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Ocarina of Time: A Masterclass in Designing a Tragedy

Published by Paolo Gambardella on 10/06/2026

This post was originally written in Italian by Paolo Gambardella. It has been translated by an AI agent and may contain inaccuracies.

There’s an article by Renan Fontes on Goomba Stomp that analyses The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time as a classical tragedy. Link loses his childhood to save a world he can never return to, and even when Zelda sends him back in time, that act is the final confirmation of the loss.

It’s worth a read. I came back to it when the remake of this all-time classic was announced.

The tragic mechanism

The core of Fontes’s argument is straightforward: Link is a war orphan, already separated from the Kokiri before the story even begins. The Sword of Courage punishes his impatience with seven years of sleep. Waking up as an adult in a ravaged Hyrule, he has become someone else.

At the end, Zelda sends Link back to the past — but Navi leaves at exactly that moment. Even if you could go back to being a child, you would no longer be the same. You can’t unlive time.

That feeling doesn’t come from the writing itself, but from how the game was built around a coherent emotional identity, and from how the memorable peaks were distributed with care.

Peak-End: the moments that stay with you

Peak-end psychology tells us that people don’t remember an experience as the average of every moment they lived through. They remember the emotional peaks and the ending. Everything else settles into the background, but doesn’t shape the overall judgement.

In OoT, the peak is probably Navi’s departure. It’s the silence in the Temple of Time as the world takes shape again. It’s Saria saying goodbye without knowing it’s a final goodbye.

A mediocre game would have put the emotional peak in the boss fight. OoT puts it in a quiet loss. The ending — young Link in the castle courtyard, Zelda watching from a distance — resolves nothing. It leaves a wound open. A wound players carry with them for decades. The same one that, for me personally, changed something fundamental inside.

Lesson: the most powerful peak often doesn’t coincide with the mechanical climax. If you want an experience to be remembered in a particular way, design the memory, not just the event.

The emotional promise

OoT has a precise emotional identity: heroic melancholy. The feeling that growing up costs you something you can never get back, and that courage won’t save you from paying that price.

Every element of the game is charged with that atmosphere. The music (Saria’s Song, the Bolero of Fire, the Song of Time) anticipates the action and then comments on it. The temples feel like places abandoned by someone who once loved being there. Hyrule Field at night is as vast and silent as a promise that might not hold.

When a game knows what its emotional promise is, every decision becomes coherent. The colours, the silences in the dialogue, the distance between characters — all of them are carrying the same feeling.

Lesson: alongside designing mechanics or systems, it’s worth naming precisely the emotion you want to leave behind. Something specific. This can lead to uncomfortable conversations with the team or with management. But it matters.

Player Need Satisfaction: why the loss hurts

Self-Determination Theory breaks down fundamental psychological needs into three areas: autonomy (I feel like I’m acting), competence (I feel like I’m improving), relatedness (I feel like I belong).

OoT is a tragedy in part because it satisfies all three — and then takes them away before the credits roll.

You have autonomy: you choose where to go, when to return, how to use your tools. You have competence: you grow up, defeat impossible enemies, master magic. You have relatedness: Saria, Navi, Malon, the sages — a web of connections built piece by piece.

Then the game pulls it all apart.

  • Saria is trapped in the forest forever
  • Navi leaves without explanation
  • Zelda sends you back, but the version of you who lived through those seven years can’t come with you.

Lesson: loss in a game hurts in proportion to how much the player has invested in building something. If you want a tragic ending to land with real weight, the psychological needs have to be fulfilled before they’re taken away.

Conclusion

Fontes wrote a narrative analysis. But underneath it there’s something more interesting: OoT works as a tragedy because the design choices and the narrative choices are pointing in the same direction. That’s coherence. And I’m glad my daughter will get to experience this remarkable game in its updated form.

Read the original article on Goomba Stomp

Action, Response, Reaction, Consequence, Implications

Published by Paolo Gambardella on 09/06/2026

This post was originally written in Italian by Paolo Gambardella. It has been translated by an AI agent and may contain inaccuracies.

When we’re designing a new game, we very often look for verbs that describe what players can do. One way to stress-test those actions is to use a framework that forces us to think through every possible consequence.

  • Action: describe an action in three words or fewer
  • Response: the immediate feedback the system gives the player to confirm their action has been registered
  • Reaction: other entities in the system need to react to the action in order to give it meaning
  • Consequence: the game’s economy must be affected by the action, even if only slightly
  • Implication: wherever possible, the game’s narrative should also be something the action can influence

Players are the ones who make the story — we simply give them the tools to do it. That’s the best way to think about narrative, in my opinion.

Let’s look at a concrete example:

  • Action: throw a rock
  • Response: sounds, particles, objects hit and broken
  • Reaction: one NPC runs away in fear, another starts attacking us…
  • Consequence: there’s now a rock on the ground, plus scattered debris that could be picked up and used by the player or by NPCs
  • Implication: if you break something that belongs to someone, your reputation might take a hit until you’ve paid for the damage

Not every action needs to be put through this lens, but I do think games today should be thinking about these things — it’s what allows a system to respond meaningfully to whatever a player decides to do.

