Category Archives: More games should do these things

What Thief does right

Subverting the architecture.  I’ll say it again: Subverting the architecture, motherfuckers. It’s the best thing you can do in games, and Thief is the best at it. Here’s what I’m talking about. Missions in Thief usually start near the front … Continue reading

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What Yume Nikki does right

A good game has clarity. It may involve subtleties that only advanced players will grasp with time, but it should always be instantly obvious where you are, what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it. Yume Nikki just burst out … Continue reading

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What Dark Souls does right

It seems like modern game design has an unwritten rule: Don’t make the player worry about anything unimportant. If the jumping puzzles aren’t important, there’ll be invisible walls around every chasm. Normal enemies usually aren’t a challenge, so that you only have to … Continue reading

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What Sword & Sworcery does right

Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP is a beautiful, meditative game that can’t shut up about how beautiful and meditative it is. What it does right, though, is economy. In the first episode you go down into the depths of a … Continue reading

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Gamification in Tales from the Thousand and One Nights

Here’s a story. Once, many games were made out of wheels within wheels, tasks within tasks. Their power came from constantly achieving these small, looping goals that fed into larger goals: Getting wood to get a pickaxe to get some … Continue reading

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What Fisher Diver gets right

Fisher Diver is a neat little game about diving into the sea to kill monsters. Here’s the clever part: All good games show your progress clearly. In some games you travel to the left, and that feels right. In some … Continue reading

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What Spelunky does right

You’re 2 levels down a cave that could kill you in an instant, and you see a shiny golden object in the middle of a clear area. You stop, wary: Item or Enemy? Fight or Flight? Your game-trained cortex ticks … Continue reading

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What Majora’s Mask does right

The final boss is the moon. It’s not rocket science. The game spends all it’s time hyping up this single villain/goal that acts as the centerpiece of everything in the game. You first see it about five minutes in; It’s … Continue reading

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What Human Revolution does right

The internet’s already covered what Human Revolution does wrong in great detail. To wit, locks you in a room with a guy who can take multiple rockets to the head. Despite that, Human Revolution has one boss encounter that it … Continue reading

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What Psychonauts does right

I’m not going to say “Write more like Tim Schafer and Eric Wolpaw,” because that’s useless. What I’m planning to look at in this series is simple and clever thematic tricks that more games should use. So you complete the … Continue reading

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