Some more thoughts on building fun and challenging arcade games

I’ve written it before that I’m not a huge fan of design documents for small projects. I’d rather be coding. So please don’t consider this as a literal document it’s more my own thoughts on some pointers for creating cool arcade games. I guess it goes hand in hand with my previous thoughts on the [...]

X Company – old game idea in new clothes

I’ve always wanted to create a game for a mobile device that effectively goes to work when you stop playing. Initially I had the idea of a sort of Tamagochi approach. Fairly predictable. But the more I played with the idea in my mind the more I came back to something a bit more adventurous. [...]

HyperGunner – level / wave design theory

HyperGunner is turning in to something to be proud of. I’m very excited to be developing it just now and am thoroughly enjoying assembling different game elements – scoring multipliers, power-ups, hyperspace bonus phase etc. What I’m most thrilled about is the pace of the action. When I first started assembling the game code based [...]

How Galaxians changed my life

Something I always wanted to write up but never really worked out the right approach for was how and why I became interested in making these simple / crude / amateurish JavaScript based games. To get the full picture we have to go back to some time around 1980 / 81. As a young boy [...]

My organic design document

I don’t know how interesting this is for people but it struck me as interesting just how many game developers (inparticular those that make very casual games, such as myself) write design documents. I had a quick look around the web last night for fellow casual game designers and stumbled upon some interesting discussions. Apologies [...]

Dungeon Raid – Dragon 32 – nostalgic inspiration

It’s amazing what you can find on the interent. When I first started dreaming up a game with battling wizards I had a very clear image in my mind from my childhood. Back in 1983 I had a Dragon 32 computer. In the US it was the sister machine to the CoCo ?? (I think). [...]

new iPhone game – Wizard Wars

During the crafting of my Gauntlet-esque game I lost some motivation. The issue of rotation vs collision took its toll. I needed something to just jump in to so that I could get a game completed. It’s hugely frustrating for me not to finish something once I set my mind to it. So I took [...]

A rethink on the level design / goals of “Castle Adventure 2″

I took a time-out to explore some game design ideas. To start with I needed to write down what I had come up with so far with my game. I then mapped that on top of what I originally set out to create. The results were interesting. So far I have created the following game [...]

Building a visual style

I’m very happy with the mechanics of the game just now. Although I still need to set aside some design time in terms of adding a few puzzle elements I’m happy that the game is behaving itself enough for me to go off and start drawing sprites and tiles. Art afterall is what I’m actually [...]

Designing a level and rethinking the challenges in Castle Adventure

Occasionally it pays to radically shake things up a bit. I’m never satisfied with my games when they’re struggling through that middle period of trying to iron out objectives vs technology vs style. So it’s during this time that I make the most drastic changes and run with them for a few days to see [...]