How to make your game 2X as fun! - (In No Time.)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ส.ค. 2024
- How do you make your game more fun?
Here are a couple of effective tricks that will help you to make your game way more addicting and fun in not time!
You want to become a better game developer, but you feel stuck and don't know how to improve any further? This video should help you to up your game, because all of these tips are extremely easy things I wish I would have known when I got started with game development.
Making a fun game isn't all that difficult, so I bet you can easily double the fun players have with your game in just a couple of hours as well. Unless you're already an experienced dev, that is.
My name is Jonas and I document the entire journey to becoming a game developer. I share absolutely everything I learn on the way, so you can become a better game developer as well.
Join the Game Dev Discord: / discord
Subscribe to see more like this in the future. :)
Was this useful? Which other tips do you have for making a fun game?
Lot's of awesome tips in this video! Adding decent audio feedback can change everything for the better :) Animations on objects that are important to be noticed by the player! Post processing effects such as bloom, color grading, vignette etc. can help a lot. Smear frames and trails are pretty cool when dealing with moving stuff and animations in general. Just some stuff off the top of my head.
Another one that I just thought of is to try and design systems with lots of opportunities to combine stuff to create unique abilities, situations, encounters etc.
I keep coming up with stuff so here's some more:
Add a main menu and title screen - makes your game feel way more finished.
Don't underestimate what controller rumble feedback can do for your game. It can be more important than audiovisual feedback for certain mechanics. Especially for gradual stuff such as charging an attack.
Speaking of which: anticipation in animations (especially for enemies) will elevate most games in terms of game feel but also gameplay feedback
Risk-Reward-systems are cool because if they are well done they can facilitate interesting moment-to-moment decisions.
Skill trees are often more interesting than totally linear upgrade-chains due to creating more interesting long-term decisions and customization opportunities through combinatorics
@@YaenGamedev I believe what you're talking about is called emergent gameplay enabled by systemic game design, but it's more about designing than polishing. There is a lot of mind tricks going into the designing of a game to make it appear more fun, I also think it circles back to another of video of Jonas about how to make players feel smart.
True, that's about system design but Jonas also talked about design-related stuff early in the video. I think well done combinatorics can give you a lot of bang for your buck since you don't have to hand-craft every situation in your game.
I don't really like how many platformers have a slow walk speed, and a run button.
This makes you hold the run button for most of the game.
This is why, in my own platformer project, I made the default speed fast, to entirely remove the need for a run button.
that's basically the concept of sonic the hedgehog
on platforms with non analog inputs, I suggest inverting the button, sometimes you want to go slow for tricky parts, and not just run off the edge like a dummy.
another option is to add some momentum, like your character starts moving slowly but accelerates to it's top speed, which also can add some decision between going for the maximum speed or slowing down to be more precise. But if done improperly it may make the game feel sluggish.
Toggle run?
@@kadirlofca another good option, crouch or run is very similar too.
same thing n++ does
I've been watching a load of your videos in the last couple of days and I'm just so impressed! Especially videos like this one where you give tips; I think you're 100% correct on pretty much everything you say. I wish I'd seen these videos when I was starting out - would have saved me a lot of time!
Thank you so much, man! Really means a lot to hear that from you.
Very nice although the camera thing did hurt my eyes a lot
i'd say have the speed increase over time, if you were only comfortable with 50% bonus speed at first then your players are probably the same.
Or have a difficulty meter that changes the game speed
Perhaps it would be better to take a tetris style approach where each goal you get increases the speed by 1%
@@toekneemart5597 I like that idea too. That gives the game a nice progression over time.
very good point
EA: huh? microtransactions? alright
* surprise mechanics
@@satibel ooffff
haha EA bad xDDD Yea this is still funny xDDDD
@@americantoastman7296 You disagree or something, mate?
@@ashleybyrd2015 ausie
- Add directions
- Make decisions affect gameplay
- Good colour scheme
- Gameplay speed
- Camera movement
Thanks :D
My god, when you showed of the first gameplay with the better gun behaviour it was almost too intense for me to watch! So many tight situations!
