The second half of this article was previously posted in the forum under the name The promise of freedom in story games with over 100 comments (from me answering questions).

Imagine a game where you inhabit a living breathing world with the freedom to go anywhere you want. Find your own unique solut…

I love the controls in the original 1996 Tomb Raider. It feels like I'm touching the world. Holding down the keys for holding objects or holding on to ledges. Using the lower key for the legs and the upper key for the arms. It’s intuitive, consistent and it felt right for me.

My m…

The world can be linear or open. The environment can be hand-crafted or procedural. But more important is the requirements of the story structure. Is the story scripted or systemic? Most games use a mix of all of the above. But the needs of the story will usually result in limits of the available v…

The concept of health points comes from old tabletop games such as Dungeons and Dragons. It's a simple abstraction of the real world complexities. With computers keeping track of the game, it should be possible to do something much more interesting.

For a typical action …

Welcome to Adventure alpha zero 2021.

I have been thinking about this for 30 years. Especially the last two years. I have tried to find the complete and perfect way to write about this and it has held me back. I have to start writing for myself and accept that a lot of it will be incomplete and of l…

It has been 30 years and there are still no game that has managed to surpass NetHack.

I first played NetHack on my Amiga 500 around year 1992. It was the tiled "graphical" version. It's now the year 2020. It has been 30 years and there are still no game that has managed to surpass NetHack.

NetHack le…