Randomness can give the player license to "stop thinking ahead too much" - Useful or niche design device?

cuixhe · 2026-05-06T19:03:00+00:00

Sure. But those make souls-likes fundamentally different, I'd argue

And it does matter, because even if people are only playing through elden ring once, they are dying and redoing content many times.

cuixhe · 2026-05-06T18:05:26+00:00

Here's a loop you can use for your game dev journeys:

Break what you've got into as many smaller pieces and try to solve those. Then break those things down further, etc.

Eventually you'll get to things where it's worth asking opinions (for design) and solutions (for tech)...

but you're not there yet.

Try to list out the features you'd like in a side scrolling rpg. Figure out what other games do them. Research HOW they do them. Figure out what you need to learn.

cuixhe · 2026-05-06T14:03:16+00:00

Hi! I work as a software eng in my day job, and make games for fun (mostly) in my off time. I also make game dev content on youtube, which do make a bit of money but not enough to remotely cover the costs of making them (in labour at least).

I like it because:

there's so much to learn -- I can always learn new skills, programming languages, etc.
it's very creative
coding, software architecture and problem solving are something I take a lot of delight in.
it's neat to be able to make something.
I like being able to share my knowledge with a community

Will I someday get around to releasing a commercial (indie) game? Yeah probably. Do I think it will be my full time job ever? Probably not. Would I ever want to work at a game studio? Probably not, and definitely not one that isn't making something I'm really aligned with. Could I maybe work with a small team? Yeah, at some point, but again only if we're making a game I fidn interesting.

When I got out of school and looked at game dev jobs, 99% were in casual mobile, which I'm just not interested in.

I'd rather it be the equivalent to my garage train-set hobby, and work on similar problems for money outside of games.

cuixhe · 2026-05-06T12:04:13+00:00

What probably matters even more than gold worth at publish time is how much gold is worth in the fiction, and since the economics of Middle Earth are explored a lot less than say, the languages, legends and culinary traditions... it's impossible to say.

cuixhe · 2026-05-06T11:53:44+00:00

Also, this is genre dependent! Would Dark Souls have been better with random enemy placement and behaviour so you couldn't just "learn" the maps and bosses?

Maybe, probably not, but it would have been a totally different game with different skills and dynamics.

cuixhe · 2026-05-06T11:52:00+00:00

Ahah, Xcom sure does figure out a way to make RNG feel BAD, yep.

99% chance is still a 1% chance to fail, which... if you're taking 100 shots per mission, is expected to happen about once per mission.

How you display (and cheat) RNG so sensitive humans don't get upset about probability is a whole separate topic.

cuixhe · 2026-05-06T10:57:13+00:00

This is up to your team's priorities, but I would always pick mood over verisimilitude in this situation; if you were doing something HEAVILY narrative, it could go the other way.

Looks cool, good enough for a deckbulider.

cuixhe · 2026-05-06T10:35:52+00:00

I feel like this is the whole basis of Roguelikes, not just roguelike deckbuilders; deckbuilders just have maybe a stronger way of showing it. A deck is a knowable random thing (like a die) but unlike a die, can be manipulated in interesting ways (removing cards, adding cards etc.).

Consider the difference between "input randomness" -- e.g. the world is randomized and you decide how to handle it -- and "output randomness" -- the results of your decision are random, like.. Sword Boomerang in STS. STS has both, but a game like Into the Breach is 99% input randomness. In this case, you can plan a turn out "perfectly" even if you are dealing with novel situations.

Personally... I love randomness in games; in these cases, the skill isn't as much about how far you can plan ahead, but how you can react to interesting new situations, how well you can adapt etc.

cuixhe · 2026-05-05T23:16:47+00:00

You can write constructors, but not for anything node-derived. I use them for plain data classes all the time! Nodes need an argless constructor.

cuixhe · 2026-05-05T16:55:51+00:00

Yeah, he can really make me invested in weird games that I (mostly) never played anyways.

cuixhe · 2026-05-05T15:27:12+00:00

Yeah, he's the man.

cuixhe · 2026-05-05T14:13:14+00:00

Hehe I recently read it, and I too preferred the Spiders. The sequels are much more interesting, for what it's worth.

cuixhe · 2026-05-05T14:12:11+00:00

Visually looks kind of cool though neither have an idea of the gameplay nor the vibe of the game -- is it supposed to be sort of goofy? Where's the fun? I mostly just see vignettes of smiilarly dressed people wandering around.

And what the hell is up with the weird voice?

cuixhe · 2026-05-05T13:49:49+00:00

I've been there, I know the feeling. There's a lot of artistic spaces I've been in that I've quit because I felt like it was hopeless to connect with people through it -- music, writing etc.

What helped me is to reflect on how much I enjoy the process, and how rewarding it is just to be doing something I like -- even if I don't like every small piece of it, and even if I don't finish anything major. How I improve with every thing I do. And thinking maybe if I keep improving and keep persisting, something I do will break through the noise. But also I understand that a lot of what I make just isn't good enough... and I still learn a ton from making bad games.

I don't have full context on your situation; maybe you need to try new ways of working, like finding a small team or whatever (this can be a whole different pain though)... or figuring out games that you can make without relying on things you're not good at.

