Guest Post: Things I’m Pretty Sure I Learned Making Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 25, 2013

Today’s guest post is by Cuthalion (Why do I do I keep wanting to pronounce it Cthulian?), AKA Yo’el, AKA Joel Moore. Joel offers some insight into the twisty little world of game development, some lessons learned – as most are – the hard way, by actually making games and making mistakes. I hope you […]

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Game Biz: Serving Two (Or More) Masters

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 18, 2013

Blizzard officially announced the shut-down of their auction house for Diablo III. There are several more months of operation before it gets phased out, but Blizzard has thrown in the towel on this controversial in-game feature. I don’t play Diablo III, myself. Oh, I was going to. I very nearly pre-ordered it. But then I […]

Filed Under: Biz, Design, Production - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

Unity Levels Up?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 29, 2013

The big buzz in the game dev community has been about Unity’s embrace of 2D support, announced Wednesday. It’s … big. Unity Introduces New 2D Tools I figured something like this was in the works when they hired the guy responsible for the best-selling NGUI toolset. I expected that it would be more limited to […]

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Advice on Making an FPS

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 19, 2013

The 2013 7DFPS (7 Day FPS) ended this weekend, but here’s the keynote chock full of advice for making games in a single week. Much of this advice is not unique to FPS games. And… well, some of it is just sarcastic. And funny. And even contradictory. 100% as it should be… Best advice from […]

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The Challenge of an Episodic RPG

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 13, 2013

I’ve had an idea for an episodic RPG for a long time. A very long time, actually – since before Frayed Knights. I actually put a great deal of time and research into the design. One day, I plan to revisit it – with a vengeance. After Frayed Knights 2 and 3 are out the […]

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What Tower Defense and RPGs Have In Common

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 6, 2013

What? Another tower defense game? Seriously? That genre isn’t dead yet? Yes, of course, I bought it.  Stupid bundles. Seriously, I need another tower defense (TD) game like I need another hole in my head.  And yet… Gah. Maybe I should admit that I have a problem. I suspect there’s some kind of emotional correlation […]

Filed Under: Design, Geek Life - Comments: 8 Comments to Read

Whadayamean, “Turn-Based?”

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 5, 2013

It seems to me that the last couple of years have brought something of a resurgence of turn-based gaming. Now, it was never truly dead or completely niche – Civilization remains one of the best-selling games on the planet, and it has (thankfully!) remained comfortably turn-based for all of this time. Meanwhile, most other “strategy” […]

Filed Under: Design, Dice & Paper - Comments: 17 Comments to Read

How to Design Puzzles for Role-Playing Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 23, 2013

I love puzzles in my RPGs – except when I hate them. I have a low threshold of tolerance for the kind of frustration they can yield, but I enjoy great satisfaction in solving them. It’s like having a sweet tooth and an allergy to sugar. When Legend of Grimrock was released, I was ecstatic.  […]

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Checklists for Making Awesome Video Games, and for Making Game Development Awesome

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 18, 2013

Making video games has always been as much art as science. At times, chained to the oars of a ship chasing the bleeding-edge horizon of technology or constrained by massive budgets to make obsessively risk-averse design decisions, the industry has drifted further out on the “science” side. Perhaps now, with the rise of indie games, […]

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What Sets Off Your “Just One More Turn / Level / Match” Reflex?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 17, 2013

I’ve decided it’s not the same for everybody. Maybe it doesn’t exist for some people. But for the rest of us (maybe just those of us with low willpower – like the ones who keep buying games from the Steam Sale even though we have more games than we could play in a year of […]

Filed Under: Design, Geek Life, Strategy Games - Comments: 9 Comments to Read

Indie Marketing / PR Tips

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 16, 2013

Leigh Alexander has posted a set of five PR tips indies really need. On the flip side, here are five  indie PR tips you really SHOULDN’T read. Or rather, five things you should not do, yet many indies do it anyway. Sadly, I’ve seen these very things thrown around certain forums as actual advice… And […]

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Frayed Knights: Dungeon Design Principles, Part 1

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 15, 2013

During the development of Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon, I evolved a set of informal philosophies or guidelines towards making adventuring areas (which I’ll just call “dungeons”, though some were outdoors). For the sequel, I actually wrote many of these guidelines down. At the risk of revealing a developing “secret formula” (hah!), but in […]

Filed Under: Design, Frayed Knights - Comments: 11 Comments to Read

Joss Whedon’s Productivity Advice

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 8, 2013

On one of the indie gamer forums over the weekend, someone shared this excellent article: How to Be Prolific: Guidelines for Getting It Done From Joss Whedon The points seem to be a little bit meandering, but the key points resonate pretty well with me. While I’m hardly perfect at implementation, when I’m on a […]

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The Same, Only Different: Where and How Much Innovation in Video Game Design?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 2, 2013

I’ve been playing Dungeons & Dragons for a long time. The newest incarnation isn’t officially “Dungeons & Dragons” (it’s Pathfinder), but it’s close enough.  I’ve played lots of tabletop adventures, and plenty of computer games based on the system. And then even more computer games that are loosely and unofficially based on  they system. I […]

Filed Under: Design - Comments: 23 Comments to Read

How Much Time Does Indie Development Demand?

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 26, 2013

Andrew Lamb, on Gamasutra, writes about Dispelling Some Myths for the Indie Studio Newbie. I really enjoyed the article. I’d say much the same things if I’d written it myself. So kudos to Lamb. But I wanted to talk about one of his points – about how much time and effort it takes to develop […]

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The Prototype Problem

Posted by Rampant Coyote on June 24, 2013

There are parts of the software development cycle that may seem counter-intuitive to people new it. Thanks to crowd-funding and the increased visibility into the development process from the indies, gamers and crowd-funding “backers” may find themselves in a difficult place of witnessing what may appear as a train-wreck as they follow development. Oftentimes, it’s […]

Filed Under: Game Development - Comments: 9 Comments to Read



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