Game Maker's Toolkit
Mark Brown on how great games are designed: mechanics, levels, difficulty, game feel and what makes them fun. 180 videos from Game Maker's Toolkit. Each one as notes: the design idea, the games that show it, and how to use it in your own game.
Ask all of them a question · The course
creator of Game Maker's Toolkit151
Has Zelda Changed Forever?
Breath of the Wild shifted Zelda from a passive, designer-led structure to an active, player-led one, and the video weighs what that gained and what it cost. The example that makes it worth watching is Donkey Kong Bananza, which blends player freedom with designer-set progression and hints at where Zelda could go.
- List every stress point in your formula and replace each with a new idea
- Plot your game on a passive to active spectrum
- Build the world from interacting properties so players can invent their own solutions
How Games Do Destruction
Real-time destruction in games comes from clever cost-cutting tricks: swapping intact and broken props, slicing meshes, soft body physics, grid-based fire, voxels, and stress calculations on buildings. The Red Faction: Guerilla stress system, and how The Finals reuses it with modern hardware, makes it worth watching, along with the warning that destruction must serve the design.
- Swap an intact object for a pre-broken version when it is hit
- Join broken pieces with physics joints so props collapse believably
- Cover the swap with particles, material-tagged effects and decals to sell impact
What's The Point Of Hard Games, Anyway?
Difficulty is a toolkit rather than a single dial: it can raise satisfaction, mirror the story and force deeper play, but it needs to feel fair and give players ways to adjust or step away. The example worth watching is Hollow Knight: Silksong, where the Last Judge shows fair difficulty and the repetitive runbacks and random boss patterns show the BS that drives players off.
- Make challenges hard when you want overcoming them to feel unforgettable
- Match the difficulty of the gameplay to the story you are telling
- Use difficulty to push players away from boring, repetitive strategies
Blue Prince: Can a random puzzle game actually work?
Explains why random room drafting clashes with the join-the-dots structure of adventure puzzles, then lays out why the developers kept the randomness and how it could be made friendlier. The example worth watching is Blue Prince, where you can hold a safe code for several runs without the safe ever appearing.
- Don't let randomness hide one half of a clue-and-lock puzzle pair
- Let players test their theories on demand, not only when the dice allow
- Don't pair random generation with puzzles that demand single-thread focus
Can I fix Zelda's UI using Unity?
Mark Brown rebuilds Echoes of Wisdom's single-row echo list in Unity and tries five alternative menus (acceleration, cross media bar, tabbed grid, radial, spiral), showing how menu shape changes speed, comfort and what players notice. The worth-watching twist is Nintendo's stated reason for the slow list: it is meant to make you less efficient but more creative.
- Check why a bad-looking UI exists before redesigning it
- Check a fix against the game's intended experience, not only efficiency
- Speed up list scrolling the longer the player holds a direction
How a Super Smash Bros. Fighter is Designed
Walks through the eight-step process Masahiro Sakurai uses to design a Smash Bros. fighter, from picking the roster to theme, stats, moveset, balance, animation, visual style and reveal trailer. The worth-watching example is how Sakurai cut Chrom for being 'Dude With Sword' and invited Robin instead, with breakable tomes and a sword as a new theme.
- Boil each character down to a one-sentence theme before designing anything else
- Cut a character who offers nothing new, and swap in one with a fresh mechanic
- Give a powerful strength a matching drawback instead of capping the strength
10 Game Design Lessons from 10 Years of GMTK
Ten years of Game Maker's Toolkit boiled down to ten lessons: mechanics drive experience, no mechanic is right or wrong in isolation, design for a target audience, and test everything with real players. The Far Cry 2 versus Far Cry 4 comparison and Celeste's Assist Mode make the ideas concrete.
- Judge a game's feel by asking how its mechanics create the experience
- Pick mechanics by the experience you want, never because they are trendy or dated
- Decide who the game is for and tune mechanics to that audience
What Makes a Game Feel Mysterious?
Mystery comes from withholding information so the player holds open questions, then letting the player answer them through their own discovery, ideally with knowledge instead of items. The Witness's hidden environmental puzzles and Tunic's knowledge-locked mountain door show how far this can go.
- Hide something behind a locked door to plant an open question
- Limit how many open mysteries the player must juggle at once
- Use one-way shortcuts so players never see a door they cannot open
The 100 Games That Taught Me Game Design
A tour of 100 games, each picked to teach one game design idea, from difficulty curves and feedback loops to randomness, information, systems and narrative. The standout examples are Left 4 Dead's Director pacing system, Mario Kart's item rubber banding, and Mark of the Ninja turning Thief into a planning game by showing information.
- Show the player the hidden state of the world to turn a game into planning
- Let difficulty and pacing rise and fall based on the player's current state
- Give trailing players stronger items so mixed skill groups all have fun
Balatro's 'Cursed' Design Problem
Hiding information can create a feeling like suspense or mystery, but only if players truly cannot get around it. Balatro's missing score preview and The Binding of Isaac's missing item descriptions show how a hidden-but-attainable loophole turns a deliberate design choice into a lasting flaw.
- Hide information when you want suspense, and build the reveal as a show
- Never leave hidden information attainable by effort, because players will optimize the fun out of it
- Decide how much information to show, because it changes how the game feels and how players act
Why Spec Ops: The Line Mattered
Spec Ops: The Line shows how a game can use the shape of a familiar genre, and its own mechanics, to make players question what they are doing and enjoying. The example worth watching is the chapter eight white phosphorus scene, which turns a routine mortar sequence into the game's central moral shock.
- Dress your game as a genre standard, then pull the rug
- Break genre expectations the player has never questioned, such as always getting a good choice
- Turn a routine action into a horror reveal using the player's own trust in the interface
Super Mario's Invisible Difficulty Settings
Mario games build difficulty settings into the game itself, as three connected pipes (easy, normal, hard) that players move between mid-play instead of picking a mode at the start. The worth-watching example is Super Mario Bros. Wonder, which stacks character choice, badges, skippable levels, hidden hard worlds and rewards for dying into one seamless system.
- Design one average critical path with easier and harder routes connected to it
- Skip the difficulty select screen when your game is hand-crafted
- Offer optional risk-reward pickups that experts chase and beginners can ignore
How Jusant Makes Rock-Climbing More Immersive
Jusant turns climbing into an immersive, decision-making activity through mirrored controls, a rope that limits and expands routes, and a forgiving stamina and checkpoint system. The video then argues that games should be judged against the developer's intent, using Jusant's deliberately calm design versus Tomb Raider's downtime climbing.
- Mirror the character's physical action in the controller input so players feel what they do
- Cut input complexity that players cannot easily learn or execute, even if it is more realistic
- Combine several kinaesthetic tricks at once, and apply them to a human character
The one thing you need to finish your game (Developing 11)
Once a prototype has shown what is fun, a concrete plan of scope, level counts and tasks turns aimless tinkering into steady progress on a finished game. The example that makes it worth watching is how Mark's level plan for Mind Over Magnet let him make around 40 final levels in a month and exposed teaching-order problems early.
- Skip detailed planning while prototyping, then plan once you know what is fun
- Fix the number of levels and worlds, and define what a level is
- Give every mechanic three levels: teach it, test it, then twist it
How Nintendo Designed Ultrahand
Shows how Nintendo shaped Ultrahand by stripping out complexity, borrowing from real-world objects, and aiming for creativity, humour and player agency. The worked examples of snapping, 45 degree rotation, Zonai devices and the visible glue make it worth watching.
- Cut complexity from a build tool upfront so freedom can grow later
- Keep rethinking the steps of a task until it takes one or two actions
- Trade fine precision for speed with coarse rotation steps and snap points
The World Design of Banjo-Kazooie
Compares the self-contained levels of Banjo-Kazooie with the interconnected, backtracking-heavy levels of Banjo-Tooie to show what interconnected world design gains and what it costs. The worth-watching example is Grunty Industries and its washing machine transformation, where a clever idea turns into tedium because of how it is implemented.
- When making a sequel, expand a few elements instead of everything at once.
- Make activating a transformation or character swap quick, or players will resent it.
- Give huge, multi-step levels a map or other memory aid.
How to Make a Good 2D Camera
A 2D camera should do far more than stick to the player: it should show what is coming, ignore jumps, smooth its motion, frame important things, and add juice. The tour of Cave Story, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, Fez, Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet, Celeste and Hollow Knight shows how each camera rule fits its game.
- Offset the camera ahead of the player so the screen shows what is coming
- Swap lookahead smoothly when the player reverses direction instead of snapping the camera
- Drive lookahead from player speed, throttle or aim to show what they intend to see
The 3 Types of Detective Game
Detective games fall into three styles (deduction, contradiction and investigation), and the best ones make players think like a detective by testing answers in a way that blocks leading, guessing and brute force. Return of the Obra Dinn's open-ended log book is the example that shows how much the answer-input design matters.
- Test answers without prompting the player or allowing guessing and brute force
- Do not let players link pre-written clue thoughts into a deduction
- Avoid multiple-choice answers with leading questions in a detective puzzle
The Genius AI Behind The Sims
Explains how The Sims builds believable autonomous characters with needs-based utility AI, from single Sims to whole neighborhoods, and why it deliberately holds back to leave room for player stories. The example worth watching is the cut urinal rule, which shows that a less realistic simulation can make a better game.
- Put needs data on objects so they advertise what they offer
- Weight each advertised reward by the character's current need level
- Give each need its own response curve so urgent needs win
Valve's "Secret Weapon"
Valve treats every design as a hypothesis and every playtest as an experiment, testing early, weekly, and in silence, then filtering the feedback against a clear goal. The story of Portal's playtesters calling the whole game a tutorial, which led to GLaDOS, shows how watching players can reshape a game.
