What seems to be the problem?

Games, generally speaking, are made up of problems. Or, as it is more commonly described, challenges for the player to overcome. These challenges can take many forms, from puzzles to solve to enemies to defeat. They also often come in different layers (defeating agents of the enemy before fighting the final boss) as well as in different combinations (solving a puzzle under time-pressure). A large part of game design is trying to make sure the player is always faced with […]

Subconscious design

Two systems
The concept of two system that handle how we work as human beings keeps popping up in different research. Lieberman in his book “human learning and memory”¹ talks about different journals³ and research that brings up two systems of learning. That we automatically learn things in some situations and in other situations we seem to have more control over what and how we learn.
Other research on two systems is more oriented towards behavior science. David Kahneman is a noble […]

Earn a free conference pass!

So your crowdfunding missed its target, your company can’t send you, or you want to scout talent before anyone else gets the chance. Whatever the reason, you may earn yourself a free Conference Pass and front row seats to meet our students by serving on the GGC Jury!
The jury arrive a day early (28/5) to attend student presentations (2-4 hours, with breaks) and then play their games on the show floor and provide thoughtful and constructive feedback […]

Educators Summit update

The Game Educators Summit is a 2-day meeting hosted by the Department of Game Design, during the GGC. We aim to bring together all higher game educations (internationally) to discuss our common concerns and set up a network of support.
So; two days, broken up by the Gotland Game Conference. The first day (28/5) is filled with short presentations and an evening meet-and-greet on the show floor among the student games.
The second day (31/5) takes place after […]

Keeping Assets Consistent Throughout Production

Author: Hanna Hagenmalm
Team: Leviathan
Concept: Draxl’s Journey
So. You have been tasked with drawing a spaceship. As you have never drawn a spaceship before, this turns out to be quite a challenge. But as the art style is graphic and your team supportive, you do manage to create a first little shiplet. It took many hours, and the standard bucket of sweat and tears and blood, but you did it. Good job.
Then you have to create a second one, and while the […]

#Artwar Character Contest: Briannon | Part 1 – Design

As I mentioned before, I am making a character for Cubebrush’s #Artwar competition. I was a bit late to start and have had many issues along the way, but also learned quite a lot. I wanted to try and implement some of the things that I learned while making my hand painted sword, from design through texturing. It is definitely not as easy without the help I had then though, but time to test my wings and see if I […]

#2 The Silent Hero

When times are hard and there is a lot to do you sometimes find a light in the tunnel in the form of a silent hero. Like Sam helpt Frodo in the lord of the rings a friend or colleague sometimes jumps in to carry you through the storm. Whether family members pulling through for you during hard times or friends comforting you through a though part of your life. I don’t know what we would do without our silent […]

Enemy Animation

Hey this is me again. This post is a continuation of my enemy design post. In this one I’ll talk about my process of animating my design.
My enemy is an insect, so obviously I needed to do some research to understand how six legged creatures works. During my search I didn’t find much material about it but an article describing how it should look like caught my attention. It stated than the all the legs on one side move almost at […]

CoC Development Diary #2

Hi there.
Welcome to another development diary of the game Crown of Creation.
Our main focus for this week was implementing and polishing all the assets we currently have and show the game on alpha presentation and play testing. The alpha presentation went pretty well I would say.
Personally my job for the week is making the powerpoint for the presentation and implementing sound to our game, and try to fix the boss behavior if possible.
So implementing the sounds was not as simple […]

Making a Light Plant

This week I started work on a new enemy, and a new mechanic for the game. This enemy is a flower that will sit on a wall and shoot projectiles that provide light, but are also dangerous to the player. The projectiles will also be used later in different puzzles that will interact with them in different ways, opening pathways or providing more light.
The plants themselves will also interact in different ways with other projectiles and the player, but these […]

5sd064 Thomas Härdin Designing Powerups

Thomas Härdin, lead design for Fenrir back again.
We are making progress with the game concept Bullet Hack. A lot of the core is finished, such as movement, shooting, win/lose conditions, etc. Today i will explain recent progress and future plans for powerups. Note that following is based in the mode that is the hacking gameplay.
Lets start at the first powerup. We had some early ideas as a group about different kinds of powerups, for example a multi shot projectile, sweeping […]

Conference sessions so far

So far, we have a one-two punch of Chris Franklin and Doris Rusch: Chris will lay the foundation of a platform study, arguing that computational devices funnels us towards spatial simulation and conflict – partially explaining the early decades of simplistic violence in our video games.
Then Doris will follow up and show how we might resist this technological determinism, bringing metaphor and nuance into our digital systems.
There have a big-picture talk from the father […]