Tip: slowing the player's movement is one of the worst things you could do. You must let the players feel in control. Look at DOOM or Mario, and how fun it makes the game with the movement alone
Stale Bagelz Not true, Halo: Reach was amazing and 4 and 5 didn’t suck because of sprinting but other issues
It works for some games. Like YumeNikki for example. The game is all about looking at the environment and atmosphere, so a slow speed makes it better.
ngl the movement speed is WAY too slow in yume nikki (even with bicycle) to properly enjoy the main thing about it - walking around
@@waker_link i didnt see it that way. I did have that problem in yume 2kki tho, since the maps in that game are way too large.
T i t a n f a l l
A tiny amount of camera movement? hahah! That's a lot! It would likely give me a headache after a while! It could be reduced to 1/2 or even 1/4 and probably be better -- enough shake so that you can feel it but not so much that it is constantly buzzing or moving around so much
Thanks for the tips! I haven't thought about the micro decisions before, and it definitely adds a whole dimension to the gameplay, i'll be keeping it in mind. Colours, speed and camera work are also all 100% good things to keep in mind. Game speed I find is often the first barrier of fun in people's first games, so definitely agree.
As you play your own game, you get better and more experienced at it, so the speed that you can play at will be different from the speed a new player can play at. It's important to be aware of that, and to get feedback from other people.
Thats also why u gotta design ur game so that its fun for all experience levels.
absolutely. I've been making a single screen beat em up game. i beat the 2 levels i have so far every single time i play. had some friends try it and they can't get past the first 30 seconds of the first stage :(
@@21CenturyBreakdownXThen lower the difficulty maybe?
Hey, Jonas, nice video. I would really love to see more videos of where you take a boring game and add interesting decisions to it. I've been digging into this subjects a lot myself, and I found a fantastic book called Situational Game Design by Brian Upton. If you want to get a formal/deeper understanding of what makes game situations feel playful I definitely recommend you read it :)
Thanks for the tip! I've definitely seen this book on Amazon a couple of times, but I never bought it. Guess I will just do so now... :D
Very interesting opinions. I actually liked the original color scheme and the static camera much better. Other than that, these seem like good ideas. Thanks for sharing.
Yay taking more time but the content is of better quality. Great work!
I've been doing 1 video per week for a while now. Thanks, southocean. I'm trying. :D
You're a saint for doing all of this for everyone.
I will definitely be using you as one of my inspirations and mentors for making my own games.
So thank you.
I only have 2 issues with your example game:
• The rings should be Yellow, like one of the player colors,
instead of blending in with the floor as if the transparency was 50%
• The screen shake is Way too exaggerated so that I'd likely have motion sickness if I actually played the game instead of just watching it. Most games only shake the screen horizontally Or vertically, and only by 1 or 2 logical pixels (which are different from actual pixels as they are a reference unit)
Everything else is correct and makes this video Very useful.
Jonas: How do you make your game more fun?
Dani: Unity's particle system is a-
Jonas: STAHP
been working on a game for two years i have found my way to most of these trick, wish I would have seen your channel 2 years ago.
the thumbnail: *DOUBLE DOUBLE THE THE FUN FUN*
Come join the fun.
Glad I came across your channel. These are some really good tips!
This is amazing! Subbed.
One little feedback - camera movement caused motion sickness for me personally, so consider moving it to gameplay options
Was expecting some stuff I've already heard from the art of screenshake but this was actually super unique and cool! I love the tips and even making a turn-based game this is giving me tons of ideas. Keep up the great work dude
One of the best vids I have ever seen about game design. So simple and so effective. Just fantastic!
Congrats Jonas for 1000 Subs!
Thank you! :)
I really wanted this. I didn't know how this showed up in my feed but thanks a lot! Simple tips but actually very useful and easy to miss
This video is amazing. The idea that you are telling is really simple and "obvious", but you managed to tell it in really transparent and good way, so many new developers could see why stuff that you talked about is important.
