So you want to make a free to play game

South Park Freemium Cycle

Making a game is something you put your heart and soul into, yet in the end, to do so at a professional level instead of as a hobby requires that someone foots the bill for food, shelter, heating and so on. It’d be nice if we could just get the best people to make the best games, but reality dictates that we need to pay our employees. There are a lot of ways to do … Read More

What makes a game fun? Episode 003 – Snowballing

What Makes a Game Fun 003

Now, this’s a bit off the topic I’d been going to cover, but it’s pertinent to the first two episodes of the “What Makes A Game Fun?” series. So what’s the topic that I’m beating around the bush on today? Why, snowballing. No, no, not THAT kind of snowballing… ew. It’s also best if you don’t ask yourself why I know that term. No, I mean the kind of snowballing which refers to the effect … Read More

Minecraft: The Redstone Starter Guide

Redstone

Now that you’ve been playing Minecraft for a while, you probably want to start building something involving redstone. At first, redstone construction may sound overwhelming, but once you understand the basics, it’s a lot less complex than it first appears. Redstone is the Minecraft equivalent of electronics, but with a few differences. We’ll start first by discussing how redstone works at a basic level: In order for a redstone circuit to do anything useful, it must have … Read More

Minecrafting For the Beginner

minecraft-logo

The virus swept through the world, a terrifying parody of low budget horror movies, turning loved ones into ravenous beasts. Aboard the last ship of living humans you head out, trying to survive at sea until the danger passes. But something much more sinister is at play. A magical apocalypse is upon us. The world heaves and buckles, landmasses change, ancient rites once again regain their power, and your boat is destroyed, leaving you in … Read More

What makes a game fun? Episode 002 – Choices

Episode 002

The most basic premise of playing a game is that you, yanno… play the game. If a player doesn’t have a direct control over the outcome of a game, then they may as well be watching TV instead of playing, because they’re not actually engaging in the gameplay aspect. This is the single most important aspect of what makes a game fun, and one which, sadly, is misunderstood by many developers, and hence we get … Read More

What makes a game fun? Episode 001 – Progression

agile-planning-whiteboard

So what makes a game “fun?” Several journalists have claimed that “fun” is in the eye of the beholder, and so personal that there’s no way to gauge it and as such we may as well stop trying to even consider if a game is fun or not when reviewing them. However, this isn’t exactly true… There are certain things which are inherently rewarding to players in a deep, satisfying psychological manner, and there are … Read More

Alien Isolation: How to Hide From a Monster

Alien Isolation Header

Before I start this review, I would first like to say I am a fan of the Alien film franchise – most of them, but not all.  I have the Alien Anthology on blu-ray, one of my prized movies.  I love H.R. Giger’s artwork, the inspiration for the original alien movie, as well as a host of other movies.  I admire the cinematography of the original, the suspense and terror that the movie series conveyed, … Read More

Choosing a Minecraft Resource Pack

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 On the surface, choosing a Minecraft resource pack seems like it should be a no brainer. In fact, picking a pack of pickled… er… pixels… feels like such a simple action that you tell yourself, “Hey, I’ll just randomly pick one of the nice ones on the various resource pack sites.” Well, sure, you can tell yourself that, and maybe it’d even be true… if there weren’t thousands of resource packs out there and if … Read More