A Hardy Developer's Journal

Doing posts dedicated solely to recommending interesting and relevant stuff found around the web, and to stop packing it all up into Links and The Compendium, is an old idea I had. However, before now I wasn’t content with the amount of HardyDev‘s original content and felt such posts would cheapen the blog. Not anymore. Also, this is a great way to appear less self-centered and give the rest of the Internet a chance to shine… (more…)

There are fewer things more enlightening about what is really wrong with a game than play-testing, and if you’re lucky, physical play-testing with a real, breathing person. The creator of a game always views things in a certain lens that skews the true perception of what’s going on, what’s needed, and what’s really visible to the player. For instance, in some of the play-tests I’ve had, I would run into a recurrent problem about the player’s visual direction–I want the player to go a certain way, open a certain door, or go down a certain ramp–but what’s the obvious direction for me is not the obvious direction for the player. (more…)