Author: Jack

Limericks, Form, Miraculous Coincidences [on latte art:] It’s not a very expressive medium, but it is a medium and it’s worth exploring (or nothing is worth exploring). – Zeigfreid, Miraculous Coincidences There is a satisfying cant to the limerick’s flow, strongly suggesting a setup, a brief diversion, and a punchline. We can still meticulously construct… Continue reading Appreciation as Practice

I like that quote from Basho…. ‘seek what they tried to seek’. mm. Maybe this [is] “what we do when we do game design”? Using all the mechanisms available to us, we create a beautiful Hedge and tease out the player’s capacity and inclination to perceive it, to invite them to seek what we tried… Continue reading Answering my own question

Correctness I find it’s more exciting to be an explorer, a detective, when I think there might be some big fuzzy ‘real’ answer and that I’m not just doing all this work for the sake of leaving behind footprints. droqen, Interpreting 靜夜思, and the Timeless Way Touche! It seems that I also used some terminology… Continue reading Correctness, Progress, and Timeless Truth

This is an interesting, um, example? specimen? I have been leaning hard into ‘the death of the author’, in a lot of ways for my own mental health, to allow myself to engage with things on my own terms and feel comfortable and confident about my manner of engagement, and what I end up valuing… Continue reading Designing without correctness

Hello, it has a been a bit! I thought I might share some recent thoughts I’ve been playing with. Thoughts around feedback, theming, and poetics. As always, in the world of GAMEFEEL. A couple months ago I started working on a port of the classic Sokoban, but re-envisioned as a sliding block puzzle (a la… Continue reading Slime Logic

So, games always take on some responsibility for what the resolution of the game experience is, and it has a limit. They can’t avoid it. Zeigfreid insists (and I think we agree). Videogames have a resolution problem (I insist, there is no escaping it). I take Jack’s suggestion as a call to work with that constraint rather… Continue reading Taking Responsibility for Taking Responsibility

The ‘Resolution Problem’ of videogames is an interesting framing for the way that we get bored after some time exploring gamefeel games. But I have some question about it. … HAIKU games made me think “ah yes, videogames: stay in your lane”. Be polite, be expressive, be real; don’t overstay your welcome, don’t pretend to… Continue reading What (or Who) is responsible for the Resolution Problem?

I find prototyping is a really trial-and-error experience, a random walk around playspaces to discover what works and what doesn’t. It’s the only way to stumble upon something totally new! So my personal answer:– Pay attention to systems external to the game.– Reject non-emersive designs and see what I find. Droqen (Prototyping Emersive Games?) A… Continue reading What isn’t emersive?

I recently had a game idea that I like, it has gamefeel aspects and natural beauty aspects, and is conceptually contained – though as you will see very easily spills into some complexity that needs to be wrangled. I like the general idea of it, but there are a lot of holes in the design… Continue reading Game Idea: Case Study