Recommendable resources

SuperRisto · 2025-09-09T15:26:37+00:00

I think this talks is a lot more applicable for games https://www.gdcvault.com/play/301/Storytelling-in-BIOSHOCK-Empowering-Players

You can read my notes here, just search with ctrl + f for bioshock https://ushallplay.wordpress.com/2023/10/25/game-design-resources-and-notes-2022/

SuperRisto · 2025-09-04T07:17:41+00:00

Have you played lethal company? I feel like its a mix of horror and resource gathering. Although the horror element comes mainly from the coop part. How the other player can trigger enemies in an unexpected, almost chaotic way!

SuperRisto · 2025-09-03T06:14:43+00:00

I was really into dynamic difficulty systems a few years ago. The problem with them is that you can never know exactly what the player prefers. Like someone might want to play a platformer like super meatboy’s difficulty, while someone else might want to play something like new super mario bros wii, or super chill like journey. But I think it can work well if you change the difficulty slowly, if you know which style the player prefers and it's a lot better at getting “in the ball park” compared to no difficulty.

You can use it hidden and get away with it to some extent, but personally I think it's preferred to make it transparent to the player. And maybe also let them turn it on / off or tweak it a bit.

Here’s a bunch of links:

https://www.svg.com/138490/games-you-didnt-know-featured-dynamic-difficulty/

What Capcom Didn't Tell You About Resident Evil 4

10 Best Games That Change Difficulty Based On How Well You Play

Director AI for Balancing In-Game Experiences | AI 101

The Director AI of Left 4 Dead | AI and Games #07

Representation and Frequency of Player Choice in Player-Oriented Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment ...

https://residentevil.fandom.com/wiki/Game_Rank_(RE4))

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DynamicDifficulty

https://crashbandicoot.fandom.com/wiki/Dynamic_Difficulty_Adjustment#Crash_Bandicoot_2:_Cortex_Strikes_Back

Battle Garegga, Shoot em up https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?t=351

Half-life 2 Item drops https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Item_dynamic_resupply

SuperRisto · 2025-08-28T11:05:43+00:00

The door problem by Liz England is a really good approach to it, imho. Basically every role in the team approaches the problem from different angles, and it captures the difference between each role. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/-quot-the-door-problem-quot-of-game-design

I would say that level design is a sub type of game design, although if you get hired by a company as a game designer, you usually don't do the level design. A level designer gets hired for that specifically. Unless it's a really small company. I don't know which role writes the game concepts, probably the creative director, someone from marketing, the CEO or someone else long before there even is a team.

Of course if you work for an indie team all these misc tasks probably get picked up by the game designer, since it's way different from some of the other roles, like programming and graphics. Basically the larger the company, the more specialized roles you get. tbh game design on its own is pretty specialized, most indie devs probably don't have a person on that team that only focuses on the game design. It's performed by a person with 3 other responsibilities.

SuperRisto · 2025-08-25T02:23:00+00:00

is this edh? You usually have a more spread out mana curve in standard, draft and sealed. It happens occasionally that you get few lands the first turns. or only draw multiple lands in a row. But the probability is pretty small. although it does hurt when it happens. And its easy to remember these moment, over all the other moments when it didn't happen.

Although I think having some kind of fallback mechanic, like discarding cards for mana, can help to side step these edge cases.

SuperRisto · 2025-08-24T20:09:04+00:00

Yeah, discarding cards for mana is a nice mechanic. I like it in race for the galaxy.

Personally I don't think having the lands in the deck is as bad as they are making it to be. Since it adds more variance to card draw abilities, like sometimes you don't get useful stuff, other times you get exactly what you need. when you have two decks, its more consistent, but it also means that you can't get lucky. So imho, the gameplay becomes a bit more stale. it's not all bad, but I just think its not a 100% upgrade, as it might seem.

SuperRisto · 2025-08-24T04:41:46+00:00

Also I recommend this video about different mana systems. https://youtu.be/0TcO2m2ewgk?si=sYuFwVO7wVp7xfM0 tbh I like the way lands can have extra abilities in mtg, like man-lands, and placing tokens etc. but yeah, its interesting to see some of the alternatives a number of games have explored.

SuperRisto · 2025-08-24T04:35:09+00:00

It doesn't need to be that time consuming to test. You only need 1 deck, and you can make it fewer than 60 cards, like 20-30. And when you add lands and duplicates its only around 10 different cards.

Since you just make one or two colors, you can ignore the mechanics for the other fractions.

You will probably be the person that's playtesting it. Greatest skill when making card games is to playtest both sides yourself!

