Even great games can include design errors. Here's a list of things not to do.
These are all the Twinkie Denial Conditions described in my "Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie!" Designer's Notebook columns. Each one is an egregious design error, although many of them have appeared in otherwise great games. I've organized
them into general categories. If you want to learn more about one, just click on it and it will take you directly to the place in the column in which I discuss it. And if you have suggestions for more, by all means send me E-mail and tell me about them! Most of these were contributed by frustrated gamers.A few people have complained that these mistakes are "obvious" -- but if they're so
obvious, how come they were in a game in the first place? And why do designers keep on making them? If you'd rather just read the original columns, you can click on the links below. Everything in the database is in them, except for Bottom-Up Game Design, which gets a column to itself. The No Twinkie DatabaseBad Design PracticeBad Conceptual DesignBad Gameplay DesignBad Game Mechanics and Balancing
Bad User Interface/Usability DesignBad ProgrammingBad Level Design or ProgressionBad Content | 