- Playtest early, even with one rough room and ugly art
- Run a weekly playtest loop: test Friday, discuss Monday, fix, repeat
- Treat each design as a hypothesis and each playtest as an experiment
How Nintendo Solved Zelda's Open World Problem
Explains how Nintendo balanced freedom and guidance in Breath of the Wild's open world, drawing on a 2017 CEDEC talk. The example worth watching is the failed Sheikah tower 'points and lines' system, whose 80/20 heat map split led to the landmark and triangle rule design.
- Lure players with a varied web of landmarks, not one obvious guide line
- Avoid guidance so strong that players feel on a guide rope
- Track player movement with heat maps to reveal split play styles
Why Capcom is the King of Remakes
Capcom's Resident Evil remakes change gameplay and content freely, but use the feeling of the original as a guide so the game stays true to what made it loved. The Resident Evil 4 remake, where strafing is added but enemies get meaner so the game still feels pulse-pounding, shows how to modernise without losing the feel.
- Build remake pillars from feelings, not features, so mechanics can change freely
- Counterbalance a player-friendly change by making enemies more aggressive and numerous
- Check every modernising change for its knock-on effect on the game's feel
How To Think Like A Game Designer
Teaches how to use the MDA framework (mechanics, dynamics, aesthetics) to judge whether a mechanic borrowed from another game fits your own game's vision. The worth-watching example is Alien: Isolation, where swapping automatic checkpoints for slow, manual save points turned saving itself into a source of terror.
- Understand why a mechanic works before copying it into your game
- Analyse every mechanic as mechanics, then dynamics, then aesthetics
- Tune a single number to flip player behaviour and emotion
How Neon White Lets You Speedrun Speedrunning
Neon White's Insight system walks players from a first clear to a speedrunner's mindset in minutes, using staged medals, short levels and hidden shortcuts to turn replaying into the main fun. The example that makes it worth watching is how each medal tier unlocks the next tool: leaderboard, timer, ghost, level hint and global ranks.
- Gate optimisation tools behind medals so players learn to replay for better times
- Build a system that points players at the real fun of your game
- Keep levels very short so retrying is the easy default
How Fortnite Exploits Your FOMO
Fortnite's habit of removing content as often as it adds it can keep a live game fresh and approachable, but the same time limits double as a retention tool built on fear of missing out. The Chapter 4 finale, where the whole map is destroyed and replaced, shows the upside, while the expiring battle pass and rotating item shop show the manipulative side.
- Remove old content as you add new content to keep a live game fresh
- Keep a stable core loop while everything around it keeps changing
- Retire old content so new players are not overwhelmed by years of mechanics
Why do God of War's Characters Keep Spoiling Puzzles?
Explains why companion characters in AAA games like God of War Ragnarok keep giving away puzzle solutions: playtest-driven fixes, accessibility, pacing, and the pressure of huge budgets and audiences. The example that makes it worth watching is the contrast between Dishonored's subtle, in-world hints and Ragnarok's nagging ones, plus the argument that endless hand-holding wears away what makes games engaging.
- Fix confusing puzzles by revising the design before adding spoken hints
- Retest puzzles once final art is in, because greybox clarity does not carry over
- Look for moments where many playtesters get stuck on the same exact bit
The World Design of Elden Ring
Elden Ring's open world gives players real freedom and organic discovery, but static enemy levels, repeated content and a constrained second half show what open world design costs a Souls game. The example that makes it worth watching is how a dot-to-dot map, optional Great Runes and hidden bypass routes let players skip most bosses while the same structure strains the difficulty balance.
- Chain regions dot-to-dot so a huge open world stays navigable
- Guide players softly so ignoring the guidance feels like a choice
- Require only part of the goals so most content can be skipped
How Game Designers Solved These 11 Problems
Shows a set of repeatable approaches for fixing design problems, from finding the root cause to iterating fast, making big changes, flipping a rule, or solving it in another system. The Gears of War active reload story, resolved with secret 'magic bullets' for players who never finish a clip, ties the whole video together.
- Find the root cause before you fix the reported problem
- Make sure the whole team agrees on what the problem is
- Prototype many quick solutions and learn from the ones that fail
How To Combine Video Game Genres
Genres can be combined in three ways: handing off between them, letting players pick a play style, or blending them into something new. Each has its own pitfalls, and the video shows how Uncharted, Deus Ex, Wolfenstein, Spelunky and Shovel Knight: Pocket Dungeon solved or hit them.
- Choose complementary genres so each one cancels the other's weaknesses
- Make one genre the primary one and keep secondary genres simple
- Let players skip or ignore secondary genres they dislike
How Video Game Economies are Designed
Maps a typical game economy as five entities (tap, inventory, converter, drain, trader) and shows how tuning each one changes pace, decisions and risk. The Witcher 3 cow-farming exploit and CD Projekt Red's two failed patches make the lesson stick.
- Use taps to reward the behaviour you want from players
- Tune tap flow to set how scarce and valuable a resource feels
- Cap inventory size to force choices and stop hoarding
Wait, Didn't Arkane Already Make Deathloop?
Compares Arkane's Prey: Mooncrash with Deathloop to show how a time-loop structure needs variation, counterbalanced progression, pressure and enforced play-style changes to stay fresh. The worth-watching example is Mooncrash's difficulty ramp tied to mission completion and its five-character split, which Deathloop leaves out and so ends up easy, repetitive and over-guided.
- Raise difficulty as the player completes objectives to offset permanent upgrades
- Pair permanent progression with a counterbalancing system or the game loses its challenge
- Randomise small elements inside a fixed level layout to keep repeat visits surprising
The Power of Invisible Choices
Action games can let players make story choices through the verbs they already use, such as shooting or waiting, instead of menus and button prompts. The Spec Ops: The Line scene where you shoot one of two hanging men, or the ropes, or the snipers, shows how an invisible choice hides options, and the video also covers the costs.
- Let players express choices through the game's normal verbs, not menus
- Hide extra options so clever players can discover them
- Make the better or kinder choice cost more effort than the easy one
How Accessible Were 2021's Games?
A survey of accessibility in 25 blockbuster games and many indies from 2021, covering controls, audio, visuals, difficulty and the studios driving change. It is worth watching for the side-by-side examples of what Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Far Cry 6 do well, and where Metroid Dread and Outriders fall short.
- Make accessibility a core design pillar so it reaches every system and survives deadlines
- Offer full button remapping, plus toggles for every hold input
- Let players map any action to press, hold or double tap
Why is it so hard to make game design decisions? (Developing 3)
Shows how a changed core mechanic can push a game toward a different genre, and how that left the designer stuck choosing between a platformer and a puzzle game. The worked example is Mark's own magnet game, plus Oliver Granlund's advice to beat analysis paralysis with a deadline and a minimum viable product.
- Let the game's pull decide its genre, not your own preference
- Kill your darlings: cut features you love when they fight the game's identity
- Set a short arbitrary deadline and a minimum scope to beat analysis paralysis
Why You (Probably) Didn't Get Lost in Metroid Dread
Metroid Dread quietly steers players through a sprawling Metroidvania map using points of no return, nearby locks and keys, teleporters and breadcrumb pickups, so the player rarely gets lost. The example that makes it worth watching is Mark Brown mapping 13 of the game's 22 abilities to show each lock sits just around the corner from its key.
- Use one-way points of no return to shrink the explorable area
- Watch for the ever expanding explorable area as abilities pile up
- Place each lock near the key that opens it
Can we Improve Tutorials for Complex Games?
Tutorials for complex games (strategy, city builders, simulation) work better when they are split up across a campaign or across playthroughs, taught by doing rather than by arrows, and built on things players already know. The example worth watching is Total War: Troy, where an hourglass end turn button left one playtester stuck for 40 minutes on turn one.
- Delay lessons until the player is invested and the mechanic is relevant
- Add systems one at a time and teach each as it appears
- Start complex games with fewer systems and let complexity grow like an inverted pyramid
The Power of Video Game HUDs
The HUD is a design tool that changes how a game plays, feels and gets built: gauges and previews give players information, and holding it back, making it diegetic, or making it vague changes behaviour. The Into the Breach and Hearthstone examples, where cool ideas were cut because the UI could not show them clearly, are the reason to watch.
- Surface hidden game state with gauges so players can make intentional plans
- Show a preview of an action's consequence before the player commits to it
- Design the HUD together with the mechanics, not as a late addition
How to Turn Movement into a Game Mechanic
Movement becomes a fun mechanic when it is built from a few reusable elements (chaining, environment, timing, momentum, trajectory, physics) and shaped to give freedom, analogue control, flow, a skill test and physical satisfaction. The worth-watching part is the side by side of very different systems, such as Titanfall 2's free-aim grapple against Zelda's fixed hookshot.
- Build movement from six elements: chaining, environment, timing, momentum, trajectory and physics
- Give movement analogue inputs so the player shapes the path instead of triggering a fixed animation
- Let moves chain together so players choose which move to use and when
How the Nemesis System Creates Stories
Explains how the Nemesis System turns ordinary player actions into personal stories, using improv, non-death endings, hierarchies, rarity and player imagination. The worth-watching example is Mark's own run with Ar-Karo the Stitch, a sword-breaking orc who dies, returns, joins his army and ends up Overlord.
- Let the game answer the player's ordinary actions, like an improv partner saying yes, and
- Give enemies prompts that the player can choose to build on
- Give every fight an ending that is not the enemy's death
How Watch Dogs: Legion Generates Infinite Londoners
Explains how Watch Dogs: Legion's "Play as Anyone" system generates a whole city of recruitable characters, then shows why that clever system barely affects how the game is played. The lesson is that an innovative system only matters when the structure, missions and story are built to make the player use it.
