The single biggest is to stop the player from getting stuck and getting bored always think like the player as well as the designer.
More Quotes from Graham Nelson:
At the end of April I archived 'Curses' and Inform, and announced them on the newsgroups.Graham Nelson
The most frequent complaint is that it's hard. True. it's a hard game to win Also, many people ask me how to use the secret debugging commands, apparently under the impression that I'll tell them.
Graham Nelson
If pushed, though, I'd say that the next stage will be reached when it it's no longer true that about 75% of the best games were written in 1980's on the way to that.
Graham Nelson
Players very widely disagree with me about what's hard and what's easy. and in a way, 'I won, but it was a fight' is the best compliment a game can receive.
Graham Nelson
I like to employ a form of repetition, in which the same elements recur but in different and unexpected ways. rather than being discarded as soon as they are understood or passed over.
Graham Nelson
This means keeping many trails open at once, inevitably requiring a fairly 'parallel' plot. This plot should be discovered rather than announced, so show, don't tell.
Graham Nelson
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