November 2011
0 posts
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On Polish: Spelunky
Polish is one of the foremost things on my mind right now (and I don’t mean the language!). This is a Good Thing(tm), because I couldn’t spend this much time thinking about it if we weren’t nearing the end of our game’s development. I know, I can hardly believe it myself!
From my experience, it’s the beginning and end stages of development where you see the...
April 2011
1 post
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"Firm, But Fair"
In the April 2011 issue of Edge magazine, From Software’s Hidetaka Miyazaki outlined the five key criteria by which his team is balancing the difficulty of Dark Souls:
1. Any player can clear any obstacle simply by learning from mistakes and paying close attention.
2. The reasons for failure must always be clear and understandable.
3. Every problem must have multiple solutions, so that...
March 2011
1 post
5 tags
The Full Spelunky on Spelunky
At this year’s Game Developers Conference, I gave a 30-minute talk with my friend Andy Hull about Spelunky and how it went from being a freeware PC game to the XBLA project that we’re both working on right now. Overall, I think the talk went quite well (whew)! You can find footage of the talk somewhere on GDC Vault, but unfortunately, you have to be a registered member of something or...
September 2010
1 post
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Finishing a Game
As I work towards completing my own game, I’ve been thinking a lot about finishing projects in general. I’ve noticed that there are a lot of really talented developers out there that have trouble finishing games. Truthfully, I’ve left a long trail of unfinished games in my wake… I think everyone has. Not every project is going to pan out, for whatever reason. But if you...
July 2010
1 post
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The Technopriests
My first encounter with the work of Alejandro Jodorowsky was when I read The Metabarons, a comic book series that describes a lineage of superhuman warriors, the titular Metabarons. The book is lavishly illustrated by the Argentinian artist Juan Giminez, who, to his credit, manages to keep up with the maddening pace of Jodorowsky’s ideas as they escalate from weird to absolutely fucking...
June 2010
2 posts
4 tags
Interpreting Player Feedback
After the first few releases of Spelunky, there was one player who began nagging me constantly to make the game easier. “Derek, I hate your fuckin’ game,” he said. “Because it’s the first roguelike/platformer implementation I’ve ever seen, which is totally awesome. But from this game it seems you suck at difficulty.” I thought about it, but I...
6 tags
Design for the Hardcore
One of the many things I heard this year at GDC that stuck with me goes something like “design your game for hardcore players first, then make it accessible for casual players.” I’m probably butchering it a little bit - I heard it from my friend Mark Johns, who attributes it to Blizzard. Who knows? Maybe the original saying was “Anchovies are the best pizza...