Wandering around a whole load of neat writing, it's time to recap the top full-length features and news of the past week on big sister site Gamasutra, plus extra features and Game Design Challenge goodness from fellow edu site GameCareerGuide.

Some of the notables - a chat with Overlord and Mirror's Edge writer Rhianna Pratchett, as well as a postmortem of iPhone title Word Fu, a history piece on Robotron 2084, a super-neat Vanillaware interview, plus some GameCareerGuide pieces on design concepts and rapid prototyping.

So much discipline:

Vital Game Narrative: A Conversation With Rhianna Pratchett
"Gamasutra talks in-depth to Pratchett, the writer and narrative designer on projects including Mirror's Edge, Heavenly Sword and the Overlord franchise, discussing the state of game stories and how they might be improved."

A New Attitude To Game Engineering: Embrace Change, Re-Use, Fun
"Massive Entertainment (Ground Control series) veterans Norneby and Olsson use this in-depth technical article to discuss how to radically improve your experience planning video games through applying software engineering processes to game development."

Postmortem: ngmoco/Demiurge Studios' WordFu
"In this in-depth Gamasutra postmortem, the team at console and PC developer Demiurge Studios (Mass Effect for PC) explain what went right and wrong in creating popular iPhone word game WordFu, from swift iteration to localization complexity and beyond."

The Boneyard: The Most Important Part of Your Character is Invisible
"In a visual arts-specific article for Intel's Visual Computing microsite and originally published in Game Developer magazine, Bungie's Steve Theodore discusses skeletal construction and animation for game characters, looking at 'strategies for taming the skeletal hordes without ending up in the graveyard.'"

The History of Robotron: 2084 - Running Away While Defending Humanoids
"In the latest in a series of Gamasutra-exclusive bonus material originally to be included in Bill Loguidice and Matt Barton's new book Vintage Games, we examine classic twin-stick arcade shooter Robotron: 2084 and the sub-genre of frantic games it birthed."

King of 2D: Vanillaware's George Kamitani
"Japanese independent developer Vanillaware has created modern 2D game classics such as Odin Sphere and the upcoming Muramasa: The Demon Blade, and founder George Kamitami sits down with Gamasutra to discuss his company's roots, passions, and plans."

The South African Game Development Scene: Past, Present, and Future
"The South African game development scene has had a turbulent history but is striving for a meaningful future; here, local Oliver Snyders examines the evolution of the industry over the past decade, by speaking to the principles and finding out the whole story."

GCG: Minimal Risk Designs: How to Design a Game When You Don't Have the Time
"Ambition got the better of you? Funcom designer Brent Ellison takes a look at some surefire, low-risk design concepts that will allow allow you to get rolling fast and complete your project."

GCG: The Indie Process
"IGF competitor and USC student Michael Silverman examines several different ways that different academic programs approach the process of prototyping games."