

Game Design Tips from Tom Hall (1994) - Rondom
https://3drealms.com/news/3d-realms-vault-1994-design-tips-tom-hall-part-1/

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scott_s
Anyone interested in game design should read the Anatomy of a Game series that
Jeremy Parish has been doing:
[http://www.gamespite.net/category/games/anatomy-of-a-game-
ga...](http://www.gamespite.net/category/games/anatomy-of-a-game-games/)

Right now he's doing Final Fantasy 6, but has previously done Super Mario
Bros., Mega Man, Castlevania, Castlevania II, Castlevania III, The Legend of
Zelda, The Legend of Zelda II and Metroid. Unfortunately, I can't find a good
synopsis page which links to the games individually.

edit: synopsis page here, but Jeremy recently moved all of his content back
onto his blog, so this doesn't contain his recent stuff on FF6:
[http://www.anatomyofgames.com/anatomy-of-a-
game/](http://www.anatomyofgames.com/anatomy-of-a-game/)

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_random_
_" \- Never have treasure you can't get."_

" \- Your first mistake." \- King.com would say - " \- Make it unreachable and
leave users no choice but to pay to cross the difficulty threshold."

~~~
Rolpa
Hall talks about how to make enjoyable games, not massive margins. Sadly, the
two seem to be increasingly disparate these days.

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miracle_ray
A bit of a classic, I found Jesse Schell's book, The Art of Game Design very
helpful. The paradigm he constructs for how all the elements of game design
fit together helped me approach game design from angles (or lenses as he calls
them) I hadn't considered before.

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butterguns
"\- Don't make the player go all the way to the end, then all the way to the
beginning, then all the way to the end again."

I'm looking at you, Metal Gear Solid.

~~~
qcoh
I think it made the location in Metal Gear Solid seem much more real. Aside
from maybe Deus Ex I don't know any games where this worked well without
feeling like backtracking.

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butterguns
For me, I just felt that brought on a sense of monotony. The entire sequence
could take a good couple of hours. Good game design drives you onwards because
you're excited about what's coming next (the same rule applies with good novel
writing). I would instead groan to myself and think "ugh, again?".

The story was the redeeming feature throughout this sequence however.

~~~
endgame
How do you guys feel about the backtracking in games like Super Metroid? I
find that going through an area with all this stuff you can see but not reach
leaves wonderful mental hooks so when you pass through again with grapple or
space jump you get all this additional exploration and get to feel good
because you've remembered stuff.

~~~
EpicEng
I think Metroid is more akin to the open world games of today. It presented a
large world (for the time) and there was a sense of exploration. In a game
which is essentially on rails... I don't want to run back to the beginning
because there's no goo reason to do so.

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krschultz
If you don't know who Tom Hall is, I highly recommend the book Masters of
Doom. It's definitely a fun read.

~~~
geoelectric
Mmm, Rise of the Triad and Anachronox.

~~~
ColinCochrane
Ludicrous Gibs!

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akallio9000
"-Challenge--this must be very carefully balanced. It must be sufficiently
tough to make the player want to keep trying, but not too hard so the player
gets frustrated quickly. Having different skill levels is helpful, but you
still have to balance the game so it is progressively harder. It should be
fair."

I'd like to add my hate for "balanced play" that punishes success. I was just
playing 18 Wheels of Steel Across America and I purely hate how your truck
suddenly handles like crap and loses power simply because the numbers in your
bank account are larger than somebody thought you should have.

