How to instantly increase your game's fun

Comments · 93

• TA

  @Taylor55055 · 1 year ago

  Watched this video 2x speed. You're right, much more fun.

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• AB

  @abnnr · 1 year ago

  my slow, mute, complex misery-simulator is in shambles :(

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• SH

  @Shadefrank · 1 year ago

  More fun elements:<br>- less delay on any input<br>- more feedback on input (particles, sounds, vibrations or screenshake, animation)<br>- always something to progress in (goals that steer you - in non sandbox games) and achievements

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• MI

  @misterG-GameDevelopment · 1 year ago

  For me these help massively:<br>1) Making the impact of actions come alive via cam shakes or effects.<br>2) embedding intentional trade offs for the players (i.e. don&apos;t allow infinite shooting, add trade off to counter balance)

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• OD

  @Odisseia-hh2td · 1 year ago (edited)

  Rule #1: add a grappling hook.

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• PR

  @ProjektHarvestSoul · 1 year ago

  1) It&apos;s not actually the speed that matters. It&apos;s decisions per minute. The cosmetic effect of sped up footage primarily affects how much you can cram into a period of time allowing you to make more decisions. You can see this in Halo Infinite with the grappling hook. They nerf&apos;d sprint into the ground because it doesn&apos;t match the slower tempo of Halo fights that everyone loves which sounds contradictory with the 1st point in the video, but again, it&apos;s decisions per minute. The reason the grappling hook was well received was because it increased decisions per minute without increasing speed. My game I&apos;m making has a very slow combat system whereby a typical fight lasts a minimum of 30 seconds and the characters feel like they&apos;re fighting in molasses, but I have fun in my prototype because how I implemented the combat system calls for a huge number of decisions to be made very rapidly. Even though you&apos;re not moving around a lot you end up doing a lot.<br>2) This one feeds into the previous one of &quot;more decisions per minute.&quot; More isn&apos;t actually good advice because balancing ruins a game very quickly when you just cram &quot;more&quot; in. In fact, I&apos;d actually say the trend of &quot;more&quot; is a detriment rather than a bonus. Games have been heading in this direction for a while and it&apos;s bothered me ever since I was a kid. Even games back then you&apos;d be 007 killing an entire army of goons. It does a good job of enhancing decisions per minute and letting the combat feel weighty, but it paradoxically also makes it feel very &quot;light.&quot; It&apos;s hard to explain properly. You don&apos;t just want a player&apos;s decisions to be rapid, you also want the decisions to have a meaningful impact, but when you cram as much as possible into the game you make each decision feel far less important. This is something I&apos;ve already noticed in my prototype, even though there are hundreds of attacks during the 30 second combat each attack carries significant weight to it because there&apos;s only one enemy.<br>3) I fully agree with sounds and music. It&apos;s incredible how much a difference a meaty and satisfying parry sound makes when spending upwards of a minute or more fighting just one opponent.<br>4) I feel like I&apos;m being personally attacked with this one. Leave my hundreds of implemented mechanics alone! (Joking about the number, not joking about implementing a lot of mechanics)<br>5) A timer or scoreboard or something along those lines is hugely invaluable. It really is a necessity.

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• MI

  @mischiefmotorsgame · 1 year ago

  There&apos;s a few things that added much more fun and polish just by being there in my game:<br>- Menu transitions make the game much more dynamic. Its not actual &quot;fun&quot;, but it keeps things moving which keeps the interest high too!<br>- Interactable objects that have actually no real purpose in the game. In my case, I added things to destroy in the environments like trees. When i added those, the game jumped like ten steps in the fun-o-meter.<br>- Anything ambiance related : Lights, light fog, audio

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• MI

  @mikeha · 1 year ago

  I think for something like a psychological horror game that is narrative based, if you can do something like multiple endings based on what you did as a player during the game, it adds replay value. Silent Hill did this really well. They didn&apos;t do the normal &quot;last boss battle can give 3 endings&quot; like today&apos;s games do, they had endings based on things you did or did not do long before the end boss, so to get those endings you needed to replay the entire game more than once

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• IT

  @Itay_Ron · 1 year ago (edited)

  I&apos;m working on a small scoped cleaning game and I think one of the easiest ways that I made my game more fun is by adding achievements for different milestones the player has reached, even the simplest things like cleaning your first object or creating a new save file can be turned into achievements. Adding achievements for these milestones makes the player feel like they are accomplishing something and motivates them to keep playing.

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• EM

  @EmergentSagas · 1 year ago

  Sid Meier (designer of some classic games like the Civilization games, Pirates, and Railroad Tycoon) has some rules he follows for game design, and one of them is double it or take it out, which is similar to some of the ideas you presented today.

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• OS

  @osenseijedi · 1 year ago

  Hi, I am the CEO of E.A and Ubisoft. You want to make your game fun ? Add a season pass. And lootboxes. Gamers love those.

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• DR

  @dreamcatforgotten8435 · 1 year ago

  That&apos;s really LEET of you guys to make your video exactly 13 minutes and 37 seconds :3

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