Learning Game Design™

It’s been a while over here – not that I wouldn’t have stuff to post, but been busy otherwise. Family’s expanding and all that :-)

So I got to borrow a PS3 from a friend and with it got Heavy Rain (my primary inspiration for  borrowing the console) and Uncharted 2. Heavy Rain was something that made me heavily consider purchasing PS3, but the fact that multiple game platforms increase the amount of good games available which increases the amount of unfinished games in the shelf.

So in the end, I decided I wouldn’t buy the console since there’s enough for me in the XBox360 and I would just miss out on Heavy Rain if needed. Luckily, thanks to my friend, I didn’t need to.

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Invisible Elegancy

Race for the Galaxy is another card game of recent times that has really struck a chord. Already sporting two expansions, it has been playtested and experimented on to death and even the expansions were ready before RftG was even published. It is a game of subtle elegance, which looks like a solitaire game with multiple people for the new players, but once it opens up the subtle and often important interactive elements pop up.

I didn’t like it at first, but it has grown on me, just like any other good boardgame.

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If you haven’t played this gem yet, go do it now. For those that require some extra convincing, here’s some. Dominion is a game of reverse deck building and making your deck eventually to be the lean, mean machine that starts getting those points before the game ends.

I got this for christmas present last year and even though it took a few games to get the gears rolling, I’m nowadays absolutely in love with the game.

It shares many qualities with MTG, most importantly the deckbuilding that you actually do on the fly and also hand-management and combos that you can hopefully generate. It’s about having a deck where each draw should be useful. Add in to the mix the fact that each game is different (since a different mix of action cards is always chosen) and it gives you plenty of playability.

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I’ve been having loads of fun with the latest Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts. I’m not the most feverish fan of platformers and partly I think they’ve gone the wrong way ever since the first Jak & Daxter.

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Originally, I didn’t really pay much attention to Burnout Paradise. I tried the demo briefly and left it at that. During that time of absence, Criterion added all kinds of content to the game, making it better and when the Ultimate Box came out at a nice price, there was no reason for me not to jump in.

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The one and currently only book about team leadership in the game industry, all the other books of the same vein will follow what Seth Spaulding did first. So how is it?

Seth definitely has the credentials to write a book about leadership. His credits date back to 1995 and he’s worked his share of Command & Conquer, Mechwarrior, Civilization etc. to name a few. Currently an Art Director at Firaxis, Seth visited Finland couple of years ago and I briefly met the guy while working at Bugbear. Unexpectedly, part of his experiences with finnish game studios has been recorded in the book, in a positive light.

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Wasabi is a recent boardgame published by Z-Man games that could be compared to the match-3 games like Bejeweled, but with a few twists that make it more interesting.

In short, up to four players draw ingredients from the pantry and put them behind their covers, where they also hold up to three different recipies. Recipies range from easy 2 ingredient pieces to a maximum of 5 piece culinaristic explosions of gastronomy.

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