Kenoma: Action Without Action

Devlog

• Who Am I? Who Are You?
  September 26, 2025 by BrukhoLevin#player fantasy, #examples, #short

  Many games base their design decisions on evoking certain emotions. Making you feel the stuff of a fantasy adventurer, noire detective, super-soldier, etc., being an explicit target for the developer... Continue reading
• Inspirations; or, "Dark Souls" Meets "Zork" In This New Indie Instant-Classic
  September 19, 2025 by BrukhoLevin

  A common way for developers to pitch or market a game is to describe it as a combination of two or three preexisting games. Usually these other games are popular and successful in some way. This is br... Continue reading

  
• Making Games Fast is Easy Without Game Mechanics or Stories
  September 12, 2025 by BrukhoLevin

  Despite having been “in development” for about 3 calendar years now, Kenoma has not actually taken that long to construct. Various episodes within my life have required that I step away from the p... Continue reading
• Seeing Things: Bichromatic Action (Without Action)
  September 05, 2025 by BrukhoLevin

  What a video game looks like is quite important. Before anything else, people will typically know and remember what a game looks like. And beyond first impressions, a game’s visual style must also m... Continue reading

  
• In Two Places at Once; or, "How's My Gimmick? Call 1-800-XXX-XXXX"
  August 29, 2025 by BrukhoLevin

  It’s no big secret that Kenoma’s main gimmick is the whole “two worlds” thing. Other games have done it, most prominently Titanfall 2 (“Effect and Cause” even has its own Wikipedia page!)... Continue reading

  
• Readable Esoterics, Findable Solutions
  August 22, 2025 by BrukhoLevin

  Kenoma is a game without combat, and where moment-to-moment traversal is at most a minor obstacle. So, the core obstructions keeping you from your objectives have to be puzzle-based. Not necessarily s... Continue reading

  
• How Does an Unreal World Sound? (Music, Effects, Abstraction)
  August 14, 2025 by BrukhoLevin

  In a utilitarian sense, music and sound effects are tools. Their use is to set tone and provide feedback to player actions. The right music underscores and surrounds both the narrative and game-play,... Continue reading
• Fact, Fiction, Action Without Action
  August 08, 2025 by BrukhoLevin

  There were two extra-narrative guiding principles I kept in mind while writing for Kenoma. Around every story beat, every character, every word, these were there: no allegory, and no literalism. I bel... Continue reading

  
• Background, and the Notes You Don't Play
  August 01, 2025 by BrukhoLevin

  If a game takes place in a world that’s not our own, one concept tends to dominate the discussion of its plot: Lore. What has happened, what has been prophesied, who did what, where, and why. This i... Continue reading
• Making Ghosts: Player Character Evolution
  July 25, 2025 by BrukhoLevin

  In the previous post, I enclosed this image: Drawn sometime in September of 2021, approximately a year before even the idea of Kenoma came to be. This was the first depiction of what would eventually... Continue reading

  
• Opening Crawl, A Brief History
  July 18, 2025 by BrukhoLevin

  Kenoma is in a somewhat unique position: at this point in the cycle, it is boring to watch. No major elements are being added or changed, the game is just being checked for defects. This will likely t... Continue reading