Thanks a bunch, this advice is pretty invaluable
1) Interesting micro decisions. Some challenge to find best solution. Trade offs. 0:23
2) Good color schemes. Useful link coolors.co 2:58
3) Speed and pacing. Usually too slow. 3:42
4) Effects, directional effects. 4:18
5) Camera movement. Screen shake. 5:17
Dude you're absolutely insane, super talented and smart about this, it's insane how much the game improved by just slowing the movement, keep up the great work. Also great fan of Superflight and Islanders
wow... subbed a couple days before.. Your points are pure gold here and in other vids.. Im literally making a checklist based from your vids. Also seeing that some points are checked in my current developed game is so pleasing :)
Wow, this was super helpfull!
Thanks a lot.
I directly created TODOs for the tipps that you talked about!
I think you are a very underrated content maker. I love the videos you make and it helps me out A LOT on my own journey of becoming a full time indie game developer.
Keep it up!
I got a idea. The game speeds up every second, but every time you collect a coin, the game slows down a tad. That way, the coins aren't completely useless and have a purpose
ayy thats a nice idea, can i use it if kool?
@@tackybob I'm not going to do that anytime soon, so sure
Will definitely be implementing some of these tips in my own game! Thanks Jonas!
Wow, really good tips, thanks Joyner!!!!!!!
Watching this in 2x speed and I just thought you were insanely good at this game
Really cool tips, thank you for sharing!
Love your videos! Keep 'em coming! 😊
As you demonstrated I could feel the chaos and franticness ramp up very impressive.
Absolutely fantastic! Really excellent points and having the example in the background with very concrete use cases was wonderful
I just discovered your channel, but liked, subbed, all that
Awesome work
Nice! Welcome on board! I'm happy you liked it. :)
I find I usually need to slow down my games. Good video.
This was great, thank you
These tips were amazing, great job. Camera shake was way too strong imo but still a great tip
5:21 who else got motion sick watching that?
i didn't
but eugh, it definitely looked better without that
not me, i only get sick like that if i spin around rapidly
how tho. its very marginal
yea
I almost threw up...
The Minimum Viable Prototype i made on Oct 22 2020
started out being too fast for my playtester, so I had to slow it down by what feels like 50% (not by actually slowing the character but by growing the viewport).
After that, I could only increase the actual character speed by what feels like 10% before it became too fast for myself.
This already sounds like a great start!
Thanks! Very practical, especially the first part.
the way you explain things is very easy to follow along
Woah there, your videos keep improving each time. Love the atmosphere of this one especially. The way you talk, the music, everything fits so well together. Good luck, Jonas :D
Thanks. Glad to hear it. :)
I was liek "wat are you doing, it's too fast already".
Then I realized I watch TH-cam at 2x.
Haha funny misspell like and what funny
bro what a real knee slapper.
Very cool walkthrough. Appreciated!
Great video. I’ve been learning a lot of coding for my game for the past little bit, and I started a game jam but realized I was lacking the “play” part of the game, it wasn’t fun to me. This video really helps put things into perspective. I’m going to take things back to the basic and make sure it’s fun first.
These videos are gold.
thank you Jonas...💜💜💜This video is so helpful 👌
Make the targets different colors, one of the colors wipes 70% of the screen and stuns the enemies for a second. A different color target gives you another heart. Another one would be it turns on a fan that pushes all the enemies away from you for 2 seconds and disables new ones spawning for a few seconds. A target could even make your character blink and destroy them on contact for a few seconds. You don't want pressure on the player all the time, back off a little and let them relax. People need a little down time to regroup and think up a new strategy.
EN:
Thanks man, you already help me with me with my first doubt.
DE:
Danke, du hilftst mir jetzt schon gegen meine meine Zweifel an meinem Projeckt, danke.
i felt lazy for over a month and didn't do any progress in my game cause i felt it was boring but your video motivated and inspired me a lot! thanks jonas
Awesome. I'm very happy to hear that. Nice! :D
I think micro-desicions with two equal solutions can be interesting if one of them has a (higher / different) cost - in FTL faster than light, for example, it is often equal weather you fire a rocket or not - firing the rocket costs ammunition, not firing costs time and possibly health. Neither option is necessarily better than the other in any given situation unless you're in the final stage of the final boss where leftover ammunition doesn't matter afterwards.
Good God, great talk! At 1:30 already stopped to take a bunch of notes on what would I do to make the movement more goal-y and engaging.
