The Complete Guide to Balancing a Game
Most people will tell you that a “complete guide to game balance” involves a massive spreadsheet, a PhD in mathematics, and a prayer to the gods of RNG. They’ll talk about standard deviations and complex combat formulas like they’re some kind of holy scripture. But I’ve spent too many late nights staring at my own…
The Complete Guide to Playtesting
If you’re looking for a “complete guide to playtesting” that involves expensive focus groups, massive QA departments, and some high-level academic theory about player psychology, you can close this tab right now. Most guides treat playtesting like a sterile laboratory experiment where you observe rats in a maze, but that’s a lie. In reality, playtesting…
The Complete Guide to Prototyping
Most “complete guide to prototyping” articles I find online feel like they were written by people who have never actually had to ship a build. They talk about “iterative cycles” and “resource optimization” as if you’re managing a skyscraper construction site rather than trying to figure out if a single jumping mechanic feels like a…
The Complete Guide to Game Design Fundamentals
Most “complete guide to game design fundamentals” articles you’ll find online are just collections of buzzwords designed to make you feel like you need a PhD to build a fun loop. They’ll talk about “player agency” and “emergent gameplay” in these lofty, academic ways, but they never tell you what happens when your math is…
The Complete Guide to Making a Game Alone
If you search for a “complete guide to solo game development” right now, you’re going to find a thousand tutorials telling you to master Unreal Engine, buy a high-end drawing tablet, or learn how to optimize shaders. It’s all noise. Most of those “guides” are just marketing for tools or ways to make you feel…
The Complete Guide to Starting in Game Development
Most “complete guide to starting game development” tutorials online are just glorified sales pitches for expensive engine plugins or math textbooks that assume you want to spend your weekends calculating vector trajectories instead of actually making a game. They treat development like a linear climb up a mountain, but if my time moderating guild forums…