It’s time for another island update: As you’ll notice, we are starting to work on that big mountain that is closest to the camera. (Finally!) This is still an early concept; it will change a lot. Ignacio recently implemented a clean way to print an overhead map of the island, …
Last weekend I wrote an email to Kyle Orland of Ars Technica in response to a question about an independent game’s certification troubles. That letter was quoted in this article, which was then summarized by gameindustry.biz, and is probably floating elsewhere around the internet too. The original letter went through …
Lately I have been doing some difficult puzzle design. Today I woke up and wanted a break from that, so I decided to nail down one of the loose ends that hadn’t been thought about yet: displaying subtitles during the in-game voice recordings (of which there are a lot). Originally …
Here’s how the island looks now: The current puzzle count is 415 (I think we have been over-counting a little recently; this is a more-accurate count). In case you missed it, I did a live Q&A with Chris Hecker of Spy Party today on Kotaku. In terms of world-building, lately …
Every week we have a meeting with the architects where we plan the structures and landscapes on the island. Most of the week, the architects are generally off thinking about this stuff while we are building the game. During the weekly meeting we get together, talk about what concepts the …
Last week, I got together with three other designers for a four-day intensive design retreat known as the Depth Jam. The other attendees were: Chris Hecker of Spy Party, Marc ten Bosch of Miegakure, and Daniel Benmergui of Storyteller. This event was an experiment. Chris and I had been discussing …
Here’s how things are looking now: In a strange twist of fate, the corner of the island that I chose long ago to be closest to the camera is the place that has taken longest to develop. As you can see, we are continually modifying this area but it’s still …
Peter Thiel is teaching a class at Stanford about how to start a technology company. One of the students is posting thorough class notes online. In this instalment, Thiel takes the question of what kind of company to start and reframes it in terms of secrets. Thiel’s point of view …
We’ve done a first pass at changing the shape of the island terrain, and here’s the result: The changes are a little bit drastic in some spots, but overall not as drastic as I had expected. I had been worried about some issues in the natural flow of where players …
Here’s how the island is looking right now: But today we are going to have the first in a series of meetings wherein we think pretty hard about the topography of the island and what the flow of natural curious investigation will tend to be from various spots. Expect the …