Assalamu Alaikum, Last week I wrote to you about why readers quit sword & sorcery stories when atmosphere takes precedence over character wants. Today I want to talk about dialogue, and how you can spot whether a book’s dialogue is worth your time before spending a nickel on it. Prose that’s performing for the reader relies on [...]
Assalamu Alaikum, I hear from readers occasionally who want to try the sword & sorcery genre. They do the logical thing: they go straight to the old-school “canon.” And then they quit a few pages in because they feel like nothing has actually happened yet. I’m one of those readers, by the way. Recently, I picked up [...]
Bismillah. Okay, folks. I am pleased to announce that The Hierophant’s Game is now available. The Hierophant’s Game is a prose novel in the world of the Brotherhood of the Wolf, and it’s a prequel story that centers on Munir, the rascally alchemist of the group. It takes place in Andalusia. For those of you who’ve [...]
It’s been a while since my last email. I’m breaking the silence today, not to sell you anything, just to share where we actually are. I think people rather underestimate the level of craft and technical care that needs to be taken when creating a game, particularly an action game. People have this idea that you [...]
I don’t want heroin. I want cocaine. Heroin is RPG stats doing the work for you. Cocaine is an arcade game that puts you on the literal edge of your seat and only rewards actual skill. That’s why we built the Massacre Meter mechanic in the game. Here’s what that means in practice:Locked shortcuts open up. Right [...]
Just step into this world now and by the time the game arrives, you’ll already know how to survive it… Is it true? Is there now a 2D combat platformer that actually delivers on what it promises? There’s no bait-and-switch, rewritten characters, or flabby difficulty. And it’s being built by the same team that created the world [...]
Player after player had the same complaints: games that held their hand, combat that rewarded parryslop over mastery, and AI letting you create walking simulators in Dark Souls III visuals and patting itself on the back for making your dreams come true. Very few players realize when a game’s combat fundamentals are actually broken underneath. This means [...]
If you’re a hardcore Metroidvania player, chances are you’ve experienced:Beloved franchises pivoting their identity so that casual or mainstream audiences might feel safe to joinGames launching with fundamental design problems that get excused or praised anyway because those games might have done story or art wellPlayers defending games purely because of nostalgia…even if the game [...]
If you’re a gamer who sees live service roguelike slop nobody asked for, or knows somebody who does, then you’re experiencing a problem that has gutted PC gaming specifically. Simple pleasures like enjoying a story-rich linear game have become nostalgia in the same way that the Pokemon craze of the 90s did. Now you may have looked [...]