Local Internet-lands have recently been abuzz with stories of a game called Legends of Echo. It’s a bit of good ol’ South African produce which uses the local Grid network to create a mobile, location-based MMO. The “mobile” bit means that it can be played on a cellphone (though models seem limited to Nokia and [...]

Although it may be little more than a myth to some, the lesser spotted ludus modus singulus — also known as the “single switch game” in day-to-day discourse — is a very real and fairly common kind of game. It operates on just one rule: input must be limited to a single keystroke. No arrow [...]

Arguably one of the most difficult skills that a game designer can learn is the ability to duly cut something from a game. This isn’t simply about minimalism, or dropping features due to time constraints: no, this is all about hunting down and removing a piece of your own hard work from a project because [...]

There is, and possibly always will be, a soft spot in my heart for Simon the Sorcerer. In the not-too-long-ago when I was a rebellious, adolescent know-it-all, there was nothing quite like putting myself in the adventure gaming shoes of a rebellious, adolescent know-it-all who also just happened to be a wizard. At the time, [...]

Castles are quite possibly the coolest buildings in existence, bar none. They’re those eponymous war huts which feature in just about every medieval fantasy you’d care to mention, from the romantic ramparts of a Cinderella story to the Gothic depths of Dracula’s Castlevania abode. In post-Dark Ages Europe, they were astounding feats of deadly engineering [...]

Anyone who has ever tried to make a game (or write a book / draw a comic series / insert long-term creative project here) is probably aware of just how gosh-darn difficult it is to keep going at it. Sure, that initial burst of creativity can fuel a working spree of a few hours, days, [...]

People tend to roll their eyes at the idea of making design documents for small-scale game projects. Fair enough: screwing around for a few hours to make a generic platformer doesn’t require the care, precision and co-ordination of, say, an Army of Two co-op snipe — it tends to be a more casual exercise with [...]

Over the years, I’ve often expressed my deep and profound respect for the casual gaming industry: a branch of game development that is so often vilified because it supposedly appeals to stupid and unappreciative gamers. Aside from numerous write-ups in places like Dev.Mag, I also tend to explain my stance when chatting to friends and [...]

Constructor is a DOS-based, tongue-in-cheek management sim that places you in control of a construction company trying to do what construction companies do best. This means, of course, that you’ll spend most of your time building cheap houses, pacifying annoyed tenants, making deals with the mob and completely screwing over any and all rivals. Before [...]

There have been a lot of things attributed to game development, but normality probably isn’t one of them. In fact, it’s been scientifically proven that the concepts of “regular” and “game developer” are mutually exclusive, and even addressing someone as “a normal game developer” brings the entire universe that much closer to a divide-by-zero implosion. [...]

Sometimes a game relies on the element of surprise to keep players on their toes and generate tense or action-filled moments. Horror titles do this a lot — sometimes a monster will leap out of the closet, or your in-game avatar will be shocked to find that dinner is actually a bowl of cabbage soup [...]

People who know me well enough are usually aware of my obsession with a Rogue-like game called Crawl. It’s said to be one of the most fiendishly difficult offerings from an already fiendishly difficult genre (victory is a mixed bag of “holy crap, I’ve finally won!” and “holy crap, what have I just wasted years [...]

The annual Independent Games Festival has featured on these pages before, lauded as one of the biggest events on the average indie developer’s calendar. From a pool of more than 300 entrants, a new batch of indie game finalists for the 2010 event has already been selected, dusted off, and presented to us while we [...]

Hard-boiled detective work, a badass trenchcoat and post-nuclear dystopia. This is what you get when you slip yourself into the … wait, you know what? We’ve been over this before. The Tex Murphy games are a set of oft-overlooked classics that put you in the shoes of the titular character: everyone’s favourite post-apocalyptic private investigator. [...]

There are many game development styles out there. Some people prefer building game worlds, some focus on rules and systems, and others prefer starting out with player/verb frameworks. These categories are nebulous at best, and even attempting to define them warrants an article of its own, but most people agree on the existence of at [...]

As an aspiring game developer, you may envision yourself one day taking a course, obtaining a qualification, and slotting yourself into Gigantic Megacorps to make awesome games forever with a team of six million people. But have you ever given serious thought to how you’re going to work with them? The size and scope of [...]