Hmmm. The immortal Sid Meier once declared that “a good game consists of a series of interesting decisions”. (I’m not certain he’s entirely right with this, as it excludes all games revolving around dexterity or reaction speed, but then this site is not about Super Mario anyway.) If we try to apply this adage to  [ Read More ]

Over the winter holidays, I finished “The Quest”, brought to my attention by the Legend of Erthia creator. While it only recently appeared on Steam, it actually has a long history as a mobile game, having been available in the iPhone app store since 2009. There are several very favorable reviews for the app out there; I  [ Read More ]

I must admit I never really thought about money in RPGs until I found the CRPG Addict and CRPGs Revisited sites and their rating category “Economy”. To summarize the Addict, a game would get a high “Economy” rating if there were lots of ways to make money and lots of ways to spend it. The  [ Read More ]

So it’s half a year later than I had originally planned, but late is better than never, right? My thoughts about how to handle wilderness journeys in (fantasy) CRPGs have become a document long enough that I placed it in the Library instead of just making a post. Hope you like it, feedback is very  [ Read More ]

I recently came across a posting on the Legend of Erthia Facebook page where the creator mentioned sarcophagi in the game which could only be opened with sufficient strength. Someone commented: “Cool, I’ll use that idea in my own game.” Well, as one of the objectives of this site is to give RPG creators just  [ Read More ]

                  (Warning: massive spoilers ahead.)       If you’ve been playing Pillars, you will (eventually?) recognize the above picture as a shot of the final battle in the game, which is pretty easy if you have two wizards casting Gaze of Adragan and somewhat challenging if  [ Read More ]

(No real spoilers here.) As noted earlier, Pillars of Eternity boasts quite the complex reputation system. Reputation with different factions, some of which oppose each other – done that. Beyond that, however, there are ten special reputation attributes which reflect your character’s, well, character: From honest to deceptive, from aggressive to diplomatic, there are a  [ Read More ]

So I’ve been playing Pillars of Eternity. If you’re reading this, you probably have been doing so, too; if not, you should do, if only for reference. As it was the designers’ intention to bring the gaming feeling of the previous generations into our time, the game fits here quite nicely. I’ll do more postings  [ Read More ]

Ancient Architects has gone live. It’s still in the construction phase – there are a number of toolkits I would like to add, and I’m certain that there are also numerous further articles about CRPG design hidden around the web. There may also be minor technical errors, please excuse. The general idea is that over  [ Read More ]