Tag design

Design Tool: Designing an AI Decision Tree

Nicolas Kraj

How do we create and implement AI intelligence? What is the best approach? What are the important steps to follow? In this article I give you my personal approach and tools for you to achieve state of the art enemies.

AI: Keys to Believable Enemies

Nicolas Kraj

What makes an enemy feel smart and believable? In this article we detail clear, actionable ways to bring our AI to the next level without breaking the bank!

A Story of Boxes, and How Players Can’t Think Outside of It

Nicolas Kraj

Games are known to be very directive, sometimes to an extreme. But even if a game was truly giving freedom to players, would they embrace it?

How to Onboard Players

Nicolas Kraj

Making an efficient trailer, a powerful demo, or creating engaging first contact is a pretty difficult thing to do.

In this article we discuss the players’ first contact with a game and what are the 6 essential elements they need to understand as fast as possible for an efficient onboarding.

The Card Games UI Design of Fairtravel Battle

Nicolas Kraj

How to design card games User Interface? What makes the UI/UX of the best games so efficient? What can we learn from them?

In this Stream and article, we dig into the world of card battlers and redesign live the UI of Fairtravel Battle, one of the games we follow on GDKeys!

Game Design Dirty Little Secrets

Nicolas Kraj

When game designers decide to cheat too. Let’s dive into the world of hidden mechanics and rules-bending to understand how to play with our players and ultimately give them the best experience they could get!

Keys to Combat Design: Anatomy of an Attack

Nicolas Kraj

The first article on a series dedicated to combat design, dissecting what an attack is and identifying what creates rewarding, fair, and engaging fights.

Menus & HUD: the Temporality Perspective

Nicolas Kraj

A break-down article on the treatment of UI in your games through a unique personal approach: time.

Design Tool: Enemy One-Pager

Nicolas Kraj

The One-Pager I am using for years every time I am starting the design of a new enemy. I give you the template files, as well as all the details you need to know in order to build unique, meaningful enemies.

Keys to Meaningful Skill Trees

Nicolas Kraj

In this “Keys to” article, we dig into the components and theory of a good Skill Tree. Analyzing the trees themselves but also the skills they contain, and opening on uncharted design opportunities.

Keys to Rational Enemy Design

Nicolas Kraj

A very rational approach to enemy design: we will talk about player abilities, challenging specific skills, player behaviors and diversity. This article will lay down the different possibilities and questions you need to ask yourself to start a new enemy design confidently.

Design Tool: Signs & Feedback

Nicolas Kraj

In this article, I give you one of my personal tools to develop, create and iterate on a solid Signs & Feedback system. I give you the base template as well as my step-by-step methodology to make it your own.

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