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Evil Islands
Evil Islands is a Russian tactical RPG released way back in the year 2000. … Well, gee, I feel old now. As I’ve written in my last post, it has inspired my venture into the Game Design territory, and I...
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Evil Islands Playtest Story (Translation)
What goes below is a translation of an article written by Aleksei Sviridov back in the year 2000. Aleksei was the lead writer of Evil Islands. This article was my first glimpse into the world of game...
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Story Time: Of Polish Evil Islands servers
This is a very weird one. Evil Islands had a bunch of master-servers for its online component: Russian, English, German, Polish, French, some others. A few years after release, though, none of them...
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Assassin’s Creed Series Stealth Viability Analysis
Being a more or less active part of Assassin’s Creed fan community, there are several things I noticed that are, one might say, constant among quite a big number of its members. For example, a lot of...
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Shadow of Mordor: Focus in games and downsides of the Nemesis system
I’ve beaten recently Shadow of Mordor. It’s pretty damn good. Tolkien-wise, dig deep enough and you’ll find contradictions to the lore (though, considering that it’s in the universe of the movie, one...
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Pacing in Puzzle Games on the Example of Portal 2
Time to get messages on this blog going again. Today I want to talk about Portals. Mostly Portal 2. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘Hey, Stas, is this one of those obligatory posts about...
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Level Design in Limbo
Today I would like to talk about Limbo. It’s a dark and moody puzzle-platformer, and in my opinion one of the best representatives of the genre out there. It’s short, but it provides a very specific...
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Teslagrad and Progress Gating
A little story. I was playing and enjoying Teslagrad. And then, unexpectedly, the pathway to the last section of the game appears to be blocked by a door that can be opened only if you have 15 scrolls,...
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The 5 Extra Coins in Hearthstone
Hearthstone is probably my second most-played game ever, the first one being Evil Islands which I was playing for about 8 years straight, so it’s hard to beat that, but Hearthstone – I did some...
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Entwined
I want to try and make it a point to write on this blog about every game I play, and if I don’t have any particular analytical topic that I would try to tackle, then to just write a little opinion...
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Creating Great Experience with Flawed Mechanics
Whenever we as designers play games, we always look at them from analytical standpoint. What works? What doesn’t? Why? And of course, ‘What I would have changed to make it better?’ This is a very...
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HUD-less Design of Assassin’s Creed 1
Until the release of Black Flag, Assassin’s Creed 1 was my favourite of the series. But even Black Flag doesn’t have what made the first game truly special. Neither did II, Brotherhood, Revelations,...
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Quests in Alto’s Adventure
Alto’s Adventure is an endless runner with a great sense of flow, tight controls, and it’s just very nice to play. What I really like about it, though, is how it handles quests. Quests/challenges are a...
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The Curious Case of The Division’s Dark Zone
The Division is an open-world third-person shooter/RPG set in mid-crisis Manhattan, with a focus on co-op and multiplayer. One of the main multiplayer features is the so called Dark Zone. It’s an area...
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Secrets Design in Rayman Legends
I was so hooked on Rayman Legends the past couple weeks. You know those games that you’ve tried for a bit and know are really good but didn’t play extensively for some reason? Rayman Origins and...
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How well missions use open-world space in Assassin’s Creed II
Creating and filling open worlds is a tricky thing. On one hand, you want them to be massive, expansive, provide a feeling that you have a whole sandbox to play in, and incentivize exploration. On the...
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Creating Emotional Arcs With Weapon Progression
There are many tools we can use to create emotional arcs for the player, as well as the character(s) of the game. The list consists of, but is not limited to, narrative structure, visual design, level...
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On Warcraft movie, critical reception, and cultural heritage
The Warcraft movie. Panned by most critics and reviewers, well-received by most audiences, and adored by most Warcraft fans. This is a flick that was expected to be the ‘messiah’ of video game movies,...
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Cohesive open-world experience of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood
I firmly believe that what we as game developers do is create experiences for our players. And all the different areas of the game, – cool gameplay, technology, narrative, audio – feeds into those...
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Assassin’s Creed: Revelations and the Importance of Cutting Features
Most of the time game development is looked at from the perspective of building. A plan is made, foundation is created, then a carcass, then everything is properly put into that carcass. The...
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