Lars Doucet - Fortress of Doors

Powering through -- DQ2 Progress Report for September 2021

Everyone's been sick for over a month but somehow I managed to get some work done anyway

Overcoming "Level Designer's" Block -- DQ2 Progress Report for August 2021

Our north star is making sure that each character's identity is established as solidly and clearly as possible before moving on. The player should instantly be able to grasp, "this is what this character is for."

business

Degraded Blockchains

The minute you connect your blockchain to an app frontend you now have a degraded blockchain, one that cannot even in principle guarantee immutability, trustlessness, and decentralization – at least not for assets that the app's customers actually care about.

Flow and Feedback -- DQ2 Progress Report for July 2021

This month's progress report is all about feedback, in both senses of the word: 1. Communications we've gotten from our community and playtesters, and 2. the way the game itself communicates pertinent info back to the player.

defenders-quest

The Rule of Firsts in Game Testing -- DQ2 Progress Report for June 2021

The first thing you tell a player to do in your game will become the default way they expect to interact with everything, and this pattern repeats fractally through every one of your game's sub-systems

roblox

So You Want to Compete with Roblox

My inbox is stuffed with pitches from start-ups wanting to compete with Roblox, that plucky Lego-ish multiplayer game-creation platform currently valued at 41 billion dollars. They shouldn't try, but here's how to maybe not fail if they insist anyways.

fnf

The Future of Games is an Instant Flash to the past

The success of an open source browser game called Friday Night Funkin tells us where "instant games" might go. Hint: we've been here before.

dq2

Elements and Leeches: DQ2 progress report for May 2021

The presence of a leech in a battle gives the player a choice: 1) Dedicate defender(s) to killing the leech, taking them off the front lines? 2) Focus on the battle lanes and let the leech steal half your juice?

dq2

Balancing Defender's Quest 2's "minion" classes

We just added 8 new characters to Defender's Quest 2. How do we keep all this stuff balanced?

defender's quest

Parade of Parasites: DQ2 progress report for March 2021

Howdy Defender's Quest fans! Today we have a progress report and a new build up on Steam for Windows/Linux. As we covered in March of the Machines, each of the two parties

gamedatacrunch

We don't actually know when many Steam games were first released

One of the most unreliable fields on a Steam's store page is the release date field.

dq

Tanking Texas Temperatures: DQ2 progress report for February 2021

It got really cold and scary in Texas for a bit but somehow I actually got a few things done!

defender's quest

March of the Machines: DQ2 progress report for December 2020 + January 2021

In the December/January progress report we talk about three new "machine minion" characters that help fill out the party.

defenders-quest

Defender's Quest 2 Progress Report for November 2020

This month we talk all about level design!

dq2

Reflecting and recharging - October 2020

This past October I did something I haven't done in over 6 years – took a vacation with my family. After I got back I took some time to reorganize some things in my life, and a plan for DQ2's continued development.

dq2

Collecting Details: Defender's Quest 2 Progress for September 2020

September's progress report includes changes to item design, status effect display, defender placement, and lots of other details.

gamedatacrunch

GameDataCrunch: my facts-first game metrics website

I'm working on a new website called GameDataCrunch.com, a new way to understand the game industry by looking at metrics and slicing them up in a bunch of different ways.

dq2

Defender's Quest 2 Progress for August 2020: Electric Four Square

Once again emphasizing visual communication: - Energy shields - Show buff zones more clearly - Ultimate is now a 2x2 sized unit

defenders-quest

Fun vs. Balance: Defender's Quest 2 Progress for July 2020

In previous months we've talked about how we ensure that DQ2 is balanced.Today we're going to talk about how we ensure that DQ2 is fun.

news

Independent once more: Defender's Quest 2 Progress for June 2020

Notes on ending my contract with Valve, and a progress update for June

nintendo

The Evolution of Game Genres: NES, Gameboy, and SNES

Ever wonder where game genres came from? Let's look at how Nintendo's usage of them evolved over time.

dq2

Back in the Saddle: Defender's Quest 2 / my life progress report for May 2020

Time for an extremely overdue update on everything going on with Defender's Quest 2 development and my life in general.

dq2

Extra Quarantine: Defender's Quest 2 Progress for April 2020

Progress report for May 2020 -- quarantine is hard, but we still did some stuff.

defenders-quest

Balancing Quarantine: Defender's Quest 2 Progress for March 2020

Quarantine sucks, but DQ2 is still making progress. Learn all about balancing careful intro stages for our hero units.

dq2

Laser Lightning Bugs in the Spotlight: Defender's Quest 2 Progress for February 2020

This month, we're working on visual design language and gamefeel.