A useful cut rule: when you can’t afford to implement all five layers for an action, ask which layer is load-bearing for that specific action. Response and Reaction are almost always required — without them the action feels dead. Consequence is required if the action involves a resource. Implication is a bonus unless narrative is your core loop. Stripping a layer intentionally is fine; stripping it because you forgot to design it is where games start feeling hollow.

Digital Eye Strain: The Hidden Cost of Hyper-Focus

Published by Paolo Gambardella on 08/06/2026

This post was originally written in Italian by Paolo Gambardella. It has been translated by an AI agent and may contain inaccuracies.

These days I’ve been getting to grips with the agents from Anthropic and OpenAI, and I can genuinely see improvements in the speed and quality of my work. Where I used to need developers to build prototypes, it’s now much more straightforward to tackle that kind of challenge with Claude or Codex guiding me along.

That said, I’ve recently been noticing a strange heaviness in my eyes by the end of the working day. This weekend was rough, especially Saturday. It felt as though something was stopping my eyes from even moving properly, on top of a general dryness and fatigue.

I found out — credit to Gemini, actually — that this is a pretty common problem. Using AI tends to pull us into states of hyper-focus.

Having to think forces us to take breaks

The first thing worth noticing is that before, I had to take lots of breaks to think things through, look up tutorials, or browse various forums. Everything was slower, obviously, but that also meant natural breaks for my eyes and spending longer on the same block of text.

Now, though, working with an agent means receiving large chunks of text in quick succession. You have to skim through them fast to separate the useful parts from the hallucinated ones, and more often than not you fire off another question straight away — which brings you back to reading another big wall of text.

AI interfaces with dark mode, VS Code with light mode

I’ve moved to using VS Code to manage my agents, since I find it better for keeping an eye on token usage and for other perks like keyboard shortcuts and so on.

The thing is, AI interfaces generally use a dark background, whereas in VS Code I prefer a light one. So I’m constantly switching between the two, which puts extra strain on my eyes.

It seems that parsing text-heavy content like code also makes us blink around 60% less than normal. Medicine calls it Digital Eye Strain, and it’s an increasingly widespread issue.

I hope this post helps others identify the problem. The fix comes down to:

  1. Sync your fonts and sizes so everything is large enough to read comfortably
  2. Reduce contrast where possible, and avoid constantly ping-ponging between different windows
  3. When the AI gives you a long explanation, close your eyes and listen to it instead
  4. Use CLAUDE.md or instructions.md files rather than chatting back and forth with the agent, to cut down on the number of iterations

There is a reading crisis

Published by Paolo on 23/04/2026

Lately I had the opportunity to review a couple of junior profiles, tests and interviews. The main issue I see is that many of them are becoming good at posing but they are also losing reading skills. I am worried, reading is so important to our profession.

During my day I review documents, chat with teammates, receive emails… all those activities involve reading. If I send to a potential candidate concrete instructions in plain English, I can admit interpretation of course. But, if I notice that you simply are ignoring instructions, I deduce that you didn’t read them.

I believe that one of my advantages as a professional are the 5 languages I speak fluently. That open to me lots of doors, because I can show reliability. I can prove with my messages that I am reading you. This is very basic and critical, you shouldn’t (as a designer) improve your technical skills with engines and tools; writing skills are also not more important than listening and reading. If you fail at that, I cannot approve your test.

If you are reading this, congrats, you are a reader. So maybe you are not part of the problem, but you can become part of the solution.

Three loops of Expedition 33

Published by Paolo on 22/04/2026

These days I am playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 pretty intensively (when other 40y-old-man-duties permit) these days. And I am also completing my bootcamp on videogames design and conceptualization. A class I gave was based on the 3 main loops of a game, and today I want to apply this knowledge to the 2025 GOTY.

Moment-to-moment (second-to-second)

This first loop is the central one, and it describes what the player does the most. You can say it describes the core dynamic, somehow. In case of Expedition33:

  • Action: Reactive turn-base combat
  • Challenge: groups of nevrons (enemies)
  • Reward: skill points, loot

WHY to repeat this loot: the game is divided in zones within an open world, the Player wants to complete the zone to unlock the next.

Core loop

The core loop is what the Player does the most during the game and gives meaning to the moment-to-moment loop. We can say that it considers the game session as a whole.

  • Action: Improve team stats
  • Challenge: complete zone sections
  • Reward: Advance with the story

WHY to repeat this loot: as any good JRPG it’s about the map! You want to play to unlock new venues and discover new places into the map.

Metagame loop

This loop describes what keeps the Players engaged, what makes them think “I need to return back into the game because I want to…”. Describes the features and mechanics that make me think into the game when I am not playing it. In the case of Expedition33:

  • Action: defeat bosses
  • Challenge: what will happen in the story?
  • Reward: plot twists and secrets discoveries

WHY to repeat this loot: the game is one great adventure story!

