In April 2024 I was looking for a way to formalise my UX knowledge. Leading a team at Ultraleap focused on showing the power of high fidelity hand tracking in XR, I’d done my fair share of interaction design, but having a predominantly software-engineering background, I was mostly skating along on vibes, the occasional article/podcast, and hands-on learning. I had a decent understanding of UX principles, but I felt like I didn’t really understand how to connect them all together.

When discussing this with my friend Taru (Lead UX designer at Ultraleap), she suggested I learn why my vibes exist and formalise my learnings using the Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF). I thought this was a great idea! One year later, I’ve completed eleven courses, and IxDF reached out to me wondering if I’d share some of my learnings.

This article will cover some of the key learnings from the eleven different courses I took — ranging from UX basics, to the future of interaction with AI & AR, to deep dives into UX design patterns.

Note: if you sign up for IxDF after clicking one of the links in this article, we both get 3 months of membership for free! :)

1: Evaluate Your Designs Using Nielsen and Molich’s 10 User Interface Design Heuristics

The first course I completed was User Experience: The Beginners Guide. It focused on the absolute basics of User Experience, and acted as a good overview of the entire field. The best resource I discovered thanks to this course was Nielsen and Molich’s 10 User Interface Design Heuristics.

These heuristics perhaps best encapsulate the “vibes” around good design that I was feeling. In short they are:

1. Visibility of system status
2. Match between system and the real world
3. User control and freedom
4. Consistency and standards
5. Error prevention
6. Recognition rather than recall
7. Flexibility and efficiency of use
8. Aesthetic and minimalist design
9. Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors
10. Help and documentation

Dive deeper into them here.

2: The Four Rules of Local Navigation

In Human-Computer Interaction: The Foundations of UX Design, Alan Dix suggests four rules to consider when thinking about how users navigate through your design. I’ve found these useful lenses to assess flows and transparency.

1. Knowing where you are: Does the user know where they are by looking at the screen?
2. Knowing what you can do: From looking at the screen, how do you know what your actions are?
3. Knowing where you are going (or what will happen): If I select something, what does it do?
4. Knowing where you’ve been (or what you’ve done): Do I know what has just happened?

3: Crafting Effective AI Text Prompts for Design

AI for Designers was a good overview of AI tools and prompt engineering through a design specific lense. Whilst I would have preferred a course focused on how to design for AI, rather than with AI (designing for being a much more essential and futureproof skill), it did provide some useful rules of thumb for prompt engineering:

1. Be Specific: Clearly state the desired format and structure in your prompt.
2. Provide Context: For complex tasks, briefly explain the situation and share examples to show what a good response looks like.
3. Iterate and Refine: Refine your prompt based on the AI’s response. Adjust tone, format, or detail as needed — it often takes a few tries to get it right.
4. Experiment and Learn: Prompting takes trial and error — keep testing and refining to improve results over time.
5. Utilize Tools: Use tools like and templates to simplify prompt creation and spark ideas!

Instructor Laia Tremosa has written an entire article about this, which you can access here.

4: Journey Mapping

Honestly, before starting the Journey Mapping course, I was only really vaguely aware of what a journey map was — and learning about them unlocked a powerful new tool for my UXR arsenal! Journey maps are a great exercise to use to visualise your customer’s journey. This course was a really great deep dive into what happens if you go DEEP on journey maps, but I’ve found them useful even as an occasional tool (having made three since completing the course!).

You can read more about Journey Mapping here.

5: Consider the story you are telling when designing for XR

The course UX Design for Augmented Reality covered a lot of concepts I was already deeply familiar with, but I was eager to learn about from another perspective. Instructor Frank Spillers focused deeply not just on typical characteristics and interactions within AR experiences, but placed deep emphasis on intentionally thinking about your experience from a story perspective.

Taking narrative design into account is especially important for XR experiences as

1. Humans remember stories better than facts. This is especially important when you take into account that…
2. Humans associate memories with physical space

The combination of both of these means that focusing deeply on narrative design can create really powerful, memorable experiences in XR.

