Beltrunner: Game Design Postmortem

A postmortem of Beltrunner, an original game built on the same engine as an arcade-faithful Asteroids remake. The author details design decisions: a countdown-based race with gates, deterministic seeded layouts, and a difficulty curve inspired by Nintendo. Power-ups are collectable tokens, and secrets reward attentive play. The system itself evolved to support the game, with lessons on what worked and what didn't.