Here’s an interesting challenge for you — convey to the player over 10 different game states without breaking immersion. Strike a balance between player control and suspense, between clear communication and immersion. Do all of that without making the player feel like they’re walking around with a plane dashboard strapped to their head. Let’s see if we can solve that challenge, learn from and improve The Long Dark.

The Long Dark is a “first-person post-disaster survival experience set in the Northern wilderness” by Hinterland Studio. It aims to simulate real world survival conditions and captures the feeling of desperation, exploration…

I’ve recently consulted a team who were having issues with their game. It had gorgeous music, stellar graphics and lots of experienced people working on it — a well made, quality product. Despite all the hard work, many players were abandoning the game only after 10 minutes. The team spent months trying to figure out a solution and have finally reached out for outside help.

While talking to stakeholders and department leads, I asked about how they gathered feedback and made decisions. …

An infographic with UI basics for designing a color picker:

The Nice Guy

A picture is worth a thousand words. A well-designed one is worth even more. We see them on road signs, in restaurants, airports and apps. They can save time, lives and also ruin them and create confusion.

Icons are interpreted faster than text, are easier to spot, take less space and require less translation efforts. A wall of text blurs in to a single mass because of shape similarity, but icons are shape-diverse and look good even in groups.

So how can we design the most effective icons that look great and convey their message clearly?

1. Avoid similar shapes for…

The most tense and nerve-racking conversations are usually the most important ones. Remember how you felt when you had to say “No” to someone who intimidated you. How about asking for a raise? Talking to people you don’t like or don’t feel connected to. And reacting to the relationship classic — “We need to talk”. They have a major impact on our life, yet we’d prefer to skip them whenever we can.

All these conversations have one thing in common — stress. It overwhelms our mind and switches on the auto-pilot. It feels like drowning or walking in pouring rain…

Any product that wants to find success, must communicate with it’s audience. It’s easy to get overwhelmed with the amount of social media platforms available to you. Should you have a Twitter, should you post stories to Facebook and Instagram, are forums necessary, where to start? If you do it wrong, community management can take up a lot of your time, with little to no results.

To give you a head start and save time, I’ve taken my experience with building communities for Stoic Studio’s “Banner Saga” and CYAN Worlds and made a quick guide.

1. Remember, an active community is worth real money.

Farm games! The Facebook darlings that annoy non-players, break friendships and suck up loads of time and money. Despite the reputation this type of game gathered, it also gave rise to some gorgeous art, innovative gameplay ideas and introduced many to videogames.

As an avid fan of the visual celebration that many of these games create, I want to share the most visually unique with you. Farming is present in all of these, but doesn’t have to be the main point and no platform is excluded. Here are the most worthy and visually inspiring games to feast your eyes on.

Hedgies