Our work is grounded in two things: curiosity and experience. We have always documented our process of exploration with practical works as well as in our research output.
Here are the most relevant things we've ever written (except for the music games paper that is referenced in The Legend of Zelda's Wikipedia entry).
Technical Reports
This technical report presents the Drama Engine, a novel framework for agentic interaction with large language models designed for narrative purposes. The framework adapts multi-agent system principles to create dynamic, context-aware companions that can develop over time and interact with users and each other. Key features include multi-agent workflows with delegation, dynamic prompt assembly, and model-agnostic design. The Drama Engine introduces unique elements such as companion development, mood systems, and automatic context summarising. It is implemented in TypeScript. The framework's applications include multi-agent chats and virtual co-workers for creative writing. The paper discusses the system's architecture, prompt assembly process, delegation mechanisms, and moderation techniques, as well as potential ethical considerations and future extensions.
Peer-reviewed publications
Game feel design is the intentional design of the affective impact of moment-to-moment interaction with games. In this paper we survey academic research and publications by practitioners to give a complete overview of the state of research concerning this aspect of game design, including context from related areas. We analysed over 200 sources and categorised their content according to the design purpose presented. This resulted in three different domains of intended player experiences: physicality, amplification, and support. In these domains, the act of polishing that determines game feel, takes the shape of tuning, juicing, and streamlining respectively. Tuning the physicality of game objects creates cohesion, predictability, and the resulting movement informs many other design aspects. Juicing is the act of polishing amplification and it results in empowerment and provides clarity of feedback by communicating the importance of game events. Streamlining allows a game to act on the intention of the player, supporting the execution of actions in the game. These three design intents are the main means through which designers control minute details of interactivity and inform the player's reaction. This framework and its nuanced vocabulary can lead to an understanding of game feel that is shared between practitioners and researchers as highlighted in the concluding future research section.
This paper presents a series of experiments that map the expressive space of specific procedural generation techniques with playful aleatory interventions. They are tools for inspiration based on divinatory practices. This paper connects these ancient procedural techniques to contemporary technologies like Twitter bots. We challenge the limits of these technologies in order to playfully explore the role they can play in everyday life. The first experiment, Nostrandomus, remixes ancient prophecies. The second one, Five Sparrows on a Vampire, generates proposals for dining experiences featuring recipes and accompanying eating instructions. The third tool, Haikookies, is a self-help inspired twitter bot that shares fortune cookie-style wisdom in haiku form. The final experiment, Tiphareth, is a set of partially procedurally generated tarot cards. Additionally, Ephemerald, a tool for streamlined Tracery-based [6] procedural content generation is introduced. The takeaway of this paper is that data curation is a fundamental component of working with generative systems. In other words, the human aspect needs to be present in order to create meaningful results.
Automation is everywhere. We fear the robots, but it is in fact a more insidious kind of automation, driven by algorithms and presented in a playful way, that is slowly corroding the social fabric. This “soft automation”, the use of algorithms to eliminate semi-skilled white-collar jobs, is transforming services into self-services, and killing the middle class as a result of it.
This paper explores the design of jumping in 2D platform games. Through creating a method for measuring existing games, applying this method to a selection of different platformer games, and analysing the results, the paper arrives at a comprehensive data model for jumping. The model supports the exploration, design and development of new jump implementations. The underlying framework and toolset can be used by game designers to measure, model and analyse movement in platform games.
“Playfulness” is a vague and ambiguous term. While it is easy to realise that a specific situation is playful, the concept itself is hard to grasp. Situations shift in and out of playfulness, leaving the term with hazy borders. This essay attempts to contribute to analysing playfulness in a rather unusual form. Instead of directly approaching the target, we take a stroll into the borderland that surrounds it, embarking on a quest to mark the borders of playfulness.