- Build the game around a clever system so players must engage with it
- Make options meaningfully different or choosing between them stops mattering
- Pick a lane: either make recruits suit specific jobs or make each run unique
How Accessible Were 2020's Biggest Games?
A survey of how 2020's biggest games handled accessibility across controls, subtitles, visuals, and difficulty, with the reasons each option matters to real players. The Last of Us Part II, playable end to end without sight, is the example that makes it worth watching.
- Let players fully remap controls inside the game, not only at system level
- Offer hold-versus-toggle and QTE skips, since remapping alone doesn't solve motor needs
- Give tricky multi-button inputs a dedicated shortcut button
How Zelda's Puzzle Box Dungeons Work
Explains how Zelda's puzzle box dungeons turn the whole dungeon into one puzzle through remote switches, a limited view and reversible states, and how to keep them fair for players who struggle. The Water Temple's cracked wall, where you must change the water level in another room and return, makes the idea concrete.
- Make a switch change the dungeon somewhere other than where you flip it
- Force players to leave the room to change the state, then return
- Limit the player's view so they must predict effects beyond what they see
Who Gets to be Awesome in Games?
Power fantasies can be handed to the player or earned through mastery, and each choice shuts out a different kind of player. Five fixes let both kinds of player feel awesome, with Bayonetta's low skill floor and high skill ceiling as the clearest case.
- Give a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling, as Bayonetta does
- Reward mastery without requiring it, so skilled players earn more but others still progress
- Offer gameplay and accessibility options, not just difficulty levels, to reduce complexity
Are Lives Outdated Game Design?
Lives are neither outdated nor essential: they are a set of trade-offs around stakes, rewards and frustration, and the useful question is why a game includes them. Crash Bandicoot 4's Modern mode, which keeps counting lives to unlock a gem for low-retry clears, is the smartest example of reworking the idea.
- Add lives only with a clear reason, not because platformers always had them
- Reward players for finishing with few retries instead of punishing them for running out
- Count retries toward the score so high ranks require a single-life clear
This Psychological Trick Makes Rewards Backfire
Explicit goals and expected rewards can undermine the intrinsic motivation that exploration, creative and self-improvement games depend on, which is the overjustification effect. Klei's scrapped Don't Starve quests and Zach Barth's decision to drop achievements show how to use goals and rewards without wrecking the fun.
- Avoid step-by-step quests in games built on experimentation and discovery
- Onboard with subtle UI hints instead of explicit tasks
- Replace fixed achievement thresholds with personal bests, leaderboards and histograms in self-improvement games
The Games That Designed Themselves
Great games rarely start from a perfect idea: designers build a rough prototype, notice what is most fun in it, and rebuild the game around that. The Ape Out and Into the Breach stories show how one surprising piece of a prototype became the whole game.
- Build a prototype, then rebuild the game around its most fun part
- Let one enjoyable mechanic dictate the rest of your design decisions
- Treat design as iteration: play the game and follow what it wants
The Birth of the Japanese RPG | Design Icons
Traces how Dungeons & Dragons passed through Wizardry and Ultima into Dragon Quest, and shows how hardware limits, audience and local culture pulled Japanese and Western RPGs apart. The worked example is Dragon Quest, which merges Wizardry's combat with Ultima's overworld, simplifies both, and gets manga art from Akira Toriyama.
- Simplify a complex genre to reach a wider, younger audience
- Combine the strongest parts of two influences into one game
- Adapt input to the platform instead of porting it unchanged
Commanding Shepard
Looks at how Mass Effect shares ownership of its hero between player and character, and where that sharing works or breaks in morality, forced story beats, squad-mates and identity. The worked examples, from the Genophage and Tali versus Legion to Jack's loyalty mission and Garrus's hidden morality, show exactly what makes a shared protagonist feel fair or hollow.
- Fix the hero's core identity and goals, and let the player choose style
- Replace good versus evil with different methods toward the same heroic goal
- Make the unheroic option viable by tying it to the hero's goal and real consequences
How do Stealth Games Deal with Detection? - School of Stealth Part 3
Explains how stealth games handle being spotted, from the guard state machine in Metal Gear Solid to the fuzzy detection meter in Dishonored 2, and why quick loading undermines the genre. The Arkham games' lasting health loss, compared with the limited rewinds in racing games, is the example that shows how to stop save scumming.
- Avoid instant game over as the penalty for being detected
- Do not force an irreversible switch to combat when the player is spotted
- Model guards as states with clear transitions: idle, combat, search, then back to idle
Should Designers Listen to Negative Feedback?
Explains how developers can sort useful player criticism from noise, using four tips: weigh the vocal minority against data, find problems rather than adopt suggested solutions, avoid sanding the game into something dull, and build a conversation with players. The Nioh durability-to-familiarity redesign and the Resident Evil 3 Nemesis case make the difference between listening and obeying clear.
- Treat player suggested fixes as symptoms and look for the underlying problem
- Keep a mechanic's purpose but redesign it when players demand its removal
- Use feedback to generate questions for yourself, not solutions to copy
The Five Types of Stealth Game Gadget - School of Stealth Part 2
Stealth gadgets fall into five categories (information, AI manipulation, redefining space, movement, dispatching enemies), and each one must be limited or countered or it creates dominant strategies. The worth-watching part is the long run of concrete balancing levers, from Ghost Recon's battery-limited drone to Metal Gear Solid V's guards who put on helmets when you spam headshots.
- Limit information gadgets so players still observe carefully instead of getting perfect intel
- Give information tools built-in limits like battery, range, noise triggers or tag caps
- Make gadget powers temporary so safety pockets expire and players must keep adapting
The 4 "P"s of DOOM's Amazing Combat
A single five minute fight from DOOM Eternal shows how combat stays intense when the player must keep answering four questions at once: priority, preference, preservation and position. The Nekravol Part II arena, with its phased enemy spawns, makes the case, and the video then shows where Eternal weakens the balance DOOM 2016 had.
- Build combat around four questions the player answers at once: priority, preference, preservation, position
- Make enemies differ enough that choosing a target is a real decision
- Give each weapon a niche so weapon choice is constant and meaningful
How Stealth Game Guards See and Hear - School of Stealth Part 1
Stealth guards perceive the player through simulated eyes and ears (view cones, raycasts, awareness meters, pathfinding-based sound), and how much of that system the game shows the player decides whether it feels tense or empowering. Comparing Mark of the Ninja's fully visible vision cones and sound pulses with Alien: Isolation's hidden senses makes the tradeoff clear.
- Decide how much of the perception system to reveal, because it sets the feel
- Build guard vision from a view cone plus extra zones for peripheral and close range
- Raycast to several points on the player's body to handle partial cover
The Genius of Prey's Gloo Cannon
Shows how one multipurpose tool, Prey's Gloo cannon, can serve combat, hazard handling, traversal and sequence breaking, and how technical limits shaped it. The example that makes it worth watching is the Gloo staircase, which also lets a player skip most of the game and finish in under 7 minutes.
- Give one signature tool several distinct jobs so it stays on quick-select
- Teach a tool's first use by throwing enemies at the player the moment they get it
- Make a utility tool set up combat rather than replace it
How Level Design Can Tell a Story
Level design can tell a story at three layers (small set dressing vignettes, places and rooms, and the overall world), and it can also steer how the player feels and who they believe they are. The Mass Effect 3 Tuchanka emotion and intensity charts and God of War's panicked search for Atreus make it worth watching.
- Stage small optional vignettes with set dressing so players deduce the story themselves
- Let the world change after the player acts to show consequences
- Use environmental props to deliver gameplay hints as well as story
The Two Types of Random in Game Design
Randomness splits into input randomness (luck happens before you decide) and output randomness (luck happens after you decide), and the split explains why some luck feels fair and some feels cruel. Slay the Spire's switch from hidden enemy moves to enemy moves rolled at the start of your turn shows how moving randomness earlier turns a frustrating game into a strategic one.
- Roll random events before the player decides, so luck informs plans instead of breaking them
- Convert output randomness into input randomness by revealing the random result before the player acts
- Cap how much the player can foresee, because perfect information invites paralysis and airtight plans
How Accessible Were 2019’s Biggest Games?
A survey of 50 of 2019's biggest games shows which accessibility options work and which still shut players out, across hearing, vision, motor ability and difficulty. The sharpest contrasts are Resident Evil 2's silent Mr. X footsteps against Gears 5's one-handed play, and Sekiro's lack of assists against Devil May Cry 5 and Astral Chain.
- Back every important sound cue with a visual cue
- Let players communicate in multiplayer without voice or audio
- Make subtitles large, named, high contrast and customisable
The World Design of Hollow Knight | Boss Keys
Explains how Hollow Knight's world design starts as a guided linear path and then fans out into many routes, simultaneous upgrades and optional content, so players rarely get stuck. The Resting Grounds, reachable four different ways, is the example that shows how multiple entrances replace signposts.
- Give critical progress more than one lock so players cannot get stuck
- Build several routes into a key area instead of using signposts or markers
- Open the world wide after a linear opening, so players find something whichever way they go
What Pac-Man Brought to Game Design | Design Icons
Pac-Man shows how a few simple rules can produce ghosts that feel smart, a rhythm of tension and relief, and a game anyone understands at a glance. The ghost targeting rules, where four simple chasers look like a coordinated pack, make it worth watching.
- Give each enemy its own simple targeting rule so the group is readable but unpredictable
- Fake enemy teamwork with independent simple rules instead of a squad manager
- Build enemy AI as a few distinct behaviour states the player can read
Clockwork Games and Time Loops
Games that simulate events on a real clock, called clockwork games, make 'when' matter as much as 'where', turn time into a resource, and often use time loops to handle a fixed end point. Outer Wilds, with its shifting hourglass twins, is the example that shows how a clock makes a world feel alive and indifferent to the player.
