Welcome to What’s in a Game, a website dedicated to the design and development of video games!
Popular Posts:
General Game Design
- How the game design of 3D platformers contributed to their downfall.
- Controlling Player Flow, including for multiple levels of player skill.
- Challenge Layering – a powerful tool for controlling flow for different people.
- Summary of all posts related to Breath of the Wild
- What order do people complete the game in and how hard do they find it?
- How BotW uses emergent gameplay to keep the player engaged.
- How Mario Odyssey combined Mario 3D World and Banjo Kazooie
- Unordered optional challenges
- Linear primary objectives
- A fascinating battle system that may be complex, but is extremely rewarding to learn.
- How Xenoblade 2 teaches the player mechanics.
Final Fantasy
- The interesting decisions from the FFX Chocobo Eater
- Sphere Grid Analysis from FFX
- Great game design decisions in FFXII (Gambits should be in every game with AI)
Banjo Kazooie
Game Development
- The best coding books to change your career
- Avoid inheritance and favor composition
- Readable and extensible code
- Don’t Make Me Think – A summary of usability notes
Let’s make the world a better place together. Support me on Patreon to get content earlier. I also offer access to my game design notebook, which is full of useful tidbits that may never make it to blog posts. Thanks!
