News

JikGuard
The Golden Goal Part 1: The Role of Events in Casual Puzzle Games
Reoccurring events have become a stable of casual puzzle games on mobile. From a design perspective, what are these events trying to achieve?
Sept. 5, 2017
JikGuard
The requirements of good matchmaking
Good matchmaking requires thinking about what your game really needs, and maybe even redesigning some aspects to make matchmaking work. This post explores which things to consider and why you need to limit requirements to avoid endless waiting time.
Sept. 5, 2017
JikGuard
The Wayfarer WIP: A Clean Slate, I've Created a Monster, Working my Magic, Preparing for the Future
A large update discussing rework, AI, Spellcasting and editor tools.
Sept. 5, 2017
JikGuard
Lessons from Suzy Cube: Level Design Breakdown
This article is an in-depth look into the design of a level for upcoming 3D platformer, Suzy Cube. In it, we are going to examine the core concepts of the level and look at each individual section of the stage to see how they reinforce those concepts.
Sept. 5, 2017
JikGuard
Video Game Deep Cuts: Maybe Tomorrow, Everybody's Golf?
This week's highlights include a piece on what happens when The Tomorrow Children goes away, a silly Everybody's Golf video, & a host of other neat articles/videos.
Sept. 4, 2017
JikGuard
Lessons From Suzy Cube: Improved Mobile Performance Through a Custom Culling Solution
Optimization is, of course, important regardless of your target platform but on mobile platforms, it can make the difference between a game that feels great and one which feels unpolished. This article focuses on the custom culling system use in Suzy Cube
Sept. 1, 2017
JikGuard
Resolving build issues for UWP packages with Unity
With the Dream Build Play competition in full swing, it came to light that a bug had developed with the Visual Studio Tools for Unity (VSTU) when building Universal Windows Projects (UWP) which is critically needed for Competition entries. Let's fix that!
Sept. 1, 2017
JikGuard
The Wayfarer WIP Mega Post
Migrated posts from my official site discussing the development of the 3D dungeon crawler 'The Wayfarer'.
Sept. 1, 2017
JikGuard
The Gamescom survival guide as an indie game developer
We've been to the Gamescom 2017, this article describes our experiences during 2 days there, Do's and Don't when you are an indie game developer and why Gamescom is such an important event!
Aug. 31, 2017
JikGuard
Urban Design and the Creation of Videogame Cities
Brief (relatively) but (quite) thorough guide to creating believable, immersive, and interesting cities and urban environments for video games. Based on my 2017 Develop: Brighton talk.
Aug. 31, 2017
JikGuard
Does Inventory Management Ruin RPGs?
Taking a look at how immersion-breaking excessive inventory management (and looting/carrying in general) can be in role playing games, which otherwise are excellent at immersing the player and letting them affect the game world through the avatar.
Aug. 31, 2017
JikGuard
Lessons from Suzy Cube: Mobile Controls That Feel Great
Adapting a controller-centric genre to the touch screen can be a daunting task. In this article, we'll be looking at the many little things, upcoming 3D Platformer, Suzy Cube does under the hood to accomplish this.
Aug. 31, 2017