A Hardy Developer's Journal

Welcome back! Last time I bitched about old-school adventure game interfaces and tried to convince people to throw them out the window. Today I’m going to give an example of how I futzed around with the interface of my game, Resonance, adding a layer of potential complexity to the puzzles while keeping the interface simple, fast, and intuitive.

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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…)

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…)