A screenshot from the ultimate fight at the end of the Undersea Palace in Chrono Trigger. The party members, as well as Schala and Magus, are all on the ground. The Queen sits atop Lavos, casting a spell. Crono Is standing up, his final stand.

Breaking Game Rules for Dramatic Storytelling

As game designers, one of our most powerful dramatic tools is the rule break:

Those moments when we break a long-established rule for the purposes of punctuating and aligning with a dramatic story moment

This was a key philosophy for, say, Undertale’s game design, but you see it everywhere.

This may sound obvious to some folks, but I think it’s worth looking at more closely!

A background image used throughout the blog website. It is a map. It shows a castle on a bluff above a lake, with a small walled town around it. The lake has rivers flowing out on either side, and is surrounded by forests. The castle is rendered in high detrail and as you go to the edges of the image the map gets sketchier and sketchier

2025-10-172026-07-08Content Design

Design Justifications to NOT have Voice

I saw some folks thinking that voice acting in games was objectively good, always a positive. “What kind of game doesn’t have voice acting in 2025?!” sorta thing

I say that there are positive reasons why one would choose NOT to have VO.

How many design justifications we can come up with?

Join me.

A very pretty but complicated-looking ui from Metaphor, the Archetype Tree, which shows a big hex grid of icons overlaid on top of a Vitruvian Man-style figure.

2024-10-142026-07-08Content Design

Maximalist Culture-Shock Immersion

Unicorn Overlord and Metaphor have me musing–

Combining these makes me feel TRANSPORTED to a big new game world:

– Maximalist ui
– Maximalist music
– En media res opening
– Multiscan environments
– Complex systems (slowly ramped)
– Unfamiliar controls
– Culture Shock
– Novelty

An image that has the Breath of hte Wild "overlooking hyrule" moment on the left, and it seamlessly merges into Echoes of Wisdom's equivalent scene

2024-07-152026-07-08Game Design

How Breath of the Wild led to playable Zelda

If you’re reading this you have already heard about The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, and likely seen the trailer. The series has finally hit a major milestone: we get to play as the titular Princess Zelda herself. So why did this happen now? I think we can trace a direct line from a design philosophy called “multiplicative design”, first seen in Breath of the Wild, to a playable Zelda now.

Let’s dig in.

2024-04-062026-07-08Design Leadership

The Unicorn Overlord Tactics System

Unicorn Overlord’s Tactics (unit AI) system is a masterstroke of systems design.

It elevates the game far beyond just being the spiritual successor to Ogre Battle that it seemed at first, and catapults every element to greater heights.

A screenshot from Shadow of the Colossus, showing a very small player character in the foreground and a huge golem rising out of the mists in the background

2022-05-172026-07-08Content Design

Evoking awe in game worlds

“How do games intrinsically motivate players to explore” is a favorite #GameDesign topic of mine.

Many of the games that do this achieve it partially by evoking a sense of awe while exploring their worlds.

Let’s talk about how that works in games.

An image from Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud. It shows a face drawn 5 times, in order from most abstract to most realistic.

2016-07-312026-07-08Narrative Design

Link, the Legendary Heroine

Preface (9/20/2016): This was originally published on Zeldauniverse.net, a Zelda fansite. The intended audience consisted of fairly dedicated Zelda fans, most of which were in their…