I’ve prepared some thoughts on Ninja Gaiden 2 (henceforth “NG2″), which I finished just recently. For brevity’s sake, I’ll make two separate posts. This first one is on pacing and weapon distribution.

Some words before we dive in so you can better frame my perspective.

I’m a big fan of the predecessor, but had realstic expectations when getting this game. I knew from reviews that this is less good than the predecessor, and the consensus seems to be that ‘it’s still the best of its breed”. (Which turns out to be a sad testament to the genre, considering its shortcomings).

On the other hand, this is actually a good opportunity for game design as we have two games that are in principle the same, but with a notable difference in quality. By comparing the two, one should be able to find out what ‘broke’ it, and maybe how it could be improved.

Continue reading “Ninja Gaiden 2: Freedom is good, control was better”

It’s my turn to take upon Braid. So far I’ve read some great articles about it. However, I often had the impression that people were more keen on discussing some quite superficial qualities of the game and made some very broad statements about it’s meaning. When they discussed details, they mentioned them often just brief examples. In the this article, I would like discuss in specific detail some of the game’s puzzles. Obviously, the game is very spoiler-sensitive. I must admit that even though I read a plot summary beforehand, the ending still caught me off-guard so I would advise you to read on even if you haven’t played it yet. Otherwise, you might just as well quit reading now and play it yourself.

If learning is not rewarding by itself, then maybe the lesson is flawed to begin with. Adding external punishment and rewards will just increase frustration

To give you a heads-up on what I would like to get across: I think the game is too hard. I do understand that there is a reason why the game is supposed to be hard. However, I think that the game hard in a SPECIAL way that doesn’t quite match the reason why it was supposed to be hard in the first place. It’s a milestone nonetheless exactly because it so successfully draws attention to an important challenge for game designers: to understand what difficulty means…

Continue reading “Braid: Understanding Difficulty”

There is an interesting custom among game designers to write so-called “Post-Mortems” about the games they made. So far I know, filmmakers, musicians and writers do not handle their work in such a scientific manner. I find Post-Mortems an excellent tool to establish a systematic and reflective approach to design, especially game design. So for a change, this time I would like to talk about a game I made: Excit.


One of the more eccentric Excit levels.

Excit is a very simple and quite small flash game. It is not a pinnacle of game design but it was a very interesting project nonetheless. I’ve learned a lot about game design through Excit and I would like to share some of the findings:

Continue reading “Excit: Post-Mortem”

As a preparation for my thesis project I had to get an overview of the current adventures games. So I bought a couple of popular titles, installed them all and played each game for a couple of minutes first to get and idea what it is about. At that time, one particular game stood out of the crowd – Secret Files: Tunguska. It is a German game by the studio Animation Arts and I heard frequently that this particular Title sets the standards as far as modern adventure games go. Even though I was prepared for a treat, I was still quite impressed by the game’s quality and amount of polish evident from the very first minute on.


Point & Click Adventures in the Year 2008: Use iPhone with duct tape with cat. (oops, I hope I didn’t spoil this one)

I’ve finished the game and although the quality remains high even up to the end, Tunguska is a good example that polish is a tricky thing.

Continue reading “Tunguska: Polish and Value”

Recently, there has been a funny strip in the webcomic VGCats about the Nintendo DS game Phoenix Wright. It mocks the reoccurring large female breasts throughout the game. Bizarrely, because of the convoluted story one character gets big breasts every time there is a crisis.


A character in Phoenix Wright is a spirit medium able to channel the spirit of her dead sister. Her breasts become large in the process. So if you consider plastical surgery, you might want to try mediumship instead.

Phoenix Wright generally features large animated images of characters. Because of economical reasons, each character has only a limited set of animations. The whole game is arrangement of repetitive, cheesy poses, exaggerated expressions, and wacky characters which are just perfect for this kind of mockery – for example in the Phoenix Wrong videos. In such videos and comics, the flaws of the games are exposed. Today, I would like to explain why this is not dismissive criticism bit why it can be understood as a kind of praise and approval. Even more, it is an integral part of what a game is and an even expression of a form of beauty.

Continue reading “Phoenix Wright: Beauty of the flaw”