After reading this post, you’ll understand the thinking behind making really simple computer-game trees, and why that simplicity matters. This is a developer log for Save the Dutch, a game where you save your best buddy, the duck Dutch, by learning the Dutch language.
There is a video version of this. Watch it on YouTube, where I go through the same design thinking out loud, show the trees in the engine, and introduce Riki Raccoon.
It was recorded to work as audio too, so you can listen to it as a podcast if you would rather. Full link list at the bottom of this post.
The Good Accident
On constraints, recognition, and why the cheap version of the bark was the beautiful one.
I like to think of creation as a wet, wobbly mass of clay that you try to press into the shape of your vision. While you’re doing that, the clay, the water, the mass, gravity, all of it pull your work into shapes it was never meant to take. You correct for that. And while you’re correcting, you suddenly start noticing shapes and ideas that weren’t in the original plan, and you take them into account, and you fold them into the design.
Here’s another example:
