The charm of Super Smash Bros.
Monday, 7th of January 2019, 13:53 +01:00
I remember my friends and I cycling back home one day after school, more than 17 years ago. They wanted to stop by the toy store because a new game was supposed to be released. Something Smash something. Never having liked fighters like Tekken and Mortal Kombat, and never having played the original Nintendo 64 game, I wasn't immediately excited about it. Little did I know that on that day I'd get introduced to one of the most interesting and fun games of my life.They picked up the game, Super Smash Bros. Melee. We all went to one friend's parent's place and played non-stop until morning the next day when we had to get ready for school. No sleep for the Smashers. The first thing I did on my...
Monetising handicaps
Monday, 24th of December 2018, 00:50 +01:00
Recently I was talking about games and the increasing presence of the Free to Play model with a friend and avid gamer. He expressed concerns about the way that this monetisation model has the tendency to bleed into the mechanics of the game and negatively impact the experience. He was not wrong, this happens. When designing F2P games it has proven to be challenging to find a fair way of including monetisation. Countless examples exist where the monetisation gets in the way of the fun, which always results in a bad game experience. I've seen lots of games ruined by blunt attempts of bringing money into the picture. Even games that are able to be played for free without a monetary inv...
Deconstructing Disney Heroes: Battle Mode
Tuesday, 13th of November 2018, 23:16 +01:00
Disney Heroes: Battle Mode was announced in April this year and launched globally in May as an impressively feature-complete hero brawler, developed by PerBlue Entertainment. The game mainly caters to millennials who were raised watching Disney films and are familiar with the more modern IPs. The game features many characters from the Disney & Pixar Universe, all mashed into a single game. Can Disney's crossover live up to expectations? From a gameplay perspective, the game is inspired by earlier casual hero brawlers like Heroes Charge (2014) and Soul Hunters (2015) and caters to a more casual to mid-core audience. The characters are the selling point of the game (w...
"Mobile": the cussword of BlizzCon 2018
Saturday, 3rd of November 2018, 13:48 +01:00
Having been a big fan of Blizzard Games for decades, I was watching the BlizzCon 2018 Opening Ceremony livestream last night. The announcement in the end intrigued me. Diablo fans around the world have been relatively uncatered to during the last years, Blizzard Entertainment has been focusing on their other IPs and building new universes, testing the hard-core Diablo fans' patience for a long time up until now. The rumour mill and gossip about a reveal of Diablo 4 at this BlizzCon was strengthened by adding a Diablo session at prime-time on the schedule, right after the opening ceremony. Diablo 4 was what the existing audience of Diablo fans were hoping for, but they...
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