- Let the world change on a clock so 'when' matters as much as 'where'
- Make the world run on a clock to convey indifference to the player
- Treat time as a scarce resource, like ammo and health
The World Design of Metroid Prime 3: Corruption | Boss Keys
Metroid Prime 3 shows how a Metroidvania loses its sense of discovery when locks and keys stop connecting and a voice tells the player where to go. The most useful comparison is its energy cell key hunt, which fixes the pacing problems of the Chozo artifacts in Prime 1 and the Sky Temple Keys in Prime 2.
- Make every new area unlock from a visible lock and key link
- Do not let constant objective prompts replace the player's own memory
- Tell the player where to go but not how to get there
How Space Invaders Birthed Japanese Games
Space Invaders gave game design the difficulty curve, a rising challenge that resets at each new stage, along with high scores, mood-setting audio and enemies that shoot back. The example worth watching is how a hardware limit made the aliens speed up as the player killed them, and Tomohiro Nishikado kept it as a feature.
- Make the game harder as the player does better, so skill meets challenge
- Keep a happy accident in the game if it improves the experience
- Shape difficulty as a wave that rises within a level and eases at the next
Can We Make Talking as Much Fun as Shooting?
Talking your way past a fight is usually just a skipped fight, a single button press behind a skill check. Dialogue becomes real gameplay when you have to read the person, remember what you learned, and use evidence, as in Life is Strange's rooftop scene with Kate Marsh.
- Do not let a skill check replace gameplay with a single button press
- Treat talking as a real alternative to combat, not an option to skip it
- Make characters respond to different approaches and let players work out which one fits
How to Make Your First Super Mario Maker 2 Level
A ten step method for building a focused, well paced Mario-style level: pick one mechanic, introduce it safely, ramp it up, combine it with others, then playtest and fix. The worked example is a level built around the swinging claw, including a bob-omb idea that was cut because it would not work.
- Build the level around one main mechanic, not every item
- Brainstorm every twist on your mechanic and test them in a test bed
- Introduce a new mechanic in a safe spot with no way around it
Why Metro Exodus is so Immersive
Immersion is not a buzzword but the result of four concrete choices: keep interactions in the world, make the player aware of their surroundings and status, hide information about the systems, and react to the player. Metro Exodus works as the example because it turns maps, crafting and upgrades into physical objects and refuses to label its open world, unlike Rage 2 or Far Cry New Dawn.
- Put maps, crafting and objectives into the world instead of menus
- Make in-world actions happen in real time so they leave the player vulnerable
- Do not push physical interaction so far that it becomes tedium without consequences
The World Design of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes | Boss Keys
Metroid Prime 2 splits its world into self-contained, Zelda-style temples to ease the memory load of Metroidvania exploration, but it undermines that promise with item detours, a thin Dark World puzzle concept, and a late-game key hunt. The Echoes case shows how a good structural idea only pays off if the game keeps to its own rules.
- Split a Metroidvania world into self-contained zones so players only hold one map in memory
- Keep each required item usable inside the area where you find it
- Once you set a rule for how the world is structured, don't break it for mandatory progress
The Challenge of Cameras
A game camera has to serve gameplay needs like visibility and aiming while also setting mood and intimacy, and the two goals often clash. The God of War (2018) case study shows how a tight, intimate camera damaged combat, and Batman: Arkham Asylum shows the fix: a camera that changes with the situation.
- Let the camera fit the gameplay, never the other way around
- Change the camera with the situation instead of seeking one perfect camera
- Give each activity its own camera: stealth, cover, perches, vents, hallucinations
The Tragedy of Halo 3: ODST
Looks at how Halo 3: ODST pairs an open, non-linear hub city with playable flashback missions, and where that structure succeeds and fails. Comparing it with Gone Home, Her Story, Breath of the Wild and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy shows both what it got right early and what a better version would do.
- Use unresolved questions about missing characters to keep players pushing forward
- Set the story in the past so players can explore freely without breaking the plot
- Let players assemble the story from scattered clues in any order
How Games Get Balanced
Covers how multiplayer games are balanced and rebalanced: trade-offs, counters, reading player data, nerfs and buffs, and handling unequal skill. The Akali win rate story from League of Legends shows why a single number can mislead.
- Give every character drawbacks that cancel out their advantages
- Build counters so every option beats something and loses to something
- Check win rate against skill level, because one number can hide a skill floor
The World Design of Metroid Prime | Boss Keys
Metroidvania world design depends on helping players remember dead ends, keeping travel between areas short, and making the final goal clear. Metroid Prime shows each of these through both clever solutions and clear misses, such as the Magmoor Caverns subway station and the late-game artifact hunt.
- Make dead ends memorable by letting players see the goal they cannot reach
- Use adversity to make a blocked area unforgettable
- Place a copy of the dead end near the power-up that solves it
How Synergies Make Slay the Spire Fun
Synergies, where elements combine into something stronger than their sum, make players feel powerful and smart while adding depth with fewer parts. Mark's 81 damage Silent shiv deck in Slay the Spire shows how planted combos, planning and roguelike structure make them work.
- Design cards that hint at partners so players spot synergies themselves
- Use synergies to make players feel immensely powerful in a game of small numbers
- Let players discover combinations themselves so they feel smart, not just given power
Improving Games for Those with Cognitive Disabilities | Designing for Disability
Games can serve players with cognitive disabilities by offering options that reduce motion sickness, sensory overload, reading strain and information load. The strongest examples are concrete: Celeste's game speed slider, Dishonored's per-mechanic difficulty tuning, and SOMA and Furi letting players remove the threat entirely.
- Let players tune difficulty mechanic by mechanic, not just easy, medium, hard
- Offer a way to remove the threat entirely for players who want to explore
- Let players turn off camera-moving effects to reduce simulation sickness
Roguelikes, Persistency, and Progression
Permanent upgrades in a roguelike give every failed run meaning but bend the difficulty curve and blur whether the player improved or the game got easier. The video shows how Enter the Gungeon, Spelunky, Rogue Legacy and Dead Cells soften the downsides of each approach.
- Keep difficulty flat across runs if you want wins to prove skill
- Offer a way to lower difficulty so weaker players can still finish
- Give failed runs something tangible so they never feel wasted
The Year Stealth Games Got Serious
Stealth design rests on a handful of conventions that Tenchu, Metal Gear Solid and Thief all established in 1998: a neutral start, clear detection feedback, a suspicious middle state, and guard manipulation. The example that makes it worth watching is Metal Gear 2, which had nearly every one of these ideas years earlier but was never seen outside Japan.
- Give stealth players clear feedback on whether they are safe or spotted
- Add a suspicious middle state between hidden and spotted
- Let players manipulate guard behaviour to create their own openings
How Return of the Obra Dinn Turns You Into a Detective
Return of the Obra Dinn works as a detective game because its story, setting and interface are built only to support deduction, and its answer system is built to stop guessing and prompting. The example worth watching is the three midshipmen, whose names are worked out from dialogue, uniforms, the timeline and elimination.
- Design the fiction and systems purely to enable the player's deduction, not to imitate reality
- Ask the same two simple questions for every case so the question never hints at the answer
- Offer a very large answer list so multiple choice cannot be guessed or used as a hint
Building Better Skill Trees
Skill trees work best when they force hard choices, offer exciting new powers, reward varied play, and stay out of the way of pacing. The Assassin's Creed Origins and Prey examples show how scarce, meaningful choices make a character feel personal.
- Make players unable to afford every skill so they must specialise
- Let skill choices visibly change what the game lets you do
- Fill skill trees with new powers, not tiny stat boosts
The World Design of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night | Boss Keys
Explains how Symphony of the Night builds an open, interconnected castle from a linear opening, and where that mix of openness and linearity helps or hurts the player. The worth-watching example is the fake bad ending that sends players back to hunt two rings and a second, upside down castle.
- Open with a linear stretch that shows the full size of the world
- Connect most areas to one central pathway so players can orient themselves
- Give each area a distinct look so players build a mental map
How Mega Man 11's Levels Do More With Less
Mega Man 11 builds eight varied stages from only a handful of unique elements each, by changing room shapes, scattering mechanics between other challenges, and repeating them in harder forms. The Torch Man room-by-room breakdown shows how a few ideas can be woven into something that feels like a symphony.
- Spread a stage's few unique elements across the level, interwoven with other challenges
- Combine two mechanics only after the player has mastered each one alone
- Vary room shapes and sizes to get variety without new content
Making Games Better for Players with Motor Disabilities | Designing for Disability
Motor disabilities make precision, speed and endurance inputs a barrier, and this episode lays out control options, simplified inputs, difficulty splits and small settings that let more people play the same game. The Spider-Man rubble scene, which asks for fast button mashing and can be turned into a simple hold, shows how one option changes who gets to feel like a superhero.
- Let players remap every control on console, not just on PC
- Build your own remapping instead of relying on console system-level remapping
- Offer alternative input methods instead of forcing motion controls
Does Spidey's Web-Swinging 'Make You Feel Like Spider-Man'?
Games promise a fantasy through their marketing, and the design question is how easily that fantasy should come true: handed over free, or earned through skill. Spider-Man's demanding combat versus its effortless web-swinging, and the grapple hooks of Bionic Commando, Overwatch and The Free Ones, show the options.