Frank has written a free article covering a lot of this, which you can read here.

6: Intentionally Consider Interaction Fidelity when designing for XR

The course UX Design for Virtual Reality dove deeper into spatial interaction — which you can imagine I very much enjoyed, having helped write XR guidelines for hand tracking. I especially enjoyed Frank Spiller’s emphasis on considering how deep an interaction fidelity (how closely virtual tasks match real-world tasks) you want to commit to:

High interaction fidelity is valuable for training and simulations. These experiences replicate real-world actions and tactile sensations for realistic training.

Low interaction fidelity offers novel experiences that may defy physical laws, enhancing performance and enjoyment.

7: The 6 Different Types of Evaluative Research

The course Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide was possibly my favourite course I took at IxDF — it really helped solidify so many of my “vibes” around how to design.

One of the pieces of information I constantly come back to is its definition of the six different types of evaluative research. It’s something I’ve used to evaluate how existing user research strategies can improve — read on for a brief summary!

1. Heuristic evaluations
   Heuristic evaluations use a few usability experts to review your design against key principles. They’re ideal early on and when budgets are tight.
2. Guerrilla usability tests
   Guerrilla usability tests involve quick feedback from people nearby — like coworkers or café strangers. They’re great for fast, low-budget checks when some testing is better than none.
3. Lab usability tests
   Lab usability tests involve observing users in a controlled setting as they complete tasks. Use them when you need in-depth insights and have the resources.
4. Contextual usability tests
   Contextual usability tests are similar to Lab tests, but are conducted in the participant’s natural environment, like their home or office. Use them for detailed insights when you have the time and budget.
5. Unmoderated remote usability tests
   Unmoderated remote usability tests are conducted without active guidance, using instructions for participants to follow. Use them to gather a large, global sample.
6. Moderated remote usability tests
   Moderated remote usability tests use screen-sharing software to interact with participants, similar to contextual tests but done remotely. Use them when you need deeper insights but are still short on time.

8: Rely on grid systems for well balanced 2D designs

This one is a relatively basic tip — but one I was unaware of thanks to my background predominantly being in spatial interaction! The course Visual Design: The Ultimate Guide was a great overview of the foundations of solid visual design, and helped me literally read between the lines when I now look at applications.

Grid systems are the underlying aids used to structure and position well balanced designs and are used everywhere. Dive deep into them here.

9: Learn to See Design Patterns

Having come from a software engineering background, I was well versed in design patterns when coding as useful tried and tested techniques that solve common problems — so it shouldn’t have been a surprise to me that design patterns also exist, for design problems!

The course UI Design Patterns for Successful Software is a great way to start understanding this and learning to see UX design patterns that exist everywhere. IxDF has a great article to start learning about them, here.

10. Predict Efficiency with the Keystroke-Level Model

Interaction Design for Usability was a monster of a course. Whilst its content was beginning to feel a little dated there were tonnes of gems hidden inside William Hudson’s many lectures.

Something I hadn’t heard of before was the Keystroke-Level Model — a model which predicts the efficiency of a user interface for an expert user. It breaks down tasks into low-level operations (like pressing a key or moving the mouse) and assigns standard times to each.

Warning — this will initially look confusing, but is pretty simple in practice!

Basic Operations:

K: Keystroke/button press (~0.2 seconds)
P: Pointing with a mouse to a target (~1.1 seconds)
H: Homing (moving hand from keyboard to mouse or vice versa, ~0.4 seconds)
M: Mental preparation (thinking before action, ~1.35 seconds)
R(t): System response time (variable)

Simple Example

Task:

A user enters a 3-character password and clicks “Login.”

Steps:

1. M — Think before starting
2. K K K — Type 3 characters
3. H — Move hand to mouse
4. P — Point to Login button
5. K — Click the button

Estimated Time

= M (1.35) + 3K (0.2 × 3) + H (0.4) + P (1.1) + K (0.2)
= 1.35 + 0.6 + 0.4 + 1.1 + 0.2 = 3.65 seconds

I find this model really fascinating, not necessarily because I’m going to go out and start evaluating all interfaces with it, but because of the clear implications that come out of it for desktop applications when designing for efficiency:

• Focus on using the keyboard for data entry
• Expose short, fixed lists of choices rather than using popups or drop-lists
• Don’t make users think!

