Cohost Archive

Okay so I'm curious! You seem to have a lot to say about the impact of world design, so I'm dying to know if you have Thoughts™ with regards to Classicvania versus Metroidvania. Is one better than the other? Are there different considerations for both??

Obviously you can't quite put one over the other, though... I feel like classicvanias were far more powerful examples of their craft than most of the igavanias (obviously Rondo and SOTN place a lo...

@DieselBrain asked:

Heya! Really enjoyed reading your critique of Dread even as someone who really liked the game! Youve written about souls stuff before but i saw the swipe you took at Gael and now it has me curious about your feelings on souls style boss design. Got any favs/least favs?

So for me a great Dark Souls boss needs to be something or someone interesting, something whose existence tells a story, and who is engaging and fun to fight. For me it's rarely...

Anonymous User asked:

All of your Metroid write-ups recently have been fantastic, and a great insight into some game design choices and thoughts about genres that I hadn't really thought of before (Seriously, "Metroid isn't about blowing up secret boxes" should be on some game dev's whiteboards in the top left corner as a reminder).

Curious thought, though, have you happened to play La-Mulana and or its sequel? I love them, but their design perplex me in a very un...

This post does not stand on its own without cohost, but the points made here still felt worth archiving.

Seeing discourse on cohost design from people coming in from tumblr and a lot of it is like "Ah, but you see, cohost is designed this way on purpose! You gotta ask why you want those features to begin with!" and like that's great that's GENUINELY great I think cohost did a good job pushing things the other way with website design trends. There are some great decisions they've made to re...

Since everyone is doing their ... anti?? game design takes, let me do mine.

We'll start with the coldest take. Good Game Design accomplishes a Goal. I think that's... pretty universally uncontroversial? Like even if someone somehow disagreed, I don't think they'd say I was going out on much of a limb. But despite this, there is trouble!! Because not all goals are good goals and I feel like the majority of budding devs who go down the design rabbit hole start designing with two of the worst...

Ask: Impact of World Design - Classic vs Igavanias

Ask: Favorite Souls Bosses?

Ask: La-Mulana's Map Structure?

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Recovering Objective Game Design Addict at the Game Designer Anonymous Meeting