- Make the promised fantasy a reward for skill, not a gift
- Do not let generous auto-aim and wide timing windows make combat feel patronising
- Let players grow into the fantasy by making combat demanding at first
How Overcooked’s Kitchens Force You to Communicate
Co-op games only force real communication when players need each other, and Overcooked achieves this through level design instead of asymmetric characters. Its kitchens split players into roles through layout and a time-based score, then break those roles apart with waiting timers, dirty plates and shifting levels.
- Use level layout, not character differences, to push players into distinct roles
- Tie scoring to speed so that cooperating is the efficient choice
- Give co-op players different abilities so neither can survive alone
Playing Past Your Mistakes
Players save scum when a mistake feels too costly, so designers have to build the desire to play on past failure into the game itself, not into the manual. The Far Cry 2 setbacks, Metal Gear Solid V's wide failure spectrum and Darkest Dungeon's always-on autosave show different ways to do it.
- Build your intended play style into the game, not the manual
- Give players a wide failure spectrum so one mistake is not a disaster
- Use small, unpredictable, recoverable setbacks that push players between planning and execution
The World Design of Super Metroid | Boss Keys
Super Metroid balances free exploration against getting lost by teaching in a tightly guided first act with one-way paths, then opening the whole world in a second act. A step-by-step walk through Zebes with dependency charts shows how landmarks, power-up rooms and closed-off paths steer the player without hand-holding.
- Split the game into a guided act and an open act
- Trap the player with a new power-up until they use it
- Close the world behind the player to limit their options
Making Games Better for Gamers with Colourblindness & Low Vision | Designing for Disability
Teaches how to make games readable for colourblind and low vision players: never rely on colour alone, prioritise size and contrast, and back up visuals with strong audio. The standout examples are Chromagun's symbol system, Battlefield 1's customisable palette, and the fighting game audio cues added after blind players gave feedback.
- Never rely on colour alone to tell two things apart
- Build a symbol system that makes every colour combination readable
- Let players swap or pick the colours of key team and enemy elements
The World Design of Metroid 1 and Zero Mission | Boss Keys
Compares how the original Metroid and its remake Zero Mission balance freedom against guidance in a Metroidvania world, showing that too little help leaves players lost and too much removes the feeling of exploring. The worth-watching example is Metroid's first three rooms, which teach the whole obstacle and power-up structure, set against Zero Mission's Chozo statues that mark the next goal.
- Teach your core loop in the first rooms using a dead end
- Keep obstacles clear and memorable, and never hide critical path progress behind obscure secrets
- Open the world a little at a time so the player is not overwhelmed
Making Games Better for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing | Designing for Disability
Teaches how to make games accessible to deaf and hard of hearing players through readable subtitles, visual alternatives to audio cues, non-audio puzzle solutions and flexible audio options. The comparison of Borderlands 2, Metal Gear Solid V and Overwatch against Half-Life 2, Fortnite Mobile and Rise of the Tomb Raider shows concretely what good and bad looks like.
- Make subtitles large and let players choose their own text size
- Use a plain sans serif font for subtitles, not your brand style
- Put subtitles on a semi-transparent black box so they read on any background
Forging God of War's Leviathan Axe
Breaks down why the Leviathan Axe in God of War (2018) works as a weapon: one tool used for melee, ranged attacks and puzzles, with a lot of work on how it feels. The worked example is how a thrown axe plus a manual recall became tactical, and how hit stop, pinning and sound make it feel heavy.
- Use one tool for both melee and ranged so choices have trade-offs
- Make the player trigger the recall manually so timing becomes a tactical decision
- Reward a tight timing window with a flash, a sound and a big payoff
Are Score Systems Still Relevant?
Scores can still earn a place in modern games when layered on top of a completable design, because they add depth, difficulty and a push toward the intended way to play. Assault Android Cactus is the example worth watching, since it hides its score-driven Pro Mode until players prove themselves and keeps its core panic the same for novices and veterans.
- Use a score or rank as optional difficulty instead of a difficulty select screen
- Compare player results to the global average so they self-motivate to improve
- Score several criteria so players choose their own way to optimise
What Makes a Good Combat System?
Breaks melee combat into attacks, defence, enemy design and impact, showing how each choice shapes whether a fight feels deep or button-mashy. The worth-watching part is the side-by-side of Dark Souls' committed animations against Bayonetta's free cancelling, and the anatomy of a crunchy punch from Resident Evil 6.
- Give every attack a distinct niche with minimal overlap between moves
- Balance every attack's advantage with a matching disadvantage
- Tune attack speed through anticipation frames, since the player is vulnerable during the wind-up
The World Design of Dark Souls | Boss Keys
Breaks down how Dark Souls builds a branching, interconnected world with an accordion structure of linear and open acts, and what that costs in direction, difficulty and fast travel. The worth-watching moment is the elevator from the Undead Parish that drops you back at Firelink Shrine, and the comparison to Zelda: A Link to the Past.
- Alternate tight linear acts with open branching acts to balance momentum and freedom
- Loop the world back on itself with one-way doors and shortcuts
- Let players reach late-game areas early so a failure becomes a goal
How to Keep Players Engaged (Without Being Evil)
Explains how designers can keep players engaged without manipulative tricks, using pacing, novelty, anticipation, long-term goals and well-tuned challenge. The worth-watching example is Uncharted 2's calm-to-intense pacing, set against Doom's long, exhausting stretches of high intensity combat.
- Swap between gameplay pillars before the player gets bored of any one
- Vary intensity as well as activity, moving fluidly between calm and frenzied
- Avoid long unbroken stretches of high intensity combat that exhaust the player
What Makes a Good Puzzle?
Good puzzles are built on a catch (a logical contradiction), steered by a player's wrong assumption, and resolved by a revelation about the game's rules, then presented minimally and ordered on a difficulty curve. The side-by-side of Portal 2 and The Turing Test, which share nearly the same puzzle but differ hugely in presentation, makes it worth watching.
- Build each puzzle around a catch: two needs that seem to conflict
- Make the solution a revelation about the rules, not a trick
- Use a wrong assumption to walk players into the puzzle's catch
What Makes Celeste's Assist Mode Special
Games can keep a strict designer vision and still serve players who need other ways to play, if the optional modes are communicated well through wording, placement and timing. Celeste's Assist Mode, set against Cuphead's Simple Mode, Darkest Dungeon's config, Heat Signature's permadeath toggle and SOMA's Safe Mode, shows how.
- Offer alternative ways to play, but make the intended way unmistakable
- Signal that a mode is not the intended game, as cheat codes once did
- Bury intent-changing options in a menu and warn that they alter the intended game
The Rise of the Systemic Game
Systemic games link many game systems so that entities are aware of each other and follow consistent rules, which lets players make clever plans and produces surprising stories nobody scripted. The Breath of the Wild rain example, the Far Cry tiger mauling a guard, and the Dwarf Fortress cats dying of alcohol poisoning make the idea concrete.
- Let every entity listen for inputs and broadcast outputs to build connections
- Make one system reach into many others, as Breath of the Wild's rain does
- Let enemies be aware of more than the player so players can plan indirectly
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild's dungeon design | Boss Keys
Breath of the Wild's divine beasts drop keys and locks for moving puzzle box dungeons, and the video shows what that open structure gains and loses in puzzle depth, pacing, and atmosphere. The worth-watching example is Vah Naboris, where three rotating chambers make fiddling useless and force real planning, set against the Sandship's physical time stone.
- Put the control far from the mechanism so players must plan ahead
- Separate the switch from what it controls to create puzzles from the setup
- Avoid free, instant state changes that let players solve puzzles by fiddling
How Games Use Feedback Loops
Feedback loops are systems where a player's success or failure changes the odds of later success or failure, and positive loops (snowballing) and negative loops (balancing) each need careful tuning. Pyre is the example worth watching, because it pairs XCOM style progression with negative loops that stop both runaway wins and death spirals.
- Pair a positive feedback loop with a negative one to stop snowballing
- Make the negative loop part of the goal and story, not a punishment
- Reward failure a little so losses do not compound into a death spiral
How Snake Pass Became a Platformer Without Jumping
Snake Pass shows how removing a core mechanic (jumping) and giving the player a body they only half control can turn a 3D platformer into something new. The example worth watching is Noodle the snake, whose long body is both your best tool for gripping and your worst enemy when gravity pulls it down.
- Remove a staple mechanic to discover a genre's unexplored design space
- Ask what a shooter without shooting would be, to find new gameplay
- Make the player's own body both their greatest asset and biggest enemy
5 Amazing Levels from 2017
Five standout levels from 2017 show how multiple routes, dynamic ordering, transformable spaces, interactive storytelling and varied pacing make a level memorable. The worth-watching example is the Lewis Finch cannery in What Remains of Edith Finch, where two simultaneous games express a mind splitting between work and daydream.
- Offer several distinct routes into and out of a heist level
- Build interconnected, vertical spaces that suit your game's systems
- Reward exploration and attention with extra vaults, codes and optional contracts
The Legend of Zelda / Zelda II's dungeon design | Boss Keys
The first two Zelda games set up the dungeon basics (small keys, a boss, a key item, interconnected rooms), but their rough edges show which dungeon rules a designer should fix. The Level 6 key shortage, the hidden bombable walls in Zelda 1 and the brutal backtracking in Zelda 2 make the case.
- Restrict small keys to the dungeon where you find them
- Never let players reach a locked-in key resource shortage with no recovery path
- Gate the boss room behind the dungeon's item so nobody skips it
The Design Behind Super Mario Odyssey
Shows how Nintendo built Super Mario Odyssey around one core mechanic, the hat throw, and let it shape the moves, the puzzles, the controls, the look and the level themes. The hat throw that works as attack, capture, platforming tool and world interaction at once is the example worth watching.
