Crowence

Dean Rands | Game Designer & Developer

Month: January 2025

  • 06 | Crazy Taxi’s Elegant Scoring

    While I love the game’s iconic aesthetic qualities and snappy controls, it’s been its unique structure that has inspired a game design that I’ve been working on. Specifically, although I’m not good enough at the game to speak for its execution, I think the core of Crazy Taxi’s scoring system beautifully enforces this structure.

  • 05 | Elden Ring, Expectations and Intended Behaviour

    Aside from having another completely detached hub, Elden Ring features the biggest shift in structure: denser areas (resembling those of Dark Souls III) occupy small parts of what is otherwise the world structure of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild; an extremely large, sparse, open world that’s segmented by chasms, caverns and cliffs,…

  • 04 | P.N.03 and the Opening

    The reason for which I’m talking about P.N.03 at all is that, at its core, it’s a super unique action game. I’ve seen it described as a third-person shooter, and while Vanessa is definitely shooting in front of an arguably third-person camera, the shooting itself is clearly not the game’s focus.

  • 03 | Elden Ring and Iterative Combat

    Elden Ring and its Shadow of the Erdtree expansion both suffer from issues that began with Dark Souls II, regarding how many of its enemy types, encounters and boss fights are foils to the player: rather than challenging one aspect of the player’s kit, much of the game is testing all of it.

  • 02 | Ninja Gaiden: Black’s Camera Issues

    I feel like people will always find a way to complain about any 3D action game’s camera, and I’m no exception (since I’ve yet to play through The Wonderful 101), but as with any facet of a game, I find it super interesting to see everyone’s approaches and guess as to their priorities.

  • 01 | Ninja Gaiden: Black and Consistency

    Ninja Gaiden: Black is a great action game: it’s fun, flashy and unique in its approach to offensive movement, with super satisfying animations that are an extension of Team Ninja’s work on the Dead or Alive series. I certainly recommend it to people who are looking for action games that scratch some of the same…