ARTICLE: Cry Havoc Design Journal 05

Welcome to part 5 of our design journal series for Cry Havoc. Today we return to Michal Walczak, the lead developer for Portal Games on Cry Havoc. And one day, early in the morning, Michał Oracz came and blew everything to hell and back. Michał arrived at the company before me, he

ARTICLE: It’s Quite A Difference

Yes, I know, I know. I am obsessed with testing. I’ve written a ton of articles about this already. I spend huge parts of my seminars on design talking about playtesting. After all, this is an important part of the design process. Here I am today, once again, talking about

ARTICLE: Cry Havoc Design Journal 04

The first 3 design journals were brought to you by Grant Rodiek. Today, we switch perspective to Michal Walczak, the lead developer for Portal Games on Cry Havoc. It’s possible that the best thing about being a game designer is that with every project you get to learn something new. You

ARTICLE: Cry Havoc Design Journal 03

Today we share with you the third in a series of design journals from Cry Havoc designer Grant Rodiek. Enjoy! When you license a game to a publisher, you need to recognize that you’re entering into a relationship. When you’re just the designer, you don’t have to listen to anyone’s feedback.

ARTICLE: Cry Havoc Design Journal 02

Today we share with you the second in a series of design journals from Cry Havoc designer Grant Rodiek. Enjoy! In the last post, I detailed the origins of Cry Havoc and its first year of development. Where we left off, the game was playing decently and some major changes had

ARTICLE: Cry Havoc Design Journal 01

Today we share with you the first in a series of design journals from Cry Havoc designer Grant Rodiek. Enjoy! In the spring of 2012 I was looking for a new game to design. It’s wild thinking back 4 years, mostly because in that time I’ve played so many more

ARTICLE: Podcast Reviews

This week, two podcasts have been spending some time talking about our games: Rolling Dice and Taking Names – In this episode, Marty and Tony take you through a look at both 51st State and Crazy Karts. These guys love fun and Crazy Karts is all about the fun! Check

ARTICLE: Crazy Karts Design Journal

Crazy Karts showed up in our mailbox in the spring of 2015. We receive dozens of prototypes in the mail and try to play them all. It’s rare that one sparks our interest. After the first play, the whole team took a minute to breathe, then looked around the table

Welcome to PORTAL GAMES

We are bookworms. Movie maniacs. Story addicts. We grew up reading Tolkien, Howard, Herbert, Dick, Lem… We were watching Willow, Blade Runner, Never Ending Story, Robin Hood…

And yet, we don’t write books… we don’t make movies. We don’t make those things, because we make games. We make games that tell stories.