- Start a game from one fresh way to play, then build around it
- Give one mechanic several jobs so it solves multiple problems
- Replace the attack that is hard in 3D with a mechanic suited to it
How Cuphead's Bosses (Try to) Kill You
Boss attacks should force the player to move, and Cuphead builds its fights from learnable patterns, reactable surprises, layered threats and distinct phases. The Baroness Von Bon Bon fight shows all of these working together, and Super Meat Boy's Little Horn shows what happens when the balance tips too far toward memory.
- Design boss attacks to force movement, not just to deal damage
- Tune a projectile pattern's difficulty by changing its speed and size
- Keep attack patterns finite and predictable so players can learn and outsmart the boss
How Game Designers Protect Players From Themselves
Players tend to pick the safest, most repetitive strategy even when it is the least fun, so designers steer them toward the intended experience by discouraging or encouraging behaviours. Encouraging with rewards usually works better than punishing, as shown by XCOM 2's controversial turn timers against DOOM's glory kills and World of Warcraft's rest bonus.
- Assume players will optimise the fun out of your game
- Prefer rewarding the behaviour you want over punishing the behaviour you don't
- Reframe a penalty as a bonus to make the same numbers feel fair
How AM2R and Samus Returns remade Metroid 2
A remake should keep the feeling a game gives the player, not only its mechanics and level layouts, and Metroid II's dread comes from design choices that look like flaws. The example that makes it worth watching is how AM2R and Samus Returns each fixed Metroid II's limits and in doing so lost, in different amounts, its horror.
- Judge a remake by the feeling it creates, not only its mechanics
- Before fixing a limitation, ask whether it was creating the intended mood
- Use a small viewport and limited sight to make players feel small and vulnerable
What Makes a Good Detective Game?
Detective games struggle because testing whether the player has worked something out often hands them the answer. The video walks through fixes, from bigger answer pools to Papers, Please style flagging to The Shivah and Her Story, where the player types their own deduction into a search bar.
- Break the detective process into steps and design a mechanic for each
- Avoid multiple choice deductions, because the answers prompt the player and kill satisfaction
- Make guessing impossible by giving players a huge space of possible answers
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds' dungeon design | Boss Keys
Open-order dungeons give the player freedom on the overworld but force the dungeons to give up item-based puzzles and difficulty ramps. Renting items from Ravio, and a three-type model of Zelda dungeons (lock and key, puzzle box, gauntlet), show what that freedom costs and what it gains.
- Let players tackle levels in any order, but expect to pay for it
- Decouple items from dungeons to enable open order, and accept lost puzzle depth
- Gate a dungeon's entrance with the item it needs, so players never hit a mid-dungeon wall
Deconstructing Ori and the Blind Forest's Best Bit
Breaks down the Ginso Tree level in Ori and the Blind Forest beat by beat to show how a level can introduce a new ability, retest everything with it, and end on a set piece that stays real gameplay. The worth-watching part is the escape sequence, where instant restarts, continuous music and no checkpoints keep a cinematic moment from falling apart.
- Test the player's existing moves before handing over the new ability
- Repeat the earlier challenges after the unlock so the new ability recontextualises them
- Show what the player can do without the ability, then with it, then test it
Do We Need a Soulslike Genre?
Naming a genre after one landmark game turns that game into a formula, so later developers copy its ingredient list and innovation slows. Roguelikes, Metroidvanias and immersive sims show how narrow genres stall, and Spelunky and Toki Tori 2 show how designing from the underlying feeling avoids it.
- Copy the experience a feature creates, not the feature list
- Mash up one genre's best ideas with another genre you love
- Define a genre by one or two core elements, not a long checklist
Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze - Mario's Level Design, Evolved
Classic Nintendo 2D platformer levels showcase one mechanic and escalate it, while Tropical Freeze weaves two to six mechanics together under a shared theme. The example worth watching is Scorch 'n' Torch and Baobab Bonanza, where separate ideas collide in surprising ways late in the level.
- Build a level around one mechanic and escalate it step by step
- Know the limits of single-mechanic levels: short length, predictability, and running out of ideas
- Put two or three mechanics in one level and weave them together
What Makes Good AI?
Good game AI is not just aggressive enemies that kill the player: it must fit the intended experience, stay readable and consistent, bend the rules in the player's favor, and serve interesting gameplay. The Halo playtest where identical AI was rated 'very intelligent' by 8 percent of players versus 43 percent once enemies were tougher shows how perception shapes how smart AI feels.
- Make enemies tougher and more aggressive if you want them to feel smarter
- Design AI to fit the game's intended experience, not a generic ideal
- Hold enemies back if chasing them makes the player play defensively
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword's dungeon design | Boss Keys
Zelda dungeons are special when they make the player think about the whole dungeon as one space (the macro challenge) and not just the room in front of them (the micro challenge). Skyward Sword's Sandship, with its single timeshift stone that changes an entire ship, is the example that shows this idea coming back to the series.
- Make players reason about the whole dungeon, not just the current room
- Use micro challenges to keep players busy while the macro challenge unfolds
- Put the switch in a different room from its effect
The Design of Dead Space - Part 3
Shows how Dead Space 3 lost its horror by giving the player too much power, ammo and speed, and why chasing mass appeal in a sequel can wreck what made the original special. The worth-watching example is the icy planet section that hints at the survival horror game the team could have made.
- Keep resources scarce so every weapon choice carries tension in horror
- Cap the power of crafted weapons so one build cannot replace everything
- Do not let an overpowered player drain fear from a horror game
The Design of Dead Space - Part 2
Shows how Dead Space 2 turned a slow survival horror game into an action game through pacing, enemy design, resources and level layout, and what a franchise gains and loses by doing so. The worked example is Isaac's church sequence, where a gunship cutscene sits right next to a quiet creepy corridor and spoils the dread.
- Give horror quiet moments, because nonstop thrills turn fear into mere startle
- Do not cut from a spectacle set piece straight into a quiet scary corridor
- Fill encounters with many fast, weak enemies to shift combat toward action
The Design of Dead Space - Part 1
Dead Space borrows Resident Evil 4's recipe of undercutting the player, then adds strategic dismemberment, layered enemy mixes, and carefully staged scares to balance dread with power. The hunter chapters, where a regenerating enemy flips the game's trip-wire rhythm, are the example that shows how one change in enemy behavior can transform pacing.
- Undercut the player's control to keep an armed hero feeling vulnerable
- Make enemy limbs the weak spots so aiming becomes a tactical choice
- Introduce enemies one at a time early, then combine them in the second half
What Made Psychonauts Special
Shows how Psychonauts uses level design to express each character's personality, so that what a level looks like and what you do in it tells the story. The Milkman Conspiracy, where a paranoid mind becomes a twisted suburb of spies and perception-based play, is the example that makes it worth watching.
- Make the level's look and the player's actions express the character
- Build mechanics that act as metaphors for the character's inner state
- Warp the level geometry to show a distorted state of mind
The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks' dungeon design | Boss Keys
Shows how much information a game hands the player decides whether a dungeon is a spatial puzzle or an automated walk between waypoints. The Temple of the Ocean King, where you write notes on the map to speed up repeat visits, is the example that makes it worth watching.
- Withhold some information so players build their own mental map
- Decide deliberately how much information to show for each system
- Make maps a hint, not a solution
The Music of Breath of the Wild | GMTK Extra
Shows how Breath of the Wild's sparse, regional, and layered music supports its melancholy tone, guides exploration, and rewards players with hidden callbacks. The Tarrey Town theme, which gains instruments as each race joins the village, is the example that makes it worth watching.
- Match the score's mood to the story's emotional state
- Let music fade into silence so ambient sound carries the mood
- Give each region of an open world its own musical identity
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - An Open World Adventure
An open world should be built around one specific experience, and Breath of the Wild picks adventure and cuts or keeps open world conventions to serve it. The worth-watching example is how it drops map icons, lets you challenge Ganon at once, and hides side content behind riddles, so curiosity does the guiding.
- Choose one purpose for your open world and make every feature serve it
- Let players fight the final boss at any time so all play becomes preparation
- Skip icon-filled towers so curiosity, not waypoints, leads the player
The Secret of Mario's Jump (and other Versatile Verbs)
Shows how a single action that changes meaning with how it is performed (a versatile verb) can create tactical choices, player expression and simpler controls from one button. The worked example of Mario's jump, from Donkey Kong's 'press A to do B' to the many outcomes in Super Mario 3D World, makes it worth watching.
- Let one action produce many outcomes depending on how it is performed
- Make a held button trade immediate damage against a bigger delayed payoff
- Only offer press versus hold if the two options are a real choice
The Magic of the First Legend of Zelda
The first Zelda gives players total freedom and a sense of mystery, yet quietly steers them with soft locks, cryptic clues and a small maze-like map so they never get truly lost. The example that makes it worth watching is how a hidden, indifferent-feeling world is actually guiding you the whole time, and how later Zelda games gave that up.
- Make the game feel indifferent to the player while secretly helping them
- Build your game around a real feeling, as Miyamoto did with hiking
- Use soft locks like tough enemies to gate areas without walls
Finding the Fun in FPS Campaigns
Shows how Doom (2016) and Titanfall 2 revived the FPS campaign: Doom by stripping out the genre's slow-down conventions, Titanfall 2 by expert pacing and constantly changing ideas. The Effect and Cause time-travel level, thrown away before you tire of it, is the standout example.
- Remove the genre conventions that slow players down if you want constant motion
- Use slow projectile enemies instead of hitscan so players can dodge
- Make health come from the fight, not from hiding in cover
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess' dungeon design | Boss Keys
Twilight Princess reuses one looping dungeon layout (a central hub you return to three times) in six of its dungeons, and this shows what that structure buys a designer and what it costs in variety and complexity. The Forest Temple key trick and Lakebed's rotating staircase show how a layout can teach and trust the player, while the Temple of Time reversal shows how to make a linear dungeon interesting.
