part 1
part 3

  1. ok @kayin you're allowed to clone your favorite game if it's more than 10 years old
  2. 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
  3. play undertale, identify all the timesavers and shortcuts. note how they don't matter because of tweet #1 on this thread

  1. same as 23 but with portal 1.
    Oh yeah another "designer friend": the science lab
  2. artists need super-specific instructions on art size, format, quantity, animations etc
    some comes from designer some from programmer
  3. you will probably demand too much art for your game and the artist will laugh at you. reuse that shit
  4. don't worry about forcing players to solve a puzzle in a specific way make sure all sensible solutions work
  5. procedural generation needs complex systems to thrive and create novel content
    otherwise it's just visual reshuffling
  6. a lot of tool development for designers is really just making systems that can import from excel
  7. is "killing npcs" a designer friend zara?
    sure
    creates tension, adds plot, AND corpses can't change the game state
  8. another designer friend: zombies
    scary, can have any sort of AI and it'll make sense no matter how bad it is
  9. games have such a laser-tight focus any small addition (e.g. doom's monster infighting. can make them feel more alive
  10. conversely, the more options you -do- add, the more players will notice the ones that don't exist
    make the set's boundaries clear
  11. do your sound cues have corresponding visual cues
    do your color identifiers have a secondary identifier
  12. good clicker/incremental games like Candy Box/Spaceplan keep introducing novel systems throughout the game as old ones get dull
  13. roguelike fans have a very precise definition of what constitutes a "roguelike"
    sod them
    steal all their mechanics
  14. sometimes you have to step away and think about things a bit
  15. 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
  16. "casual" games are attending to the 90% of humans that don't like learning new rules to games every time they play one
  17. On the other hand, a barrier to entry is an easy way to create a feeling of community against the feeble scrubs

part 1
part 3


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in reply to @zaratustra's post:

lessons from Portal/Undertale: you don't need that much visual/gameplay variety, length, narrative complexity, anything that fits [but they're gonna laugh at me if it doesn't have blank] as long as you have three things: a soundtrack that builds and evolves with the story and really hits it out of the park at key moments, at least one compelling character that's so fun you don't want to stop writing for them, and you manage to construct the feeling of this just being a small story in a large world, mainly by placing things just off the beaten path that have a basic shock of intrigue but no actual importance to the game at all. (ratman easter eggs, snowman piece, snail races, etc)

so uh, hope you manage to meet/be/afford a world-class composer haha

also see: Celeste, for a higher effort game with the same basic formula, but the mad game devs just kept going, Maddie is my hero

re:

good clicker/incremental games like Candy Box/Spaceplan keep introducing novel systems throughout the game as old ones get dull

tbh pacing is absolutely the thing that great clicker games excel at. what makes or breaks a clicker for me is "do i care about getting to the next question mark box". lots of games absolutely fail at this halfway through, usually as soon as they introduce a prestige mechanic that makes you play the entire game again but 5% faster.