This is the vault for gaming design, titles released in the past that are still relevant today for design or plot choices.
Why go 3D when you can go 4D? The first game I’ve ever reviewed in my life, way back in 1996 when I was 12, was actually 4D Sports Boxing. Or at least I thought that’s what it was called, even though supposedly the official name is just “4D Boxing”. I was downright ecstatic about…
Leave your kafkian metaphores at the door, ladies and gentleman, cause we’re about to go where no cockroach has ever gone before! Bad Mojo is one game that is easily remembered, since it is indeed one of the few titles around where the player commands a cockroach: roaming around in kitchens, bathrooms, living rooms, avoid…
It’s a mad, mad, mad, mad Tv world. The basic plotline of a videogame, how would you describe it? Going back to the medium’s roots, could be just… not dying. A rather straightforward objective, which we can all cater to, but not really a story. More often than not your quest was about saving the…
A game of unspeakable sadness and pain… In the 90s it was normal for many novelists to be directly involved in the writing of videogames, not just hired to mentor the writers, but to help convert their original books in gaming form. Indeed, this is something that has gradually stopped being a thing (or maybe…
It is a well known fact that, originally, Electronic Arts was not the evil colossus that would become, later, in the 00s, but a very different kind of company that attracted all kinds of talented designers, managing to release some of the more interesting titles of the 80s. Still, even after the departure of Trip…
Johnny Castaway is not a game. It’s a roguelike-like-like(unlike) screensaver with procedurally generated events during a day and night cycle. Indeed, Johnny is a screensaver, developed by Dynamix and distributed by Sierra in 1992, probably one of the best examples of a software designed like a game. Screensavers used to be pretty…
Kings are the slaves of Real-Time Strategy. In 2000 Majesty came parading out of the gates, sceptre in hand, screaming to the world: “I am the Fantasy Kingdom sim”. It did indeed kept its promise, since the overall character roster and rules come straight out of a Dungeons’n’Dragons rulebook of the nineties. Rangers, rogues, warriors,…