s fighting against a lot. Gravity, how well it can push against the snow, how easily it can change its momentum. That right input was really just one of many opinions on which direction they should be going. The geometry of the mountain is complex, riddled with bumps and tiny vallies to push you in unexpected directions. Flat and concave surfaces can help build a lot of speed, and they’re easier to turn on, too, while convex hills slow you down and you risk getting air time It's really hard to see where I drew that picture that there's any difference at all where I hit this bump, but hitting it just right reduces air going into a...