- Place a key behind an unreachable spot so every player sees the backtrack point
- Show a new item's value with enemies that are painful without it
- Use a hub-and-chunks layout to keep a dungeon focused and manageable
The Last Guardian and the Language of Games
It teaches that games say the most through their mechanics and rules, not cutscenes, using Fumito Ueda's Ico and The Last Guardian to show how combat roles, rules and bent rules can express a relationship. The moment worth watching is Trico breaking the stained glass eye rule to save the boy, which hits harder than a cutscene.
- Tell your story through mechanics and rules, the unique language of games
- Let combat roles show the relationship between characters instead of explaining it
- Break an established mechanical rule at a key moment to show a relationship has changed
How Event[0]'s AI Puzzle Assistant Works
Explains how Event[0]'s chatbot AI Kaizen turns typed text into believable replies using tags, context and an emotion matrix, and why it works and where the puzzles fall short. The worth-watching part is that a convincing conversation with a game character needs a big database and smart framing, not a neural network.
- Map typed words to tags, then match tag patterns to responses
- Choose responses from input, current context and emotional state together
- Swap in synonyms so a character rarely repeats the same line
5 Game Design Innovations from 2016
Five 2016 games that tried new ideas show how to reward players, make a team feel human, loosen dialogue, build a game around one constraint, and use a temporary mode to offer play the base game can't. The Hitman Elusive Targets and Superhot examples are the most worth watching, because each shows how a limit creates a new kind of tension.
- Give a computer explicit highlight categories so it can pick a subjective best moment
- Weight highlights with context modifiers like enemy speed, target impact and objective proximity
- Reward players in ways a scoreboard cannot when roles contribute differently
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap's dungeon design | Boss Keys
Splits Zelda dungeons into 'find the path' and 'follow the path' types using four questions about branching, choice and backtracking, and argues that making the player build a mental map is what makes the better dungeons. The Minish Cap's loops, such as the one-way door in Cave of Flames and the repeated switch room in Temple of Droplets, show how to steer players or hide how linear a dungeon is.
- Classify a dungeon by asking four questions about branching, choice and backtracking
- Make the player build a cognitive map of the dungeon
- Size dungeons so players can hold the whole layout in their head
Nintendo - Putting Play First
Nintendo starts every game from a new way to play, then lets that core action decide the character, enemies, art, music and even the story. The example that makes it worth watching is Splatoon, which began as a controllable white block and only later got squid kids, punk music and a graffiti look.
- Start a game from a fresh action the player performs
- Make every object in the game interact with your core mechanic
- Ask what the logical outcome of your core mechanic is
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker's dungeon design | Boss Keys
Wind Waker's dungeons show how a dungeon can feel like a Zelda dungeon in name but play as a straight line, and how motif-based room puzzles teach the player better than random ones. The Forbidden Woods boomerang door, which leads straight back to the place that needs the item, is the moment that makes it worth watching.
- Don't hand the player a direct path back to where the new item is needed
- Judge dungeon linearity by whether the way forward is always in front of you
- Give the player reasons to revisit one space as new abilities unlock
Why We Remember Bioshock's Fort Frolic
Explains why BioShock's Fort Frolic level is so memorable: one antagonist shapes the whole level, the enemies unsettle the player, and a relationship is told through ordinary shooter mechanics. The example worth watching is Sander Cohen, who turns a murder quest and a wave fight into a collaboration and a dance, then lets you live.
- Express a relationship with a character through your game's existing mechanics, not cutscenes.
- Let one antagonist's personality saturate every part of a level.
- Make the player a performer in the antagonist's show.
The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Seasons' dungeon design | Boss Keys
Introduces a graph notation for comparing dungeon structure (key item, small keys, locks, backtracking, boss key) and uses it to compare the 16 Oracle dungeons with other Zelda games. The worked comparisons, from Gnarled Root to the Water Temple and Jabu Jabu's Belly to Mermaid's Cave, show how small changes to one simple formula create very different dungeons.
- Map a dungeon as key item, small keys, locks and backtracking to compare layouts
- Let players find several keys at once to add non-linearity
- Offer a choice of locked doors so the dungeon feels less predetermined
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's Amazing Open World
Small, dense open worlds can beat huge ones because every space can be designed with care, filled with story, and navigated by the player's own attention. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's Prague, with its street addresses, buzzers and trashed apartments that tell stories, is the example that makes it worth watching.
- Make a small world dense so there is always something to find
- Question whether a bigger open world is actually a better one
- Use small spaces so players actually absorb world-building details
Shovel Knight and Nailing Nostalgia
Nostalgic design works by recreating how old games feel in memory, not how they actually played. Shovel Knight borrows widely from the NES catalogue, drops the punitive parts, and quietly cheats the hardware limits, while Mighty No. 9 copies Mega Man's flaws along with its strengths.
- Borrow from a whole era of games, not one specific game
- Aim for how old games feel in memory, not how they played
- Keep the strengths of retro design: one mechanic, teaching through levels, fast starts
The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask's dungeon design | Boss Keys
Majora's Mask dungeons get their complexity from asking the player to understand and then manipulate a 3D space, not from key order or branching paths. The Stone Tower Temple, which flips upside down, is the example that shows how far that idea can go, along with where the game's stray fairies and timer undermine it.
- Build dungeon difficulty from understanding the space, not from key order
- Make the level itself a mechanism the player must first understand, then change
- Let one state change reshape the whole dungeon, as Great Bay Temple does
The Comeback of the Immersive Sim
Explains the immersive sim as a design philosophy built on agency, systemic rules, emergence, consistency and reactivity, traced from Ultima Underworld and Looking Glass through Deus Ex to today's revival. The example that makes it worth watching is the contrast between Thief's rope arrows working on any wooden surface and Thief 2014's grapple points marked with white rope.
- Tell players the goal, not the method, and give them space
- Build the world from global systems instead of one-off scripts
- Let rules apply everywhere instead of marking special interactive spots
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's dungeon design | Boss Keys
Shows how Ocarina of Time's dungeons keep Zelda's building blocks (keys, items, maps) but become mostly linear because every locked door sits behind another. The Water Temple, a three-way water level switch that turns the whole dungeon into one puzzle, is the example that shows what the others lack.
- Make a state switch with several settings so players must choose, not just flip it
- Make one dungeon-wide system that changes how every room behaves, so the whole level becomes one puzzle
- Do not put every locked door behind another one, or the dungeon becomes a linear chain
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening's dungeon design | Boss Keys
Link's Awakening moves the big key to the boss door and makes the dungeon item the thing that reopens the whole dungeon, turning each one into a small Metroidvania built from keys and locks. The example that makes it worth watching is Eagle's Tower, where a heavy metal ball becomes a key that you have to carry through the level.
- Let the dungeon item unlock obstacles placed throughout the whole dungeon, not one door
- Make backtracking feel motivated by giving the player a reason to be excited to return
- Give the dungeon item many uses so it reshapes the whole dungeon
What Mirror's Edge Catalyst Should Have Learned From Burnout Paradise
Shows why an open world only helps a fast game when every mission type uses the whole city, and why Mirror's Edge Catalyst wastes its map while Burnout Paradise makes the sandbox the core of every event. The contrast between Burnout Paradise's any-route races and Catalyst's short point-to-point runs along a red line makes it worth watching.
- Design every mission so it needs the whole open world, not a slice
- Reuse the same space so players learn routes and shortcuts through mastery
- Do not carve an open world into short point-to-point missions with shortcuts beside the route
The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past's dungeon design | Boss Keys
Breaks down how A Link to the Past varies dungeon linearity, from one hidden critical path to free key routing to pure gauntlets, and how that shapes pacing and the feeling of difficulty. The Eastern Palace and Palace of Darkness switch-block puzzle show how small layout choices make a dungeon feel bigger and smarter than it is.
- Hide a single critical path with detours so players feel they chose the route
- Place keys far from their locked doors to tune dungeon difficulty
- Let players hold several interchangeable keys to give them real routing choices
A Deep Dive into Star Fox Zero's Controls
A critique of Star Fox Zero's gyro aiming and dual-screen controls, showing why a control scheme built to justify hardware fails when it does not give the player meaningful choices. The worth-watching example is the contrast between Star Fox Zero's duplicate screens and Affordable Space Adventures and ZombiU, where each screen holds different information.
- Give each screen different information so the player must choose where to look
- Do not build a control gimmick to justify the hardware
- Make a second screen or view show information the player cannot get otherwise
Controllers Control Everything
Shows how the input device decides which games can exist, from arcade dials to twin sticks, touchscreens, motion remotes and VR hands. The Skate, Brothers and Katamari Damacy examples are worth watching because they show how a strange use of a standard pad can create new gameplay.
- Choose a control scheme that suits your game's core verbs and input device
- Remap standard sticks and triggers to mimic the physical action on screen
- Let controls carry the story and theme, as Brothers does
Should Dark Souls Have an Easy Mode? (See Pinned Comment)
Difficulty is a tool that delivers a specific intended experience, so a simple easy mode at the start can undermine a game, and difficulty options are better woven into the game itself. Dark Souls, Bloodborne and Spelunky show how hidden, in-world options let players tune challenge while still earning the designer's intended feeling of accomplishment.
- Decide the experience you intend, then shape every mechanic to push players toward it
- Treat difficulty as the means of delivering a sense of accomplishment, not a barrier to remove
- Let tough enemies force players to engage deeply with your combat system
Depth, Mastery, and Vanquish
Depth comes from letting players get more out of a small set of mechanics through combination, timing and positioning, so a game can be fun for button mashers and still reward masters. Vanquish, a cover shooter built with PlatinumGames brawler thinking, shows this through rocket slides, AR mode, overheating and tricks like boost-dodging.