11. Watch this video from the Design Sprint team to get an awesome overview of how to conduct User Interviews!

I really loved the course User Research — Methods and Best Practices — I’ve found the amount of user research I’ve been conducting to be ever increasing, and this course really helped equip me with new tools to tackle it!

One video that appeared often throughout my entire IxDF journey was video The Five Act Interview — a fantastic overview of how to conduct user interviews and test prototypes.

The five acts it covers are:

1. Friendly Welcome: Begin by making the participant feel comfortable and explain the purpose of the session.
2. Context Questions: Ask broad questions to understand the user’s background and experiences.
3. Introducing the Prototype: Present the prototype to the user, clarifying that it’s a work in progress and their feedback is crucial.
4. Tasks: Guide the user through specific tasks using the prototype, observing their interactions and gathering feedback.
5. Quick Debrief: Conclude with a brief discussion to capture the user’s overall impressions and any additional thoughts.​

Phew! So, that’s it — eleven takeaways from the eleven courses I completed with IxDF. Hopefully this article was a source of some user experience inspiration!

If you were in a similar situation to me — having done UX work without ever reading up on the why I would recommend IxDF as a good starting point. And finally — ✨ a bonus tip✨! IxDF has a wealth of knowledge and share a lot of it for free — check it all out here!

11 UX Tips From a Year of Learning With IxDF! was originally published in Pip Writes Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

let’s chat about the humane ai pin.

yes. it’s a weird device. and, it has some obvious flaws (some very obvious flaws). There currently seems to be two predominant sides to the discourse around it:

Sides 1, and 2.

first up, you’ve got the AI shills and snake oil salesmen, saying it’s the all encompassing future, and it’s going to revolutionise everything.

let’s be real — it’s not. At the moment, AI is untrustworthy, and clearly not ready to be your primary method of interaction with a computer. It hallucinates, cites untrustworthy sources and often gives incorrect answers. To create a device that leans SO heavily on using AI to the point where it wouldn’t be inaccurate to describe it as a device built on an AI operating system, is incredibly risky.

Next up, you’ve got people who get realllly riled up by this thing and seem to be egging it on to flop. these people are unable to see past the devices (quite obvious) flaws — namely the untrustworthy nature of AI, and the over abstraction of a computer interface into pure voice, and a laser powered hand screen (wow what a combination of words!). Let’s perhaps not even begin to get into the strange way Humane have marketed the device (incredibly self serious, refusing to let reviewers get hands on, etc etc etc).

Side 3?

Ok, so sure. These things exist. The flaws are obvious & it’s not the saviour of tech. Humane as a company take themselves too seriously and are very much falling into the same sort of hype cycle trap that comes and goes quite regularly (see: magic leap).

BUT

Isn’t it so much fun to see someone try something different?

Humane to me feels like it’s riding this slowly growing wave of tech that goes against the tide. Monopolies like Apple, Meta, and Google are primarily trying to put computers in front of you, as much as possible — using XR technologies strapped to your face to ensure your screen is always near you. I work in XR — I’m not necessarily against this — there’s a tonne of cool things this enables.

But, there’s a growing wave of people who are fed up of screens being everywhere. Humane, and others, are trying to push the idea of ambient computing — a vision of computers that rather than live in the foreground of our lives, blend seamlessly into the background and let real life take its place.

As computers get more and more addictive, and take up more and more space in our lives, it’s important to think critically about how we use computers.

Is it good that the first thing I do in the morning is check my phone? What about the fact that I use my phone on average 20–25hrs a week? In the past year I’ve been trying to put more friction between myself and my phone — uninstalling apps and accessing them through the mobile web, using a blocking app to limit when I use my phone etc.

I recently, finally managed to get my hands on Panic.’s Playdate which has a beautiful screen, and a singular purpose of analogue interaction, which prompted me to start thinking about how I could abstract interactions away from my phone, and onto it, to place further steps between myself and my phone.

