The Lindenbaum Prize, a competition for short gamebooks, goes into its fourth year. This year’s contest has no less than seventeen entries from a variety of genres, with a wide range of creative approaches. It’s a great opportunity for experiments, and it’s always exciting to see what the authors come up with. If you’re interested  [ Read More ]

The Lindenbaum Prize, a competition for short gamebooks, goes into its fourth year. This year’s contest has no less than seventeen entries from a variety of genres, with a wide range of creative approaches. It’s a great opportunity for experiments, and it’s always exciting to see what the authors come up with. If you’re interested  [ Read More ]

The Lindenbaum Prize, a competition for short gamebooks, goes into its fourth year. This year’s contest has no less than seventeen entries from a variety of genres, with a wide range of creative approaches. It’s a great opportunity for experiments, and it’s always exciting to see what the authors come up with. If you’re interested  [ Read More ]

The Lindenbaum Prize, a competition for short gamebooks, goes into its fourth year. This year’s contest has no less than seventeen entries from a variety of genres, with a wide range of creative approaches. It’s a great opportunity for experiments, and it’s always exciting to see what the authors come up with. If you’re interested  [ Read More ]

“As many as you can fit, especially girls!” – yeah, dude, I guess that’s one possible answer. Although, wait, we might have something to work with here… I would assume that most home-grown developers, when confronted with the “party size” question, go with their instincts first, and probably never question the decision afterwards. For instance,  [ Read More ]

That I’m a fan of puzzles should come as no surprise (see here, for instance). On a mechanical side, I like to be challenged in unusual ways, where combat after combat eventually gets stale; in terms of atmosphere, I find exploring mystical and potentially dangerous places so much more interesting if I happen upon something  [ Read More ]

I’m pretty certain the concept already exists in the world of game design theory, probably under a different name; all I found on a (not too thorough) search was this (https://www.possibilityspace.org/tutorial-generative-possibility-space/), which comes close, but doesn’t quite fit. Especially not since I wish to address that topic from the specific perspective of a CRPG designer.  [ Read More ]

So I’ve begun setting up my new game, and one of the first matters I took a look at, as it’s usually the one you also encounter first as a player, is the character generation. Given that I want the player to create a whole party instead of just the main character (as has been  [ Read More ]

The recent GoG re-release of the old WarCraft games reminded me of the fun I had with the WarCraft II editor – and my frustration about the limited AI settings. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that there were actually tools out there to edit the AI! So despite not really having the time for  [ Read More ]

Legends of Amberland is a very traditional indie CRPG that was released on Steam last year and has now found its way to GOG (which is how I noticed it). TL;DR: If the screenshots in this posting trigger any kind of positive memory in you, buy the game; it may not be perfect, but will  [ Read More ]