One thing to always keep in mind is difficulty progression and how other factors in your game might affect it. Eg: If the player gains a heal ability then the the difficulty should ramp up.
Another common error is starting a game with an unrealistic difficulty level. One should start off easy first and progress to a higher difficulty later. This not only gives the player more time to get accustomed to the controls, but also gives them time to learn the mechanics of the game.
Eg: In my game Floor 13 you have to defeat 13 floors of enemies which starts with a simple melee enemy but gradually scales up to a boss battle with lasers and projectiles. This enables the player to learn about ranged enemies, tank enemies, stage enemies, and gives them time to practise combat.
Finally, setting the difficulty can be a challenge in of itself. One issue is that the ability to judge its difficulty from a player’s perspective is almost impossible since you’re the game designer. This is especially annoying in puzzle games. The key thing is to think as if you are a new player and try not to overcomplicate things without sufficient time for them to learn. (linking back to difficulty scaling)
Very interesting trying to find all the different ramps and their connections for any given palette. Really helps in understanding how all the combinations of colour create unique overall colours. Here I’m using Polyduck’s japanese-woodblock palette as an example
Here these 2 balls seem to be very different despite how only 1 colour has changed
The leftmost ball appears more orange, as brown is just dark orange, but also more desaturated overall. The right ball is much brighter and warmer due to the red completing the colour shift.
Basically remember that you should think about the whole ramp, not just one colour at a time, as colours influence each other nearby. It’s like this optical illusion (both squares are actually the same) but far more subtle.
Try and experiment with unusual ramps, they can yield interesting results
Very different hues, but works surprisingly well!
Was going to post this on weekly art challenge but this is probably better. Although I’m not sure how well this falls under “game design” lol
I definitely follow specifically this rule completely to heart at all times and do not make impossibly hard bosses and gameplay that drive people, including myself, completely and utterly, incomprehensibly insane.
I have made a lot of effort towards many many many collaborations but the vast majority have gone nowhere. Therefore I have decided to revive this topic to help with this as I really love seeing successful collabs!
*note that this is talking about collaborations where more than one person is working on the game not just taking character ideas like with what I did for Card Delver.
(also can i rename this topic to Luke’s Game Design Tips?)
Personally, there are three main reason why colllabs fail
Can’t communicate well on the forums
Try to collab with way to many people
Don’t have any good direction or foundation
Problems caused by this
Hard to make significant progress before interest in the game dies as collaboration is slow. Managing the project is also significantly harder as it might take a day or two to tell someone what to work on - by the time the message gets through they might have worked on a random idea, contributing to a muddying of direction (see point 3)
Too often, all ideas are just added into the game plan to please the large number of people trying to have a piece of the collab. Having too many conflicting ideas can make working on the game and choosing what to do difficult. A problem with working with too many people is that it results in low quality but high quantity input from the collab.
A poor foundation means that it will be harder to come up with ideas. Lack of direction also means that ideas might be added without thought about the overall game as that concept hasn’t been made. Poor ideas slow down the development, dilutes the original plan that may have been made and overall would be detrimental to the finished game. Finally, without a foundation it’s harder to remain motivated.
Ideas to fix this:
Better communication: If you’re working on code or art make sure that you say what exactly you’re going to work on. But also make sure you’ve gotten confirmation by other team members before steaming ahead! You could have a system where a “like” means yes and if not liked by all team members wait until you hear feedback with a reply (if no reply in a week then go ahead) Im sure theres lots of clever things you could do. Just know what people are also not terminally online so try not to be too impatient or demanding.
Be selective about your team and get to know their work: The chatting area should be used to show off your ideas and find a small group of people who want to collab. Only make the topic if you’re sure that your team is willing to match your effort and commit. Try not to do those huge polls where only 1/50 people contribute long term and instead let people reply sharing their ideas to show that they want to contribute. Actions speak louder than clicking a poll. Maybe do the poll but ask for proof of interest with a gameplay idea, small spritework, music track, story beat etc
Try not to start from nothing: A clear foundation makes it easier to come up with relevent ideas and makes game making smoother. eg: PHANTOMS had cool concept art to inspire (but ended up dying due to no motivation). Things like demos and game jam games are such good starting points that I haven’t seen used as starting points before. The quality of the game is an important part of what keeps a collaboration going, if its promising then people would be more invested and willing to work on and add to it. It gives more legitimacy as well since it doesn’t look like just the average 2 week collaboration phase.
Maybe we should work on smaller games too… probably good to define a limit so that the scope creep doesn’t spiral too far out of control and everyone loses motivation since they can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.
also tysm @jwunderl! means a lot since i was a bit unsure of this one as i’ve come back to finish it after a few months
