Category: Game Design

I spent three weeks last month staring at a spreadsheet for my own game, trying to figure out why my players were ignoring the entire skill tree I’d spent hundreds of hours balancing. I thought I was giving them freedom, but I was actually just burying them in a mountain of useless variables. Developers love…

I spent three months of my life building a branching dialogue system for my current project, convinced that if I just added enough “if/then” statements, I’d finally understand how player agency is created. I thought agency was a math problem—a complex web of variables that would make players feel like gods. But after watching my…

I spent three years moderating a guild forum where I watched dozens of “hardcore” players quit within forty minutes of a new expansion dropping. They weren’t quitting because the mechanics were broken; they were quitting because they felt like they were being lectured by a textbook rather than invited into a world. Most developers treat…

I spent three months building a bespoke, cinematic opening for my first solo project, convinced that a high-budget, scripted sequence was the answer to how to design a tutorial that actually sticks. I thought I was being “professional,” but all I was really doing was building a wall between the player and the fun. I…

I spent three weeks last month staring at a spreadsheet for my own tiny project, trying to figure out why my players were hitting a wall and just… stopping. I had followed every textbook on how difficulty curves are built, scaling enemy health and damage in these neat, predictable increments that looked beautiful on paper.…

I spent three months of my life building a combat loop for my current project, convinced that if I just tweaked the cooldown timers by another 0.5 seconds, I’d have mastered the art of flow. I was wrong. I was treating pacing like a math problem to be solved with spreadsheets, when in reality, how…

I spent three weeks last month trying to code a combat system for my own project, and I thought I had it figured out. I had the math right, the damage numbers were scaling perfectly, and the logic was airtight. But when I actually pressed the key to swing the sword, it felt like nothing.…

I remember sitting in a cramped dorm room at 3:00 AM, staring at a combat prototype that was technically “perfect.” The math was flawless, the frame data was tight, and the hitboxes were precise, but playing it felt like filling out tax forms. I had spent weeks obsessing over damage scaling when I should have…

I spent three months of my life building a combat system that felt like a masterpiece on paper, only to realize I’d accidentally designed a glorified chore simulator. I kept reading these high-level design blogs that talk about “synergistic engagement” and “reward optimization,” but they never mention the moment you realize your players aren’t actually…

I spent six months building a complex, interconnected crafting system for my current project, only to realize during the first playtest that I hadn’t built a feature—I’d built a chore. I had polished the UI, balanced the math, and written the lore, all to discover that the core loop was fundamentally boring. Most people will…