There are companies out there built on this philosophy of dumber phones — e.g. the light phone, a phone that simplifies a phones needs down to purely the tools we need, and nothing further.

One of my favourite concept videos, Little Signals, by Google, simplifies things even further, envisioning a future of soft, unobtrusive devices that gently signal to us rather than overloading our poor brains with buzzes and beeps.

There are larger concepts out there that are introduced on more mainstream devices — for a while, reviewers argued that foldable devices enabled more purposeful usage of their phones. Early Smartwatches, allowed us to look less at our phones, with quick glances at our wrist instead of risky dips into our phones.

Humane’s AI Pin is fascinating to me as another take on this friction-first, step away from computing everywhere.

It’s not always listening — requiring a prompt from the user to activate, and quickly stops talking to you. The friction of talking to it with your voice forces you to think of what you need, before you interact.

The projector interface on your hand is an (arguably overengineered) example of purposeful friction — it seems slow to use, and offers minimal ways to interact with it, rather allowing you to more quickly interface with your pin for quick bites of vital information, where voice can be slow.

Whilst it has its flaws, i think it brings with it a larger moment to stop and think about how we interact with technology.

We’re on the cusp of the next generation of technology. In 10 years, things could look very different to how they do now. XR and AI promise to bring with them dramatic advances in how we interact with, and use computers.

Does it have to be so full on, all the time?

Isn’t there space for less disruptive, more human ways to interact with technology?

the humane ai pin, ambient computing, and placing friction between us and computers was originally published in Pip Writes Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hi!
You may have noticed, but it’s been rather quiet around here lately.

Dust has settled and what was meant to be a few weeks away turned into a few months. Let me explain where I’ve been.

In case you don’t know, I study Computer Science at University, woo hoo! I’ve just entered my final year and first semester ate up every second of my available time, so much so that I didn’t even have time to play games, never mind write about them! It’s been wild, but now I’ve entered my final full semester of University, I have a lot more free time — so writing should commence again, right?

Well…

Not quite.

This is a tough decision, but I’ve decided to stop my regular Wednesday/Saturday schedule. It was a blast doing it, but I’ve been running this blog for what would be four years this September! To put that in some context, I’m only a young ‘un and I’ve been running this blog for 16.2068966% of my life. That’s nearly a sixth of my entire life! Itching For More has been going for two years — that’s a tenth of my life! Numbers are numbers, but it does feel like this is something that has been going on for a rather long time.

But, I am proud of it. I’m proud of what I’ve written. I’m proud of how far my writing style has come, creating pieces like Proteus’ Natural Nature. I’ve interviewed people, made tonnes of new friends and contacts through this, learned a ridiculous amount about just how personal games, and writing can be. However, it is time to move on.

Primarily, I’m not a writer. I’m a programmer. With life becoming more and more busy, I want to delegate more time to creating things, rather than simply observing them. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop writing — expressing myself through words is something I have come to love and I would sorely miss writing (and did sorely miss it over the past two months!). However, I want to move on to writing about what I am making. I’ll still occasionally cover games, write poetry and maybe the odd interview, but most of all, I want to make things. By the middle of last year, writing had become less of something I love, and often more of a chore — something which took up time which I wanted to use elsewhere. I want to write because I enjoy it, not for the sake of it.

But, thank you to you, if you’ve read any of my writing over the past four years. I know my reach is incredibly small considering the vast size of bigger sites, and how little I self publicise(for context: only one of my pieces has ever crossed 1000 views on medium, the rest averaging around 30–50), but I’m so proud of what I’ve written. I know only few people will read this, and fewer still will care, but I feel that I owe you an update about my plans.

Pip.

The Future Of Pip Writes Stuff was originally published in Pip Writes Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the past few months, I feel like I’ve barely had chance to breathe. I’ve had a really (really) lovely, but admittedly hectic summer, coupled with a return to University life, the workload and change of pace has taken a while to adjust to. What I’m trying to say, is that I haven’t had much chance to play anything, apart from the occasional Itching for More piece, squeezed into the end of a day.

