Gamasutra Expert Blogs: From Guns of Icarus To Dark Souls

[In highlights from Gamasutra's Expert Blogs, industry notables write about diverse topics, including a postmortem on steampunk airship game Guns of Icarus, design lessons from Dark Souls, and more.] In our weekly Best of Expert Blogs column, we showcase notable pieces of writing from members of the game development community who maintain Expert Blogs on Gamasutra. Member Blogs -- also highlighted weekly -- can be maintained by any registered Gamasutra user, while the invitation-only Expert Blogs are written by development professionals with a wealth of experience to share. We hope that both sections can provide useful and interesting viewpoints on our industry. For more information about the blogs, check out the latest official posting guidelines. Here are the top blogs for the week: This Week's Standout Expert Blogs Postmortem: Muse Games' Guns of Icarus (Howard Tsao) Muse Games' Howard Tsao offers a postmortem on Guns of Icarus, which released on Steam, Mac App Store, etc. in early 2010. It was not a wildly successful game but enough for Muse to now make Guns of Icarus Online. Lurking In The Shadows: Examining the Mechanics of Stealth Games (Josh Bycer) Stealth mechanics have evolved considerably since the days of Metal Gear. Josh Bycer notes that, with titles like Assassin's Creed, games built for action have been implementing stealth mechanics, which has lead to a design change in stealth titles. 9 Things We can Learn about Game Design from Dark Souls (Robert Boyd) Robert Boyd of Zeboyd Games (Breath of Death VII: The Beginning, Cthulhu Saves the World) examines why From Software's uber-difficult Dark Souls is more than an exercise in masochism; it's an excellent example of game design. Vaulting The Bar: ‘Designing Shadow Complex’ (Simon Carless) Gamasutra publisher Simon Carless picks selected GDC Vault talks and makes their videos free for the first time -- debuting with a 'Designing Shadow Complex' presentation from Chair Entertainment at the 2010 Game Developers Conference.