Game design is both challenging and rewarding. Great games start with a great idea, but it takes hard work to make them real. We prepared seven recommendations that can make your next game a big hit.
Understand Your Audience
Before you draft a single line of the code, it’s crucial to know who this game will be for. Conduct market research, study current trends, and, most importantly, talk with people from your potential player base. Social media, forums, and gaming communities can offer invaluable insights into what your audience desires. Developers creating games for betting sites not registered with GamStop say that understanding your audience is crucial for making engaging games.
Meaningful Narratives
A good story can greatly improve a game. Your game’s story doesn’t need to be very complex; even simple games can have engaging backstories. The important thing is to blend the story smoothly with the game so it feels natural.
Characters that are too weak or too strong are undesirable in the game. If a character is too strong he will affect the game much more than a weak one. In reality, no one will play with weak characters. If, on the contrary, characters are too strong, then players will choose only them. But this, in turn, will make the game more boring due to monotony. So, your characters should be neither strong nor weak.
Variety vs. Imbalance
You surely know the game Counter-Strike. Let’s imagine you entered a one-on-one fight and chose knives as your weapon. There is an ideal balance, meaning the result of the battle will depend only on the player’s skills. But after a few rounds, you will be the first to get bored with this “perfect balance”; you will want variety. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce additional items and conditions for their use. For example, if there is an automatic weapon with maximum damage, it is advisable to introduce restrictions on the rate of fire and reload time. If this is not done, the imbalance will become very noticeable, and the advantage of the weapon will be too obvious, which is not good.
Fortune is a Lottery
Relying on pure luck in games is not inherently negative, but it can be unpopular among many players. Games often feature critical hits that cause excessive damage, allowing beginners to defeat more experienced opponents. However, such randomness can frustrate experienced players. It’s important to balance the element of chance in gameplay to keep it reasonable. Completely removing these mechanics is not always the best solution. For instance, critical hits could be programmed to occur after every third consecutive hit. This adds a strategic element: if a player isn’t quick or strategic enough, they risk taking damage that resets their critical hit counter. This system promotes balanced gameplay because it rewards skill and strategy rather than pure chance.
Automatic Deterioration of Balance
Imagine you’ve meticulously designed your game to be perfectly balanced. Initially, everything seems great, but as time passes, the dynamic may shift. Players might discover new strategies or exploit hidden features, and feel that gameplay becomes repetitive and less engaging. Recall the iconic Rocket Jump in Quake, a technique that even surprised the developers, including John Romero.
To address such imbalances, it’s crucial to update the game regularly. Once players have had a chance to explore the game, introducing patches to adjust certain elements can help maintain balance. This encourages players to find new strategies and keeps the gameplay fresh and engaging.
Welcome Feedback
Use feedback and keep improving your game. Getting thoughts from playtests, reviews, and the community helps you see things you might have missed and shows you what to make better. Welcome this feedback, even if it means changing parts of your game.. Also, pay attention to feedback after your game is out to make it better. This process of updating and improving based on feedback makes your game better and builds a loyal player community.
Perfection Isn’t Necessary
Game designers should address imbalances, yet they aren’t expected to perfect every aspect. The goal is to craft gameplay thoughtfully and diversely. In reality, achieving an ideal balance of all skills and weapons is unattainable. What’s crucial are the game’s timing, spatial design, economic balance, player comfort, and engaging gameplay—these elements define the game’s quality.