#Game design

[prokopetz]

Precision puzzle platformer which initially appears to have a cliché "it was all a dream" ending involving the protagonist being found unconscious by the side of the road, except it's actually everything after your first "death" that was a coma hallucination, with different endings depending on how far you got before dying for the first time. You can tell whether you're still on the deathless route because certain of the game's more fantastical movement gimmicks do not appear in the "real world", obliging the player to devise alternative solutions for many puzzles.

[regal-bones]

Throughout the world of Last Sprout, you will discover ancient items of great power - RELICS. These items will flesh out the lore of the world, as well as unlocking certain gameplay features 🗡️🗡️🗡️

Watch the trailer for Last Sprout: A Seedling of Hope at this link! 🌱

You can support me on Patreon for £1 and see concept art, assets, and snippets of story for the game!

[descendinight]

🎮 can you defeat her？🪽🩸

[vulpes-nothus]

To be honest, a mash-up of Warframe and Darktide would be indistinguishable from 99% of rpg space shooters out there.

[anim-ttrpgs]

It is really flabbergasting how often and how hard I always end up having to go to bat for extremely significant and foundational elements of the TTRPG artform such as “adventure modules” and “rules.” It feels like if I were in a visual artist and I had to advocate for, like, pencils or the color green.

[alexriesart]

Our little nod to Shai-Hulud for Subnautica: Below Zero, the Ice Worm.

Its rostrum is biochemically heated, shattering the ice it moves through.

[rael444]

[lathbora-virann]

I do love a good outfit concept design board it has to be said.

civilian appearances (Crows)

civilian appearances (Shadow Dragons)

civilian appearances (Tevinter) *the status levels appear to be mislabeled

civilian appearances (Anderfels)

VOLTA Studio

[blacktabbygames]

Been working on cleaning up the Scarlet Hollow UI! • Text box is taller, meaning you can read more dialogue options at once without scrolling. • Text box is more transparent, meaning you can more clearly see art behind it at all times • Scroll box for choices is wider, meaning it's less likely a given choice will take up multiple lines (again, less scrolling!) • Added some leaves to populate the negative space. • Quick menu now lives in the text box, clearing up space in the top right for character sprites. • Leaves slightly change colors when a character talks (vs narration) • Leaves will turn deep red when a major decision is on the screen!

For all of you who can't tolerate change: 1. Play Slay the Princess

2. We're also adding an option to use a more minimalist textbox that has less leaves/color, but keeps the increased box height

[anheliotrope]

Mahjong is proof sent by Satan himself that game design doesn't actually matter.

[prokopetz]

The key to understanding all of the video game concepts I post on this blog – the unifying thesis, if you will – is that I think haterism is an underexplored dimension of video game design. Most devs think making a game that hates its player and wants to inflict pain on them simply means making a game that's tedious and unpleasant to play. I think we can do better.

[20clawzstudios]

Okay maybe serpent eating man was a bad example, but you get it :P Ambition in Shattered Neon grants characters Luck when they have made what they feel is progress towards making their ambition true and complete. Many ambitions (ie, I want a world where no one is taken advantage of) are not feasible to actually ever be completed. Progress towards making a "better" world and actually accomplishing that are two different things, and that distinction is noted within the game's rules. As an aside, Luck itself is a transformative resource, letting players reroll both their own rolls/dice AND the dice/rolls of other characters. It's effectively narrative power, as one can use it to possibly force their own character's success or the downfall of another. It ties into the themes around luck and how sticking to one's own morality is rewarded by the magic of the universe, not simply accepting the world as it is. Ambition as effectively a "win-state" (to borrow a term from video games) is an interesting concept. I've always been a fan of games, be they ttrpgs or video games, allowing for multiple win states. I think it adds a wonderful layer of mechanical and narrative complexity surrounding what it actually means to succeed.

One of the most recent issues I've realized in ttrpg design I'm seeing when I look into new systems is the idea of Goals. This isn't to say games like Mouse Guard and Shattered Neon aren't good, but moreso that they have a glaring issue with Goals: people do NOT know how to write a goal to save their life. And like, I can't blame anyone for that. We live in a world its hard to think of what you'll eat tomorrow, much less what Leo the Serpenteater is wanting to do.

I'm not sure what solution to this is best. OSR stuff and AD&D tend to map goals to character levels so players know roughly what their character should want to do at any one time, ie "At level 9 a fighter can expect to try to make their own castle or barony". Mouse Guard notes very specifically that Goals are things that you could complete in one session. In Shattered Neon I did the opposite. Goals are instead Ambitions. Things your character strives towards but knows they may never actually achieve.

I don't think any of these approaches are perfect, but it is interesting to see how each approaches "how do you set a goal?" question people will have differently. Yet another example of why you need to play or read multiple games to make a good ttrpg.

[descendinight]

🎮 💒 游戏开始！！

[200-word-rpgs]

200 Word RPGs 2024

Each November, some people try to write a novel. Others would prefer to do as little writing as possible. For those who wish to challenge their ability to not write, we offer this alternative: producing a complete, playable roleplaying game in two hundred words or fewer.

This is the submission thread for the 2024 event, running from November 1st, 2024 through November 30th, 2024. Submission guidelines can be found in this blog's pinned post, here.

[ethereal-ecologies]

Hirō Isono