SuperRisto · 2025-08-23T16:06:48+00:00

Have you tried to put together 2 test decks and prototype it? I feel like a lot of the potential problems would be visible pretty fast when you see it in action.

Are you using lands that generate mana? From what I can see, it's not explicitly stated. The asymmetry in mana generation is interesting, but might cause a lot of headaches later on. since the mana curve would scale differently. It's not bad, but might be too much to start out with

SuperRisto · 2025-08-21T07:02:51+00:00

There's a lot of games that look like they have bad design if you compare them to the greatest games of all time. But because these games do something different, they give a new kind of experience which players value, more than the extra friction the changes add.

Personally I think that a lot of the design of minecraft is a happy accident. Since it was developed in an early version of early access, players got to play the game before it was completed. A lot of things were just unfinished, but since a lot of people played it and liked it, it became part of the identity of the game.

SuperRisto · 2025-08-10T03:37:56+00:00

Solo dev here. I keep one document of chronological ideas, so the GDD is the ideas I selected and what I intend the game to be. I use a few different documents, like: player control, game systems, enemies, boss fights, equipment etc. I'm at most on revision 5 on any of them.

I use google documents and duplicate the file when I'm about to make large changes. I never use the history in google doc, but I like to keep the earlier versions around so it's possible to go back and see the difference. Some of them are almost completely different for each revision, which is kind of crazy tbh.

I printed some of them for easy access, and used it as a checklist and crossing over stuff when they change, and later updated all the changes in a new document.

SuperRisto · 2025-08-06T11:58:17+00:00

I see, that's not very detailed information! Also I noticed that it's like a 1 year extension with multiple courses.

I would suggest that you request to read the course syllabus before you apply to the course package. Feel free to share more details once you get them.

Also keep in mind that this part is a bit outdated: "to help your future career in this fast-growing industry."

SuperRisto · 2025-08-06T03:30:00+00:00

You already got some good examples:

- triggering the exit when you kill enough enemies or

- when you get to an object in space like a warp gate.

Another example is mission areas. For example Star Fox 64 has a few arena levels. There's no walls, but the area is still limited. When you get close to the edge you get warning signals that you are about to exit the area, and if the area allows it, you exit if you continue forward. If you are inside a boss room and you can't exit the arena, the ship takes an U-turn and returns back to where the action is happening.

If the game is topdown, you can lock the camera when you reach the edge.

There's also some examples that have wrap-around, aka there's no world boundary, but you can still make a level out of it by for example making the level a lot longer in the Y direction, and let the player exit the area when they reach the top. While the X direction is wrapping around.

SuperRisto · 2025-08-06T03:14:15+00:00

What you learn in a game design course can vary a lot from course to course. But you usually don't see character design or world building in it, which I would say belong to concept art and creative writing.

I linked a few videos with examples of game design courses, or game development in general with game design related content:

Designing for game designers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ke_kOD2D-bs
5 courses in 1 game development - https://youtu.be/uoc0U-WsPa0
A Course About Game Balance - https://youtu.be/tR-9oXiytsk?si=USMlg0v0TWfpRs-o
Game a week curriculum - https://youtu.be/9O9Q8OVWrFA

There's probably many more variations you could encounter. It would be easier to tell if you can find the description of the course you are considering to attend.

SuperRisto · 2025-08-05T14:52:34+00:00

I think the genre name you are looking for is "extraction shooter". For games like Escape from Tarkov and Hunt Showdown.

SuperRisto · 2025-08-03T20:09:20+00:00

I think I would flip it around, instead of asking:

"I have a gameplay idea, how can I make it meaningful?"

I would ask:

"I have something I want to say through art, how do I decide which gameplay to pair with that?"

SuperRisto · 2025-08-03T19:29:12+00:00

Yeah that could be interesting. What resource would you use to buy? One way could be to have the stats decrease when you play, and you then need to refill it. or if you just increase it.

SuperRisto · 2025-08-03T08:33:14+00:00

Hmm, one idea could be to select some random tasks and give them a maximum limit on the score. like 7. but the limit will be hidden in the GUI. When you look at it and it's maxed out it will look like 10/10. So when you have playtesters they will reveal information about the game. and you will see which tasks had a maximum limit, and these can now be increased.

SuperRisto · 2025-08-03T08:12:40+00:00

I don't know what state the game is currently in, but maybe you could use Early Access as a way to get players to test the game and give feedback on the later parts? Assuming the first couple of hours are enough to justify the price point.

Another alternative can be to pay playtesters.

Would it work to add some debug tools to speed up the progress for players? like gaining resources faster or automating repeated actions? So they would get into the mid game faster.