- Design for three skill levels: learners, players and masters, all enjoying the same game
- Make the novice's lazy way of playing still fun, so you don't become niche
- Build depth by letting players combine a small set of mechanics, not by adding more
Morality in the Mechanics
Argues that morality works best when it lives inside a game's core mechanics instead of a separate karma bar or binary choice scene. Darkest Dungeon, Undertale, This War of Mine and Papers, Please show how resources, combat and a rubber stamp can make the player feel complicit.
- Embed morality in your core mechanics instead of adding a separate karma system
- Make the optimal strategy ethically uncomfortable so players implicate themselves
- Give expendable characters emotional depth so sacrificing them carries weight
Anatomy of a Side Quest: Beyond the Beef
Shows how one RPG quest can support many character builds by gating options behind stats, perks, reputation and morality while still letting players improvise. The worked example is Obsidian's Beyond the Beef quest in Fallout: New Vegas, played five times with five different characters.
- Let every character build find a way to use its skills in a quest
- Offer several routes to the same goal, each with different risks and costs
- Gate options behind stats, perks, reputation, faction and morality to support role-play
How Her Story Turns Video Clips into Clues
Her Story shows how a game can give players real freedom over a story while the designer quietly steers them with search rules, clip writing and result limits. The example worth watching is the five-result, chronological search cap that keeps the biggest reveals buried until the player has the context to understand them.
- Hand the player freedom, then bias it quietly to protect their experience
- Cap search results and sort them in story order to hide spoilers
- Write each clip to be enigmatic until the player has wider context
Climbing in Games
Automated, one-button traversal in modern Tomb Raider and Uncharted removes the skill and tension that climbing and jumping can have, and a set of smaller games show movement can be as deep as combat. The comparison of Tomb Raider's old grid jumps with Grow Home, GIRP and I Am Alive makes it worth watching.
- Make traversal a skill-based mechanic as deep as combat
- Demand expertise from the player so mastery becomes its own reward
- Keep enough challenge in an action that it registers as an achievement
Following the Little Dotted Line
Quest markers and mini-map trails can turn an open world into a layer of waypoint-chasing that keeps players from actually looking at the world. Mark Brown shows older and newer games that make navigation an act of observation, and the Fallout 3 museum scavenger hunt that rewards reading the environment.
- Don't let waypoint trails replace the directions your own writing gives
- Keep the game UI from becoming an artificial layer over the world
- Make the map reflect only what the player has actually explored
Why Nathan Drake Doesn't Need a Compass
Linear games can guide players without compasses or waypoints by building the guidance into the level itself, using light, composition, motion, colour, sound and landmarks. The Uncharted 3 rooftop chase makes it worth watching, because it shows how many of these quiet tricks stack up in one short scene.
- Light a dark area's exit so players flock to it
- Frame the path with pillars, walls and negative space
- Use guiding lines and stepping-stone shapes to suggest a path
Is Until Dawn a Good Horror Movie?
Choice-driven stories can lose the dramatic logic of the genre they borrow from, because players are trained to win while a horror film needs people to die for a reason. Until Dawn's eight playable characters and the idea of playing as the film's director show one way to bring that logic back.
- Don't let players' win instincts fight the genre your story borrows from
- Make the player act as the story's director instead of one character
- Give players many playable characters so they can sacrifice some for drama
Analysing Mario to Master Super Mario Maker
Analysing one favourite level from each of four Mario games shows that a level is built from one or two ideas that are introduced safely and then iterated on to raise the challenge. The worked examples (Seesaw Bridge, Chocolate Island 3, Super Mario Bros. 8-2) and the Mario Maker level he builds from them make the pattern concrete.
- Build a level around one or two ideas and keep iterating on them
- Introduce a new mechanic in a safe area before adding danger
- Ramp difficulty by lengthening the stretches between safe zones
Point and Click Puzzle Design
Point and click adventure puzzles feel fair when they follow three rules: clear goals, good signposting and specific feedback. Day of the Tentacle is the model for all three, set against Broken Age's scarf puzzle and Gabriel Knight 3's cat hair moustache as the unfair counterexamples.
- Give players clear short and long term goals before any puzzle
- Hand the player several goals at once so they can switch when stuck
- Signpost every puzzle with clues found by looking and talking
Adaptive Soundtracks in Games
Adaptive soundtracks can do far more than crossfade from calm to combat: they can give feedback, shape a world's character, and make a place feel alive. Mario Kart 8's Mount Wario, which uses four tracks stitched together by invisible trip wires, is the clearest example of how simple the trick can be.
- Use music as feedback during puzzles to signal progress and mistakes
- Crossfade between separate tracks at invisible trip wires to score a race cinematically
- Keep one melody and swap instruments to give each location its own identity
creator of Game Maker's Toolkit, making his first game6
The hardest thing about finishing a game (Developing 15)
Finishing a game means cutting the plan to fit the deadline, getting to a playable start-to-end build early, and then locking content so the last months go to polish and playtesting. Worth watching for how Mark cuts Mind Over Magnet from 50 puzzles to 40, then uses the complete build to see what to restore and what to fix.
- Cut the plan to fit the deadline instead of moving the deadline
- Get a complete start-to-finish playable build before you polish anything
- Lock down content at a set point and spend the rest on polish
How I polished my indie magnet puzzle game (Developing 12)
Shows how a rough-draft puzzle game becomes a finished world: fixing level order after playtests, layering visuals and sound, and choosing which polish to spend time on. The worth-watching example is a first-magnet level that stumped every playtester, including two professional puzzle designers, until a new level before it taught the missing trick.
- Teach a hidden trick in an earlier level before a puzzle needs it
- Playtest to find mechanics you did not realise you were requiring
- Fix a confusing level by changing level order, not only the layout
How I make puzzles for my indie magnet game (Developing 9)
Teaches a repeatable way to generate puzzle ideas by pairing every mechanic against every other, then ordering and filling gaps in the level list. The worked example is the electromagnet plus drill bit puzzle, where the magnet's escape time depends on where it is trapped.
- Give level design a concrete goal instead of 'make an interesting puzzle'
- Build a puzzle matrix that crosses every mechanic with every other mechanic
- Find the surprising interaction first, then build the level backwards from it
The stuff no one tells you about game development (Developing 7)
Shows the unglamorous groundwork behind a puzzle game: persistent manager objects, a non-linear hub, level order driven by file names, and custom tools that speed up level building. The memorable payoff is that good tools made building puzzles so fast he accidentally ended up with most of a new demo.
- Separate game-wide systems from level design using persistent manager objects
- Never copy save, transition and pause code into every level
- Let players change control and visual options, and sync them across every level
What did people think of my game demo? (Developing 5)
Playtest feedback on a 30 minute puzzle platformer demo shows what goes wrong with character feel, clarity, genre blending, cluttered puzzles, exploits, and a weak core mechanic. The worth-watching example is Mark turning each critique into an action point, including making the magnet the pillar of the game.
- Make the character feel good to control before building levels around it
- Keep rules consistent so players can trust the mental model they build
- Design from the view of someone who does not know how the game works
The mistake every new game developer makes (Developing 2)
Game design is the foundation every other part of a game sits on, so a new developer should build a scrappy prototype to test whether the idea is fun before making art, story or music. Mark's failed Picross game Carter's Curse set against the magnet prototype that turned into a better idea shows why.
- Prototype the core mechanic first, before art, story, music or code polish
- Do not trust that an idea is fun just because it feels fun in your head
- Build a prototype as a scrappy test bed with only the bare minimum features
creator of Game Maker's Toolkit and developer of Word Play2
How I Coded the Perks in my Roguelike
Shows how to build a roguelike perk system so that each of over 100 passive modifiers is its own small script built on a shared base class, instead of one giant block of if statements. The worked example is Word Play's 'first letter is a vowel, multiply score by 1.5' modifier, which grows into a system of triggers across the whole game.
- Give every passive perk its own tiny script instead of one big if-chain
- Build all perks on an abstract base class with default do-nothing functions
- Use a sentinel return value to mean 'this perk did nothing, move on'
How I Made Word Play
Shows how a solo designer took a Balatro-meets-Scrabble idea from game jam to Steam release in seven months by building in layers, cutting scope, and playtesting early. The example that makes it worth watching is Word Play itself, where a spelling game was made juicy first and the roguelike perks (160 of them) were stacked on top.
- Build the core activity first and make it satisfying before adding systems
- Develop in layers: core verb, game loop, content, then balancing
- Cut scope ruthlessly by choosing whatever option takes the least time
creator of Game Maker's Toolkit and solo developer of Mind Over Magnet2
I made a game about magnets (Developing 16)
A look at the last stretch of shipping a first game: freezing content, adding a developer commentary mode, and triaging nearly 100 tester-found bugs by severity. The worth-watching part is the bug list, where mashing the polarity button or binding movement to the scroll wheel breaks the game in ways the designer never planned.
- Rank every bug from 1 to 5 and fix the worst first
- Retest after every fix, because fixes create new bugs elsewhere
- Test rapid button mashing, because it can break puzzle state
I just changed my entire game (Developing 13)
Shows how a solo developer fixed a pixel art scaling problem by remaking every sprite, then built a trailer from unfinished content and a weekly build and playtest rhythm ahead of Steam Next Fest. The worth-watching example is Mind Over Magnet's full art remake after months of failed compromises.
- Plan art resolution and camera system together before producing final assets
- Skip the compromise and do the real fix when a workaround keeps nagging
- Know the three ways pixel art scales badly to non-integer resolutions
