- ok @kayin you're allowed to clone your favorite game if it's more than 10 years old
- here's a secret: pixel art IS easier. don't be ashamed
yes great pixel art is harder but you weren't gonna have great art anyway - play undertale, identify all the timesavers and shortcuts. note how they don't matter because of tweet #1 on this thread
- same as 23 but with portal 1.
Oh yeah another "designer friend": the science lab - artists need super-specific instructions on art size, format, quantity, animations etc
some comes from designer some from programmer - you will probably demand too much art for your game and the artist will laugh at you. reuse that shit
- don't worry about forcing players to solve a puzzle in a specific way make sure all sensible solutions work
- procedural generation needs complex systems to thrive and create novel content
otherwise it's just visual reshuffling - a lot of tool development for designers is really just making systems that can import from excel
- is "killing npcs" a designer friend zara?
sure
creates tension, adds plot, AND corpses can't change the game state - another designer friend: zombies
scary, can have any sort of AI and it'll make sense no matter how bad it is - games have such a laser-tight focus any small addition (e.g. doom's monster infighting. can make them feel more alive
- conversely, the more options you -do- add, the more players will notice the ones that don't exist
make the set's boundaries clear - do your sound cues have corresponding visual cues
do your color identifiers have a secondary identifier - good clicker/incremental games like Candy Box/Spaceplan keep introducing novel systems throughout the game as old ones get dull
- roguelike fans have a very precise definition of what constitutes a "roguelike"
sod them
steal all their mechanics - sometimes you have to step away and think about things a bit
- the player has a mental math on how much fun they're expected to still draw from the game so, a weird hard endboss just makes them quit
- "casual" games are attending to the 90% of humans that don't like learning new rules to games every time they play one
- On the other hand, a barrier to entry is an easy way to create a feeling of community against the feeble scrubs