So, what a breath of fresh air it was, playing part of 29, the first chapter of the upcoming No Longer Home, by Humble Grove.

29, is a point and click adventure game, which follows two protagonists — Ao and Bo. It’s beautiful, thick with atmosphere and delicately crafted scenes and is semi-autobiographical. This small section of 29 felt like an immaculately made puppet show. Cardboard cutouts and woolen puppets inhabit a Stanley Donwood-esque wood. Whilst Humble Grove’s previous vignette pulled out from Earth to the stars, in order to look down on themselves, 29 focuses inwards, using a small adventure game to explore some of the autobiological aspects of the game.

29’s transition into the game (in the game) is so, so, soooo slick. As the characters chatter amongst themselves, walls fall away, room sliding off screen as the scene on the TV appears around the characters. It’s a breathtaking transition to behold, a transition that 29 continues to employ throughout the rest of this vignette, giving everything the feel of a pop up book — hand crafted, intimate, and physical.

As the character within the game progresses, they reach various points where the friends playing the game offer up different options, different ways to explore. As with any adventure game with multiple decisions, a lot of them are tantalisingly hard, if simply for the itch for wanting to explore everything fully. As you progress, you meet more characters, through choosing different decisions, stemming from different people in the room.

Everything in 29 glides. Whether it’s the scenery serenely gliding off of the screen, the way the text game interacts with the characters playing it, or the transitions of your choices to actions, glide seems to be the keyword. That sounds stranger, typing it out, but Humble Grove have succeeded in creating a style within 29 that glides around the screen etherally, which when combined with its beautiful ambient soundtrack makes gives every moment an elegance often lost in other, more brash games.

As you progress within the game, in the game, you come across scenes that remind Ao and Bo of places from their lives. I’m enjoying the confusing layer of meta raised here — as Bo and Ao are based on Tom Davison and Hana Lee, there are multiple layers of the purpose of 29 to explore. The characters are confused at the familiarity of the game they’re playing, creating both a natural and slightly magical relation to the in-game game.

We may relate to characters and stories when experiencing them — games are brought to life through a player’s head and their willingness to become absorbed within the game, so we tend to relate places and characters in games to places and people we already know. However, within 29, the developers themselves have placed these scenes within the game, allowing the narrative of slight confusion within their game to coalesce. This gives the game a magical element, purposefully showing characters scenes they are familiar with — scenes that may also be familiar to the devs themselves.

However, there is a third layer on top of this — in relating places ourselves, we too relate to the experience of déjà vu — I’ve had experiences where places and people in media are ridiculously similar to places I know in real life. We can relate to the feeling the characters are experiencing, whilst also experiencing a slight sense of disconnect. It almost feels like flicking through someone’s dogeared diary, each turn of the page more interesting, and more forbidden than the last.

Everytime I see more of 29, whether it be a snippet of writing, a wip gif, a screenshot, or another chunk of gameplay, it seems to have grown into something bigger, more mature, and more exciting. 29 is shaping up to be a beautifully crafted first chapter.

29, by Humble Grove, is out in early 2018.

Preview: 29, Chapter One of No Longer Home was originally published in Pip Writes Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Outside:
everywhere is empty.
leaves fall.
moon beams push through a thin layer of clouds.

a thin layer of almost imperceptible mist covers the land.

the ocean crashes against the shoreline,
foam appears for a second like shining pearls in the darkness, before slipping back under the surface

hills become shadows, wrapping themselves in black cloaks, sheltering from the cold.
further away, fields of dry green now damp to the touch,
wet, and cold — the moon reflects light, not warmth.

night time. was originally published in Pip Writes Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Every (kind of) week, Itching For More materialises, like one of Trump’s policies — entertaining but also problematic and very worrying. This week, is small, post apocalyptic walking simulator: Like Roots In The Soil

Like Roots In The Soil’s main mechanic is a brilliant, simple idea, executed effortlessly. In Like Roots In The Soil (by Space Backyard), you watch two people walk the same path through a city at different times of its life — one, older man walks through the rubble of a city, whilst a younger man wanders a built up, clean city.

