Today’s topic is one that is important for all sorts of game design: difficulty. There’s lots of ways to make your game difficult, but unfortunately most of those ways are shortcuts that don’t lead to appealing gameplay.

Lots of game developers will feel the need to make their game more difficult, so they add all sorts of “features” that only end up making the game more frustrating. “But the player is dying more often,” they say, “it’s a challenge.” Well, kind sir—is it really a challenge? Or is your gameplay just hard for no real reason?

Today we’re going to look at the difference between challenge and frustration, and how to add to your game’s difficulty curve while avoiding making your players feel bad about it. Read more

This article is one that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I expect this article to be a big one (lengthwise, and content-wise)—and there’s a lot of stuff from it that might take some time to sink in. But this subject is something that I would very much like to introduce to the RPG Maker and indie game development community.

Today we are going to be talking about player psychographics, what they are, and how an understanding of them will help with game design. Read more

Welcome to the second part of my series on designing RPG puzzles. Last time, we went over some of the broad categories that different puzzles fall into. Today, we’re going to break things down a little further. Let’s talk about the elements that make up every puzzle in an RPG. Even the simplest of puzzles can be broken down into its core essentials. Read more

Howdy. This is the first part of my new article series on puzzle design for RPGs. The goal of this series is to encourage critical thought about puzzle design as well as provide inspiration and motivation for the puzzles in your RPGs.

Today, we are going to look at a few core types of puzzles that are often found in RPGs. These might not be the only types of puzzles that can be in a game, but these are broad categories that cover a wide variety of puzzles, and this article will serve as a starting point for a more in-depth look at puzzle design. Read more

Howdy! I’ve been playing and reviewing RPG Maker games for over a decade, and it’s an unfortunate fact that very few of them stand out. It’s rare for an amateur RPG to feel original—and ever rarer to find one that really offers a unique experience. Most games are simply forgettable.

The best way to ensure that your game is memorable is to create a unique identity for it.

This article is a follow-up to my previous article about game design, Fuck Your Features. In that article, I talk about how to recognize and cut down on excessive features that may harm your game—in this article, I’m going to discuss ways to isolate and implement positive features in order to create a unique identity for your game. Read more

Dungeons! Any RPG would be incomplete without them. The dungeons in your game are where the majority of the gameplay will take place—your dungeons are the meat of your game. You can expect your players to spend a lot of time—and a lot of thought—in your dungeons, so it’s important to make them stand out.

What is a dungeon? A dungeon is an area of the game that provides danger and challenge for the player. Typically, RPGs are split up into two types of areas: towns and dungeons. Towns are places where the player can relax and heal; where he can comfortably explore and upgrade his characters: towns are typically the resting places between dungeons. But just like town areas don’t need to be towns—a dungeon doesn’t have to be a temple or a cave—any setting you can imagine can be a dungeon area—as long as it provides the potential for danger. These area definitions are based on gameplay function.

So let’s get creative with our dungeons. Read more