along that end of the NBA Live Coins

And then eventually inch their way through.""In a masocore game, you just respawn very quickly back to the previous checkpoint," Rohrer says. "So I was trying to make something that is kind of... along that end of the NBA Live Coins spectrum, not in terms of sheer brutal difficulty [requiring] Super Meat Boy reflexes or VVVVVV reflexes, but I really wanted to make a tactical game, where there are these challenges put in front of you but it's more about looking at the situation and trying to figure out how to

 

your way through it in a way that gives you an advantage."He suggests the response has been mixed; many players have complained there is "no goal" in the game, and he's had to explain his intention for infinity on the site: "Pac Man is infinite," he references -- "your goal is to  Buy NBA Live Mobile Coins get as high a score as you can get. In my game, it's hard to move up, but you can freely move down; the implied goal is to keep moving up."It took some time and effort to balance the game so that it becomes not repetitive

 

but "a small chunk of tactical challenge," that requires players to manage their health to see how far they can progress. "Developing this game gave me this whole newfound appreciation for what i had always passed off as pointless... player punishment and repetition for the sake of making the player do stuff over and over," he says.On Art And MeaningRohrer is ever-smiling, animated, approaching design as a puzzle to be solved, eliminating some goals in favor of pursuing others that may result

 

the kind of experience for which he aims. But his games themselves are often heavy, somber themes of death or time or infinity -- with this newest one, exploring the idea of permanent death was very intentional.We asked him about the apparent conflict between Rohrer, the friendly, approachable design strategist, and his mysterious, sometimes-morbid work at nba18mt. "There is a sort of darker side to my personality in terms of how much i think about my own death and so on," he concedes. "I guess