Your view of these two men is a rotatable cylinder, restricting you to only ever seeing either part of both worlds, or only one of them. There’s probably a far better way to explain the concept, but the easiest way to understand is to simply play it. As the two men explore their city, small snippets of text appear on the screen, giving you some insight into their goings on.

The dilapidated city boasts a gorgeously dusty palette of colours, giving a stark contrast to the clean, bright alternate city of the younger man. On top of this, the beautiful ambient score distorts a little in the broken city, becoming more rough. The small differences and parallels between each city is what makes Like Roots in the Soil interesting to play, and what holds the players attention for its tiny five minutes of play time.

The story of Like Roots In The Soil, like its main mechanic, is simple, but well executed. As you’d expect, Like Roots dwells on themes of past and present, focusing on the interconnection and inseparable nature of the two. As you walk through the city, an initial assumption is that the broken city is the future of the shiny, unbroken city. However, the ending takes this idea and turns it on its head. Throughout the game, the old man carried a plant in a can on his back, placing it down at the end of the game. In the same spot, the younger man stares at a tree, can protruding from its bark.

Through this simple observation, we can conclude that in fact the broken city is the new city’s past, not future, the citizens rebuilding it. In this knowledge, the story takes on new meaning, now being attributed to the younger man, the older man an ancestor of him. The short story contemplates upon the city, calling it a “cold ocean made of steel”.

The son’s distaste for his city is obvious in his words, as he describes it as “absorbed in the oblivion of the present”. Yet whilst he wants to escape the city, he is held up by his father’s works. The moral drawn from this short piece is one of fixing rather than running. One of changing one’s perceptions to remember the past, rather than blindly focusing on the future.

This can easily be applied to the present day — in a society ever eager to not learn from its previous mistakes, it is easy to become absorbed in the present, springboarding from it to a shiny future, forgetting the roots that once so firmly held you down. Like Roots In The Soil begins by talking about inertia — the state of rest, or uniform motion, only changed by external force.

“ — All objects continue their existing state of rest or uniform motion, unless that state is changed by an external force. —

— First the calm, and then a sudden force that disturbs it, forever. — ”

Within the game, this external force manifests itself in three objects — the disaster that caused the broken city, the plant, which perhaps sparked the rebuild of the city, and the old man — the boy’s past, influencing his future, preventing him from obsessing with the present.

Like roots in the soil is a free download, available here.

Itching For More: Like Roots In The Soil was originally published in Pip Writes Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Hey there! No proper post this week, because a project me and numerous others have been working on has finally been released!

TRASHZINE is a small zine containing interviews with small altgame/trashgame developers. Originally inspired by one of Moshboy’s tweets, the project grew into a small collection of interviews, taken throughout 2017. Through this Medium site, one of my main aims is to give small developers more attention & visibility, and so I am mega mega happy to be a small part of TRASHZINE — something that shares my aims.

So, download it! Read it, enjoy it and share it : -)

TRASHZINE is a free pdf download. Download it here.

TRASHZINE was originally published in Pip Writes Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Every week, Itching For More comes catapulting into your life like a runaway goat. This week, goat farmer simulator: Where The Goats Are, by Memory of God

A patchwork house and coat,
Pieces of different cloth, from different places, held together.
A slow life, languid and warm.
Goats, tiredly wander around the yard,
Chickens pecking away at nothing.

A patchwork city, far away, linked only by
The occasional letter, ink on paper.
Brothers, patchworked together.
Each has left Tikvah.

She is alone, in a patchwork world,
Her farm isolated.
Abandoned,
A patch fallen from the quilt,
A songbird dead on the ground.

Pen falls to paper, marking words.
Over and under, ink flows over the page
As Tikvah’s stick flows through the sand.

Goats, chickens, plants.
All of this is optional.
Sleep away the day,
Wake only for the letters.
Read, alone, as the world burns.

Where The Goats Are is pay-what-you-want, available here.

