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Design
Deduction as Exploration in TR-49
The classic detective story starts with them exploring the scene and collecting evidence, and ends with the detective sitting in their chair, smoking a pipe and piecing it all together. This talk explains how inkle's breakout mystery game TR-49 takes a different approach that puts the deduction step first, by turning the puzzle process from a quiz about the evidence that can only end in a tick and a new puzzle into the way the player explores the "map" of the game, opening new "locations" by the deductions they make: which in turn allows us to make space for the deeper mysteries, with less clear-cut answers, that bring the game to life.
Session Takeaway
- A different model for deduction mechanics; moving from quizzes to exploration.
- Examples drawn from our recent release, TR-49, of how we did this in practice.
- Pros and cons for this design strategy.
Design for Change: Should Designers Be Letting AI Make Product Decisions?
This talk questions the growing assumption that Artificial Intelligence should guide key product or UX decisions in product teams. Rather than accepting AI recommendations at face value, I will explore where AI genuinely enhances research, prototyping, and design decisions, and where it subtly shifts responsibility away from human designers. Attendees will discover practical frameworks for using AI in ways that strengthen product quality, user insight, and ethical outcomes.
Session Takeaway
- How to evaluate when AI adds true value to UX and product decisions.
- A simple framework for balancing human judgement with AI support.
- Practical ways to keep ethical design and user needs at the centre of AI‑assisted workflows.
Designing Immersive and Explorable Open Worlds with Narrative Encounters
This session examines the development of the Open World Encounter in Project Avatar, covering the design domains of systems, narrative, and gameplay. It highlights how the encounter framework enhances player exploration, improves immersion, and seamlessly blends gameplay with the project’s rich lore and strong IP identity. Through this overview, we explore the design principles, technical solutions, and development workflow that shape how players discover, interact with, and understand the world around them.
Session Takeaway
• Practical methods for designing open world encounters that balance systemic behavior with authored narrative intent.
• Techniques for integrating lore and worldbuilding into moment-to-moment gameplay without disrupting player agency.
• Actionable workflows and cross discipline practices that help teams build scalable encounter content for large open worlds.
• Practical solutions for preserving already produced content and resources during scope adjustments.
No, Puzzle Games Aren’t Dead, You Just Didn’t Realise They’re Emotional Experiences Too
Games are emotional experiences, this is very clear in genres like first person shooters or adventure games. However, puzzle games are about logic and deduction, and it’s not immediately clear that emotions are even present, let alone important. I will make the case that despite appearances, puzzle games are indeed emotional, and in articulating how different mechanics create different emotions, we can better understand why some puzzle games stick with us longer than others, and what to consider when building our own puzzle games.
Session Takeaway
- Why you should think of your game mechanics and the intended experience together.
- Examples of how the mechanics reinforce a particular experience.
- New appreciation of puzzle games and puzzle mechanics.
