Game Design

Damage types, hero economies, campaign structure and the rules that make the factions play differently.

9 posts

An eight-slot multiplayer lobby with player names, faction crests and team groupings, over a map preview

How multiplayer works in a browser RTS

Eight players and hundreds of units on an ordinary home connection, because the world never travels. Only what you clicked crosses the wire.

10 Aug 20269 min read

Ratmen corruption creeping across a green map towards a dwarf wall line, with a Gnawhole entrance behind the front

Game Design

Nine factions that actually play differently

Nine factions, each one changing a rule of the map rather than a column of stats: creeping corruption, hidden tunnels, crystal power fields and six more.

24 Jul 202610 min read

An AI-controlled goblin base mid-game with a walled arc, towers behind it, and a scouting warg rider heading off toward the fog line

Game Design

How an RTS AI opponent thinks

Seven personalities, difficulty expressed as behaviour rather than as free resources, and an opponent that reacts to what its scouts have actually seen.

23 Jul 202610 min read

Third-person view of a hero in a torchlit stone corridor, a closed wooden door ahead and darkness beyond it

Game Design

Putting a dungeon crawler inside an RTS

One hero, no base, no economy, and a door you cannot see past. Four things a strategy game quietly assumes had to be taken apart to make that work.

7 Jul 202610 min read

A line of crossbowmen firing into light-armoured archers while their bolts glance off a dwarf shield wall behind

Game Design

Designing a counter system players can read

Twelve damage types against eight armours is ninety six numbers, and no player reads ninety six numbers mid-fight. Half of them do nothing, on purpose.

16 Jun 20267 min read

Third-person view over a possessed dwarf hero mid-fight, action bar lit along the bottom of the screen

Game Design

Designing heroes with no dead time

One rule shaped every hero in the game: the player should always have a useful button to press. Four-ability kits failed it, so every kit went to six.

16 Jun 202610 min read

A goblin gambling den beside the Troll-Vault shop, eight lit gear slot panels on its front

Game Design

Loot, gear and a gambling den

A Kobold Digger drops a healing potion 6.4% of the time. Every drop chance in the game is a real number you can look up, not a designer's feeling.

16 Jun 20269 min read

A design document open beside the running game, its two race table visible against nine faction crests

Game Design

Designing a game in writing before code

The original design document describes a two-race game with two columns of stats. It shipped with nine factions, naval warfare and a review of its own weaknesses.

1 Apr 20269 min read

A skirmish lobby slot row with a provider dropdown open, showing Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini as choices for one AI seat

Game Design

Letting a language model command an army

A language model gives orders every 12.5 seconds while an autopilot handles the second-by-second work. Where the boundary sits, and what it costs to run.

25 Mar 202611 min read