A Hardy Developer's Journal

Interfaces are important.  I love interfaces.  Forming an intuitive and fluid language that is used by the player to communicate with the game, and a way for the game to communicate back is fun.  But adventure games, even the commercial titles, rarely get much interface love.  Games in the genre tend to stick to one of the commonly used control schemes.  (more…)

The intriguing and unique adventure game TRAUMA (previously known as Illucinated) has been nominated in the 2010 edition of Independent Games Festival for Excellence in Audio, Excellence in Visual Arts, and for the Grand Price as well.

The game’s creator Krystian Majewski agreed to have his mind picked for a bit, so that we could find out more about the history of TRAUMA, while the game is already in its final stages of production. (more…)

Review by Drew Wellman, aka ddq5

Note: Download Full Game Here

Whilst Ben Chandler and the like are consistently getting game development just right, there is the rest of us, me included, getting it just about completely wrong – or are we? And are we that different from Mr Chandler?

This article, in short, will try to explain why trying to make your first project huge and exciting is indeed a bad idea, but why I’m sticking to it and why you should never give up.

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Everyone knows robots are the coolest thing possible to appear in a cartoon or elsewhere. And in our latest interview we talk about them with Erin Robinson – the inventor of various types of Puzzle Bots and Nanobots. (more…)

So, you’ve got a whole lot done on your game, graphics are looking how you want and you’ve got some puzzles you really like. But hang on a minute, how do you know when your game is done? There’s always going to be moments when you go “I could just add a bit more on here”, and sometimes this is very beneficial. But you have to stop working on the game somewhere, or it’ll never get done.

This could be something so much bigger: It’s a natural feeling to get near the end of your project and think “This could be so much bigger!”. Parts you could add, bits you could extend – in fact if you’re like most people you’ll probably have ‘realized’ that the story you wrote would work so much ‘better’ as the first part in a trilogy. (more…)

I have to say that past years visit to the Monkey Islandish Caribbean has turned out to be a truly epic journey filled to the brim with piratey adventures and charming concepts. And here is where we are now. Right at the end. But is it the last chapter of one big story? Or more like the end to an episodic series? And how good is it exactly? (more…)