Design docs are about builds

Published by Paolo on 21/04/2026

A good way of thinking in GDD is to write down more details of what’s already in a build of some sort. With this I mean that if you design pages and pages of documentation regarding something not concrete, you are at risk of delivering something disconnected from reality.

Frame the problem, develop prototypes, align, and only after write down specs. That’s the way. You need less talk and more rock.

Give the best of your “more or less”

Published by Paolo on 14/04/2026

Many years ago, I lost my job ad a dream company and I decided to become the best game designer I could possibly be. Part of this is still within me, also if many things changed. One for all, I understood that teams/clients do not need, nor want, the best in class.

If you are reliable, honest, candid, and humble, generally speaking you will be better welcomed into games teams. I notice, especially among junior game designers, the will to be better than others or more knowledgeable. You can easily end up being perceived as superb, like that.

The best way to do your job is to give the best of your “more or less”, without delivering too much. You will lose less energies and your job will be recognized in any case.

Game designing focusing on positioning

Published by Paolo on 13/04/2026

In this age of slop and significative increment of information and leisure that people receive, positioning will be always more critical. One of the mistakes clients make is to think in positioning like something belonging to the game. But positioning it’s in players’ minds, the game is just a medium.

If you see the recent successes you will notice how they well extremely clear in terms of positioning in the minds of people:

  • Resident Evil Requiem: the original and unique horror game
  • Crimson Desert: the open world for fun, not story or stat-oriented players
  • Pixel Flow: high intensity puzzle game, where you should master the speed of the belt

Game design should help in this. In fact, it’s impossible solely using marketing to identify the right patterns to spot a new genre where you position yourself. People in their mind have like 2-3 slots maximum per category. So what’s your?

How to help your team position the game

Every single time a new game starts, you discuss around its genre. The game genre is a shared language among everybody involved. You can say “I want to make a racing game” as a developer, but you can also declare “I don’t like souls-like games” as a player. The genre is a good point of start.

In mobile f2p a common philosophy (because it’s a service business) it to think like “let’s take the players from this other mobile game”. So you are playing to steal somehow players from your competitors. I think it has advantages and disadvantages. The positive thing is that you will become laser focused in offering a bigger/better game that already existed, basing on your own resources and expertise. The disadvantage is that you may ignore the context of your competitor and end up competing with a giant that will crush you. I think in all the companies that are trying to make a Brawl Stars but better. Good luck with that!

Another philosophy is to create your own genre. You spot motivations, study the use cases, determine possible gaps, and innovate accordingly. This is my favorite method, but it holds risks. Because you need real taste and true engagement with the community. You need to really will to also put out fast things that may not work. It’s not for everybody. As a consultant, for instance, I cannot propose that to all my clients.

Conclusions

There are no silver bullets, that’s clear. Otherwise they would have been already taken by others. You need to be really aware of your situation (or the situation of your employer), to decide the best path. Nobody said it was easy, but one thing is important: game design in the AI era is required to care about the game position. Otherwise it will be meaningless.

Unreal Engine and Claude: advantages and headaches

Published by Paolo on 10/04/2026

I use Claude to make my prototypes within Unreal Engine. I don’t have anything embedded in the engine itself, I have the program installed and go back and forth to implement what the LLM suggests me.

It works pretty good, I have to say. On one end, it forces me to structure well the problem to solve; Claude helps with everything, from research to properly framing. I am faster in creating my own JIRA tasks and message my colleagues in a proper and clear way. Then, I use blueprint and I have to say that the results (from a prototype perspective) are pretty satisfying. Also, at the end of each chat I tell it to create a report for its knowledge base, so that in future should be better and better. At least, I hope so.

There is a challenge though: switching back and forth from Claude to the engine to implement what the LLM says is tiring and I end up my days with headache. It’s like having someone giving you suggestions constantly. I know there is a way to integrate everything into the engine, but it’s still experimental and I don’t want to risk on a shared code.

Inspiration and pragmatism

Published by Paolo on 09/04/2026

There is no secret formula to make a successful game, otherwise it would have been discovered already. It’s true, though, that success cases generally involve the right doses of inspiration and pragmatism.

The inspiration is needed to create something novel, something unique, something people wants. When I see games starting from charts and SensorTower reports I already know they are doomed. Games should start from something intimate to someone, and inspiring. It can be a childish fantasy, there is absolutely no need to be a tormented artist.

For instance, think in Royal Match the match-3 game from Turkey: they clearly started from the fantasy of breaking expensive dishes and pots in a royal mansion. Something that many of us had when children, visiting historical places with our family or schools. You need something like that, if you don’t have that do not throw away your money and find it first.

Pragmatism is needed because you need to be very aware of what the market actually wants. In this way, we would have avoided the $80B investment in “the Metaverse” by Meta, for instance. Lots of effort, creative energies involved to try to find the Grail, and for what? It is clear that people doesn’t want VR devices covering their faces. Also Activision/Blizzard, recently presenting a MOBA game for mobile phone with Overwatch IP, for Western audience. People here do not want to play MOBAs, why are you greenlighting something like that?

You need to be inspired by some fantasy and read the room before of starting a new expensive venture, things that I would like to see more here in Europe.

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