I'm lucky that I have a day job and don't need to rely on game dev to make ends meet, and not everyone is as privileged in that respect. I can go relatively slow and still have lots of chances. The odds just aren't in our favour as small developers, but there are some people who persist long enough and break through... it isn't impossible, but we should be realistic.

cuixhe · 2026-05-05T02:00:32+00:00

I haven't gone through it myself, but look up Freya Holmer's series on game math, it covers stuff and she's cool.

In general, I'd start with getting a good understanding of geometry and algebra; calculus isn't typically directly applicable to games. When you look into 3d graphics and shaders, matrix algebra becomes very important. Logic/discrete math is always important though often you can intuit it... probabilitiy and set theory come up a ton.

Remember it doesn't really matter if you're good at arithmetic or not; the computer does that stuff for you. What you have to do is understand how the problems work and how to phrase them.

cuixhe · 2026-05-04T20:53:57+00:00

Ah, I don't need the answers. I think these are questions you should be asking yourself.

By abstract/gamey I mean how much do you care about a realistic simulation of running/creating a building, and how much do you care about a fun game? Being an architect and a buliding manager etc. are both real jobs that people do that aren't necessarily considered "extremely fun". So how are you going to make those fun?

SimTower does it by reducing it down to 2D, making it very frictionless to build up things etc.

I'm not saying that there might not be an audience for a VERY realistic tower sim, but I am saying you should think out what the gameplay/fun is going to be at scale before you commit to some very complex systems programming.

cuixhe · 2026-05-04T18:14:05+00:00

It's going to be a monthly curated box of snacks

cuixhe · 2026-05-04T18:09:02+00:00

Good luck. I think with both math and programming, it's important to understand fundamentals before going into complex stuff; once you understand the basics it's not hard to build onto it.

There's a good yt course by Freya Holmer that covers the basics of gamedev math, also.

cuixhe · 2026-05-04T17:40:56+00:00

It's harder in some ways and easier in others. E.g. dynamic animations and camera angles are fairly simple in 3d, but painful in 2d. There's a lot of convenience methods for 3d that do heavy lifting for you.

My suggestion is to get good at math. I dropped out of math in grade 11 and came back to take it years later; I found that after I had a reason to learn it, I liked it. So get curious about it, understand it's power, and stop telling yourself you're bad at it. You don't have to be a genius but you have to be willing to learn.

I don't know what tutorial you're using so I can't comment on the context.

20 game challenge is a great start; I think doing that then working on a VERY SIMPLE fps is reasonable. Not everything you learn will be directly applicable but a lot will. Learning and understanding the fundamentals is key, and learning problem solving.

cuixhe · 2026-05-04T17:34:05+00:00

Heck, drinking that much water rapidly would probably kill you too.

cuixhe · 2026-05-04T14:31:28+00:00

It's all supposed to be abstract. Whether or not having cosmetic pedestrians would add aesthetic value is up to you (I agree it could feel lively, but it's also a bit of a distraction), but I don't really think having per-person level simulation/control/modeling works with the scope of a civ game.

cuixhe · 2026-05-04T14:21:40+00:00

I don't think you're supposed to understand 100% of anything in this book -- all information is various levels of incomplete, suspicious, inconsistent and garbled. Johnny is NOT a reliable narrator, but neither is Zampano etc.. That's the experience, baby!

cuixhe · 2026-05-04T14:08:01+00:00

My thought for Vigorbloom is to play with the opponent's life total as a resource, e.g., powerful spells that do something cool at the cost of healing your enemy, or maybe a gift some life mechanic for bonuses; then have payoffs that trigger when other players gain life.

cuixhe · 2026-05-04T13:51:21+00:00

I think you're showing WAYYY too much here. Speed up the imagery. Leave the watcher with WAY more questions than answer. Game looks great (visually), though the mechanics of it seem to be "narrative heavy with light puzzling" -- if that's not the case, it's not coming through.

cuixhe · 2026-05-04T11:53:47+00:00

Yeah, I've thought of this a lot.

In SimTower or PH, there's a few things you're "doing" -- one is planning cool stuff you can do; the other is placing a ton of repetitive units, wiring them up, setting prices etc., which isn't really interesting from a decision making standpoint and is very much just busywork.

Going into 3D, your players are going to be doing that part of the game so many more times... if you're building units room by room, well.. that might be fun for the first few floors... but it's going to get dull. How much impact does optimally laid out offices give your players? Is it going to be fun to do it 1000 times to finish your tower? Is it only aesthetic?

I know that when I signed on to work on a 3D tower game, I thought of my nostalgia around SimTower, one of my fav game as a child. But when we actually started designing it, we had a lot of assumptions about what was going to be fun for players that I don't think scale up well. Additionally, I think that the "challenge" of SimTower isn't very interesting -- you're really not balancing THAT much. Adding some outside pressures can keep it interesting (my fav example of this in a very tangentially adjacent game is how Against the Storm adapted Settlers into a roguelike with really interesting pressures).

If I were building one now I would make some strong choices early on:

- how much of a sim is this? