Max Nichols' Game Design blog
I present to you: a huge flowchart showing all of the confirmed (and some of the speculated) influences on the first Legend of Zelda title. And then, for good measure, 5000 years of those influences’ influences. See below for a list of citations demonstrating all of these connections!
A short awhile ago I was interviewed by Play Sense, a game marketing company that, on the side, has a series of interviews with folks in or around the games space with. It was a really fun chat with Sandra Mad. We touched on my own history with Zelda and game development, why this website exists, and how it’s impacted me.
Every game has what I call a “surface area” for its gameplay systems. At a fundamental level, what we are doing when we design progression systems is deciding how we want to dole out access to that surface area as rewards.
So today I want to talk about the concept of a game’s surface area, and how that interacts with or enables progression systems!
In the first article, I discussed game design patterns, and called them the brushstrokes of game design. In the second article I discussed game genres, and described how they were organic groupings of design patterns that had, over time, been given names. In the third article I discussed game design choices, and how we make them.
It’s time to finally talk about what a personal game design aesthetic is!
Let’s talk about making choices. Full-time game designers typically make hundreds of choices every day. Most are tiny, some are more substantial. Most are made unconsciously or with only a second of thought, and most of the rest are decided quickly. These quick daily decisions are the engine of our game design aesthetic: they showcase it and refine it.
We can all list genres of games: FPS, action-adventure, roguelike, otome, hidden object, and so on. When someone uses these terms we (mostly) know what they mean, and they help to quickly summarize a lot of information. Developers use them as shortcuts to answer a lot of design questions, retailers and award shows use them to categorize, gamers use them to describe games to their friends, marketing uses them to set expectations. Everyone loves to argue about where exactly to draw the lines between them.
Let’s begin with a basic building block, one of our simplest functional units of game design: design patterns. This concept is borrowed from architecture, coined by architect Christopher Alexander and popularized in his landmark 1977 book, A Pattern Language. Alexander wanted to articulate, describe, and harness the dynamics that allowed architectural styles and forms to naturally evolve and respond to the life of their inhabitants and builders.
In the process he found a general-purpose way to describe a given art or design style from any context, not just architecture.
I realized that despite working on Destiny and Destiny 2 encounters for years, I’ve never really talked in any sort of detail about what goes into that. Let’s change that!
If you haven’t done it already, it’s worth reading my Fundamentals of FPS Gameplay article, which is a 5-10 minute read that I originally wrote for this Destiny article.
At the most basic level, FPS gameplay is the interplay of line-of-sight, movement, facing, cover, and timing between a player that can shoot what they see, and at least one opposing entity that can shoot back. Let me illustrate a little bit.
As a game designer, maybe you’ve got some high-level goals for a [system/level/feature], but how you achieve them is a blank slate. Too blank.
Earlier in my career this meant undirected brainstorming until something clicked. Agonizing.
Here’s my top-down strategy for this kind of brainstorming.
I was fortunate to be a guest on Post Games podcast’s episode about the history of the Zelda series! I was interviewed on the podcast,…
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!
This post is a long timeline image. The image is a collage of screenshots, photos, and quotes related to the career of Satomi Asakawa, an accomplished character designer who worked on many Zelda games.
For years I’ve pondered a paradox:
1) The fact that crunch is poisonous to creative work.
2) The fact that many of my favorite games were made with crunch.
My answer:
Crunch allows a team to naively reach a crucial creative state, at high personal cost.
It can be reached without crunch.
Sacred Realms is a Zelda retrospective podcast, where hosts Matthew and Lyndon Willoughby discuss the Zelda series as they replay all the games. I’m a frequent guest on the podcast, offering my perspective as both a game designer and a Zelda historian.
This time: Tears of the Kingdom! The first new 3D Zelda since I began contributing to the podcast. We dove into every topic we could think of, from the nature of awe in games to the nitty gritty of how physics and audio systems are implemented in games. A ton of fun!
A team can get really paralyzed waiting for things to be Decided™.
One of the most valuable things a senior can do on a team during production is make quick decisions to “put stakes in the ground” even on topics that are not yet 100% confirmed or aligned, and then document/broadcast those decisions.
Sometimes there are big unknowns or a lot of things that still need to fall into place, and while waiting, team members are blocked, or feel unsure, or like they need to make Plans A, B, C.
Cut the Gordian Knot: make a call and let people keep moving.
“What’s your number one personal game design principle? And even better – does it have a cool name?”
The best games are made by centering the humans making them.
I thought about my answer to this for a few hours today, some folks may have seen me post and delete some replies, hahah.
But if I need just one? That truly encapsulates all my #1 priorities? This is it.
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.
I hooked up my 360 and Guitar Hero 2 and was shockedpikachu.jpg that my skills had decayed enough that I had to play Medium, hahah.
There’s a lot of great stuff about the game, but I think it is really an absolute masterclass in difficulty ramp design, and teaching players mastery. It’s worth study.
What if I told you that Pokemon Snap and Hitman have a lot in common.
To the point where if I was ever tasked with making a mobile Hitman game, I think I’d model it on Pokemon Snap.