
Basic Rules to Develop Simple and Appealing Games - hmoutol
http://www.voidbee.com/blog/develop-simple-and-appealing-games
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drcode
I recently spent a couple of weeks working out the details for a new game
based on a clever concept but then suddenly realized my "game" didn't actually
have any gameplay or anything fun to do in the game.

It's always good to take a step back from your creations and ask yourself "Is
this fun? Will anyone want to play this?"

Great article.

~~~
RodericDay
One of the big game journalism outfits did an hour long "Let's Play" with
Jonathan Blow, where they showcased The Witness and talked about many of its
design decisions.

My favorite part was where Blow talks about how the puzzle idea started from
an RPG-style game where you cast spells by performing gestures on-screen,
where certain aspects of how you drew symbols (ie: speed, size) determined the
traits of the spell cast. I always had that idea myself.

However, after exploring the idea a bit, he realized that it wasn't really
much fun to do elaborate gestures when what you really wanted was to merely
cast "Fireball 1", which you would do a thousand times in the course of the
game. What was really fun was the lore-related ways in which you could teach
spells to the player, by having them find them carved as runes into the
scenery and such.

So he made a game about that phenomenon of "discovery" instead. I thought it
was brilliant insight.

~~~
acheron
Didn't Black and White do that?

~~~
lubujackson
I think Dungeon Master on the NES did it, too. It might work on a touch screen
or with some sort of generated spell-making logic based on gesture
combinations, but having 10 spells and 1,000,000,000 non spells wasn't very
satisfying.

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jentulman
Interesting read.

I've recently decided to start taking the plunge into game dev myself, coming
from a purely web/app dev background and to try to blog the process in the
hopes it will turn in to a useful resource for other completely green game
Devs.

The first of the two (somewhat insubstantial) videos I've made about it is
here if anyone's interested
[https://youtu.be/PliCYTiCxKk](https://youtu.be/PliCYTiCxKk)

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Negative1
Great read and great advice. The hardest of all things mentioned of course is
assembling a team of both competent _and_ passionate people to work on the
project. All other challenges pale in comparison.

The article spends 3 sentences on the subject of which one is shilling their
product, which basically seems like a dating site for game developers. Since
they are just entering alpha everything rides on them proving that great games
can be birthed from their service. It's a great idea so I hope they can do it!

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dicroce
Here's my theory on what makes a game fun:

Games should be filled with challenges and rewards. Some of these are tiny
(give a unit an order, hear "Yes Sir!") some are big (defeat a boss, see
victory animation). All of these things should in some way (no matter how
tiny) be seen to advance the overall game. Games are boring when they either
don't give you enough little rewards or when the little rewards seem
superfluous toward the overall goal.