Itching For More: Where The Goats Are was originally published in Pip Writes Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A Quick Note: Hey! Welcome to a new, perhaps infrequent series analysing game loops (woo hoo!) In this edition of The Loop, we’re going to be looking at No Man’s Sky’s base building quests, and how it helps No Man’s Sky communicate to the player some of the game’s necessities.

No Man’s Sky, at its core is a game of exploration. One of running round distant planets in wide eyed wonder, staring up at strange pineapple-shaped animals and colourful scenery. Its huge universe is, of course, its selling point. Billed as an “infinite procedurally generated universe”, focused around “exploration and survival”, it presents you with an overwhelming amount of possibilities — its latest major patch introducing having an impressive number of overhauls, improving upon the previous couple of patches & launch build.

One of the most significant systems introduced into the game since its launch is base building — something I originally saw as reductive — forcing the game to become more of a “survival” game than the game of long exploration sessions that I initially fell in love with. Base building essentially let you choose a planet as your “home planet”, and create a base upon it out of predefined parts, giving you more options for storage & research. I felt that this was a backwards step for the game, drawing the focus away from infinite possibilities and more inwardly towards its weak upgrade system.

However, the latest patch is its most significant overhaul, adding a ridiculous amount of content, including a whole new mission system. Within this mission system, employees within the base were included within the mission system, adding lore and purpose a-plenty. This change is what, in my opinion, has given the base building system a purpose, and brought No Man’s Sky back towards an exploration base game.

The base building, rather than being a step backward, has become a subtle tutorial, teaching players the essentials of exploration, through slow growth of the scope of each mission. The missions tend to be either travelling to different locations or buildings to find blueprints, gathering enough of one resource, or killing x amount of things, however it all bottles down to resource collection in order to further your base.

Your motivations for each mission lie in physical rewards (exocraft, or blueprints to upgrade weapons) and, more importantly, snippets of lore. The Atlas Rises patch added huuuuge amounts of new lore to find, and the base building received a big chunk of it, allowing you to learn more about each race and your own story.

The basic loop of these quests looks like this:

Whilst this loop is quite basic, get quest, do quest, give in quest, the important step is the one in between each of these — the travelling. This is the aspect that slowly grows with each additional quest. Whilst the first few missions have you explore around the initial area of the base, gathering iron to build structures, it grows, beginning to task you with exploring caves to gather a certain plant. Eventually the quests have you exploring all over the planet in order to find certain buildings, contextually related to the quest’s storyline.

In slowly growing the scope of each quest, No Man’s Sky slowly begins to let you become familiar with your surroundings, enabling you to recognise the planet more and more. Each quest slowly pushes you further away from the base, giving you more and more ways to be distracted by No Man’s Sky’s brilliant terrain generation.

In slowly exploring the planet, No Man’s Sky shows you what it has to offer. Serene walks, mixed with quick flights. Lore, abandoned buildings, crashed freighters, strange terrain and happy creatures, caves and space stations. The quests all slowly reveal these, giving you an idea of what future planets may hold. Smaller quests show you the joy of its details, medium travel giving you the knowledge of the density of its treasures, whilst quests covering larger distances allow you to understand the sheer scale of No Man’s Sky.

All in all, the base building has been transformed from something of little interest or importance to a feature which gives the player a tutorial for exploration. When the game was first announced, the main question associated with No Man’s Sky was “What do you do?”. Whilst the answer was exploration, No Man’s Sky initially failed to easily convey it to its player base, leaving some confused and others angry. This update is one of many in bringing the vision of No Man’s Sky to fruition, creating a game of true exploration.

For further reading on No Man’s Sky, try these:
1. No Man’s Sky just wants you to walk and i am ok with this

2. No Man’s Sky: A Poem

3. Colours in games — small memories

The Loop #1 : No Man’s Sky was originally published in Pip Writes Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I miss when parks felt
Infinite and playgrounds felt
Like fortresses. When

Everything was tall
And I, small. Infinity
Has shrunk without me.

I miss when parks felt infinite was originally published in Pip Writes Stuff on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.