Game Design in Everyday Writing: Cadence

Roller coasters aren’t fun because they are fast per se; their fun actually comes from the changes. First is the long, slow climb, building anticipation. Then your stomach lurches as you drop and twist and launch through turns and loops, and your speed fluctuates, too, slowing on some hills, before lurching down again. Etc.

In games you utilize the principle of cadence to make sure that levels are constantly shifting in terms of pace, difficulty or even type of skillset required.

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Hot Take: Mindtrap is a Bad Puzzle Game

A key part about a puzzle is that everything you need to solve it needs to be presented from the start. The challenge to the player is figuring out how to put the pieces together. In this case, the information that the man was in a sailor’s outfit is unknown and not something someone should be reasonably able to deduce from the given information. Literally nothing in the setup telegraphs that the man is in a sailor’s outfit. It’s like someone gave us a jigsaw puzzle that was missing pieces and then were shocked that we couldn’t solve it.

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Game Design as Expression Pt. 5

I don’t intend to solve everything with blog posts alone by the way. Instead, today I’ll set out quest markers to guide us from here on out. Even if you don’t immediately jump to your feet to design a game for yourself/others after this, I hope you can glide away with the capacity to at least consider some new possibilities for expression and creation.

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