Cool. What kind of game are you working on?
@@JonasTyroller Not working on a game currently. But interested in practical game design at any time of the day :)
I've made a game last weekend for a jam. If you're interested, gm48.net/game/1040/runners
About pacing: a good rule of thumb to anything you believe might affect pacing, double it or cut it in half, one at a time - and see if that has any effect.
Great tips. Made me think about my game.
Fun impactful sound effects are rewarding for the player as well
If the rings don't actually do anything, they feel like pointless distractions. In all games like this I know, they give a temporary powerup, like invulnerability, triple fire or piercing attacks.
Also, am I the only one who HATES screen shake?
Schwarzer Ritter screen shake was a very bad addition in this situation
Really a great channel!
We were making an F-Zero -like game for a school project and the speed of the ships was 3. Someone suggested the game could be faster and just as an experiment I set it to 5, that's 66% faster.
It was awesome. We were making a racing game based on super fast ships and we had forgotten to actually make the game fast.
I like alll your advices, except for the last one. I HATE games that shake constantly. That's something old awesome games never had and never needed.
Great videos, love ur personality.
If you add camera shaking, add an option to turn it off. It's incredibly annoying when the camera shakes for some people.
Undertale does this really well for example, sparing an enemy removes the gain of xp but improves your general “karma” with the games ending, and killing an enemy gives you xp but reduces the”karma” and each choice has consequences to the ending of the game
Thanks this made my game alot better
I'm working on a bullet hell game, and in my game I had decided to make the bullets you fire automatic hone in on enemies so you can focus more on dodging. This video made me realize that doing that removed the micro decision of getting closer to enemies for better aim. I was able to fix it by making your bullets do much more damage when you are closer to enemies, so now I keep that micro decision while allowing the player to continue focusing on dodging
So i am currently working on an RPG where you play as a blue circle with a face with some inspiration from the classic paper mario games.
You have 10 HP and 5 FP
You also have 2 attacks Bash and Basher
Bash does less damage than Basher but Basher costs more FP to use than Bash
And you have 2 types of items Pretzels and Candy
Pretzels restores HP while Candy restores FP.
And you also have strategies Flea which fleas the fight and Defend which reduces the amount of damage you take during your opponents turn.
Now this is pretty much a basic RPG and i wanted to make it fun so i looked up this video and i have some ideas for new enemies that might be interesting.
The Theif which steals some items from you giving you the choice to either attempt to kill the theif before he steals your items or use up your items so he doesn't steal it.
Or the BOMB which after a few turns explodes and damages both the other enemies and the player character you can either kill the BOMB before he explodes saving you from the damage but this also means the enemies won't get hit or you can defend which reduces the amount of damage you take but also explodes killing the other enemies.
And then theirs the healer which heals the other enemies and itself. Bash won't deal enough damage to it so you might wanna use Basher.
And the Box Box which doesn't attack you but summons other enemies so you might wanna target this enemy before it summons more.
Now i pretty much gave away the the solutions to beating these enemies on your own but if your fighting more of these enemies like for example the Theif and Healer you might wanna think twice.
Also i know i am not that experienced in gaming but i still wanna give you advice. Maybe give the rings you collect in your game a reason to collect. Cause without a reason the player might just focus on survival instead of collecting the rings. Like maybe have the rings clear an entire screen of enemies if you collect enough or maybe it gives your attacks more attack power or maybe it temporary removes the speed limitation. Or maybe instead of a reward for doing so give them a punishment for not doing so such as an instant game over or more enemies or maybe not being able to attack at all. In general just give the rings you collect a reason to collect cause otherwise they will be ignored.
I really enjoy these topics
Thanks. What specifically do you mean?
@@JonasTyroller advices that are related to game dev .. and could be implemented in other domains with some tweaking.
i find most games too fast... the best option is to let the player adjust how speed & how advanced graphics! for example a LOT of mobile games use way too much effects & i would love to turn them off to the basic minimum because the LAG & the distraction... screen shakes & fancy particles should be able to be turned off. having more custom options lets more people play & have fun!
Very smart video, well done!