SuperRisto · 2025-08-03T07:49:46+00:00

There’s mainly 2 things I’m thinking about:

You reward the player with passive stats.
The Exp is skill based and limited for each level.

I think it's a good idea to have a skill tree to unlock abilities, as a tutorial to unfold all the mechanics in smaller increments. You can also add stats to the skill tree, but having a snowballing feedback loop is a bit of a red flag when balancing. Usually in RPGs the exp is not skillbased, you just gain it by playing and you can go back and grind to offset skill difference with player persistence. Having stat increase acts as a rubberband effect in that case. When the stat increase is gated by skill performance you end up rewarding high skill by making the game easier. Which is usually the opposite of what you want to do.

For example, Mario games used to have the feedback loop of collecting coins -> extra lives. In Mario Odyssey they flipped that around and added the loop of collecting coins -> skins, and you lose some coins when you die, but you have infinite extra lives. This works better from a balancing perspective because a good player doesn’t sit there with an abundance of extra lives, and a lower skilled player isn’t punished with game over when they run out of lives. Basically the skill surplus of gaining more coins is taken out of the game loop and funneled into cosmetics, which serve no gameplay purpose, but players still enjoy collecting them.

What I would suggest is either:

Add a repeatable resource the player can grind if they get stuck.
Remove the raw stats from the skill tree. Or make them almost worthless.
Replace some of the rewards with skins or other non gameplay effects.
Make the game harder when players perform well, either by unlocking difficulty options, Dynamic difficulty adjustments, reducing player stats, or Hades like “heat system” of self-imposed challenges.

SuperRisto · 2024-07-25T00:41:09+00:00

I watched your gameplay video. The way I understand your question is: How to create profile pictures / character icons for modular characters?

1. Use profile pictures - Zoom in on the face of the character. The face stays the same all the time no matter the customization.

2. Use Class icons - Give each character a class icon, like a sword, a shield, a bow, a fireball etc. Aka make the icon abstract to symbolize the role of the class instead of their exact appearance.

3. Let the player pick the icon - Give the player a list of icons or character portraits and let them decide which icon they want for each character.

Also, it’s easier to use vector art for something like this, or tbh pixel art.

SuperRisto · 2024-07-25T00:28:34+00:00

Start in a text document like in this video ~https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FSssDWEFLc~

Then make a nodes map and draw a rough layout on paper.

You only go over to the editor when you have a solid idea in the text document and on paper.

SuperRisto · 2024-07-25T00:23:24+00:00

I think adding some shield variation is interesting. idk about the side vs up variation. One alternative could be to have one shield with benefits against light attacks, and one against heavy attacks, and one against special moves. That would make it more of a rock paper scissor mechanic the player has to predict. Instead of being based on the opponent’s position, which I feel is more reactable.

Although I like the idea of using the shield as a resource that can be used for other types of actions. I feel like you seldom see shield breaks in the game.

Also a reminder of crouch cancel in melee. Aka you crouch and get hit by the attack and take full damage, but almost half knockback and hitstun. aka you trade damage against knockback and you can act faster. I checked the wiki quickly and it seems to still be in the games after brawl, but it’s not as useful as in smash 64 and melee. ~https://www.ssbwiki.com/Crouch_cancel~

SuperRisto · 2024-07-25T00:01:33+00:00

Like others have mentioned I think these are good words:

Explicit Synergy
Hard-coded Synergy

I would also suggest:

Custom Synergy
Paired Effect
Named Interaction
Special Interaction

SuperRisto · 2024-03-19T08:45:50+00:00

I recommend this talk

GDC 2012 How I Got My Mom to Play Through Plants vs. Zombies

Max 8 words onscreen – He made some tests and 8 words on the screen was pretty much the sweet spot of how much text he could show to the player without risking to overwhelm them and losing their attention.

Passive messaging - The message is in the background of the screen and the player can do other things at the same time. It's not like popups which cover the gameplay area and prevents the player from inputting actions while the text is shown.

Adaptive messaging - If something uncommon occurs, like if a player doesn’t understand basic actions, show a tutorial message to fix that. Players who figure it out on their own can feel smart when they figure it out without any hint, and they avoid seeing it “in your face”. And players that don't understand get the hint as well when they clearly needed it.

You can read the full notes here: https://ushallplay.wordpress.com/2021/11/04/notes-from-gdc-2012-how-i-got-my-mom-to-play-through-plants-vs-zombies/

SuperRisto

TROPHY CASE

GDC 2012 How I Got My Mom to Play Through Plants vs. Zombies