One more think I'd like to add
When the player walks there should be a particle like the enemy's get when they did it would look nice
Good! Double the fun - twice the sales!
- Count Dooku
Very good tips! I’m not even good with real coding and only use Scratch, but these tips still help me a bit.
scratch is real programming as it does what any other programming language does: uses logic and instructions to get a computer to do something. scratch is just a visual programming language to make it easier
Great tips yo improve a game rapidly. I think they are good to improve games jams game too. The juicy tips you mention are similar to an amazing talk I recommend by one of the Nuclear Throne designers Jan Willem that I saw some years ago on youtube.
Good advice. Made me think differently
Very good, thank U Jonas :)
First off, great video! I'm not a game dev yet but I'm enjoying all your tips for when I do start. However, in this case I actually liked the first color scheme better... the red enemies against the equally strong blue bg made my eyes hurt a little bit and it was hard to focus. I would've kept the bg a lighter color, but that's just my personal preference
I feel like im skydiving and he is giving me instructions on how to make a game
why
awesome :) those are pretty good tips thanks!!
You're welcome. :)
Well i think we can break it to appeal (look) and engagement (game play) after that you can manage your game fun factor.
Completely agree with you. A very good example of some of the things you said is a game called Diep.io. You remember the days when .io games were popular? Yeah, diep.io back in the day was one of the most popular .io games, probably just behind agar.io and slither.io. I'm sure you know what .io games are, but in case you don't, I'll explain.
In the game, you basically spawn as a small tank in a server with multiple other people. You then shoot bullets to destroy squares, triangles, pentagons and even other players. As you do so, you gain level. And when you gain level, you are given points to upgrade a certain feature of the tank. These features include:
-regeneration speed
-health
-body damage
-bullet speed
-bullet penetration
-damage
-reload
-speed
When you reach max level (level 45), you aren't able to even upgrade half of all of these features, which makes it that you have to find what's best to upgrade. Furthermore, when you reach level 15, you are given 4 different choices of different tank classes. When at level 30, you are given more options for classes and the options you are given varies depending on the first class you chose. Then at level 45, you are given even more options for classes.
There are a total of 41 classes to choose. This variety does a really good job of accomplishing what you said in your video. It makes the player explore more and try to find what the best possible combination is.
Wow! You are literally just giving us free advantage in the game buiness, thats so cool! Thank you a lot!
You don't need to be a game developer to enjoy this video and this is good!
I can't see how the insane camera would help, because it makes everything so much harder to see, but everything else is very helpful.
Thumbs Up Video!
Camera movement helps, but it’s best when subtle
Yaknow what this game reminds me of?
Those old arcade games!
If this was an arcade game, i think it would've kicked butt!
Like really, this would have been a fairly popular arcade game.
This was useful and I enjoyed it
I agree with a lot of this, but there are some issues
1. I agree with the general premise of micro decisions, but you can't look at just that. Yes, slowing your speed does make more interesting decision making, but it also makes the game clunky. Players will likely like the first version better even if it lacks choice simply because it's more fluid. It feels smoother. There may be better ways to achieve the same thing, such as maybe making the controls less tight with the laser or making it so you are locked into type for a certain amount of time before changing.
2. Some aesthetics are questionable. Your original explosions looked better. The enemies blowing up away from the impact is less natural. Explosions should be from the point of impact because that's what normally happens in real life. Likewise, the screen shakes can frustrate players if they happen a lot.
For the goal rings looking the wrong color, why not swap colors? Ring becomes the yellow color that the ship is, ship becomes the dark wall color, walls become dark blue background color, and background becomes light blue ring color? That might look better.
Nice Nice Nice Nice! Really useful!! Nice!
Awesome. Awesome. Glad to hear it.
Used this trick 100 times, with an original fun of 5, my fun is now
5*2^100
it seems so fun, that i need to play it!!!
Risk/Reward Ratio
Every action the player can do should boost one element while draining another
🎉very nice. I enjoyed that
this was helpful but im not a big fan of packing in as much action in as little time as possible. i think it's more interesting to leave more time for decision making.
There was this game called Three Body Problem and it was basically your tips in this video combined with a basic game.
honnestly the camera movement is more dizzying than exciting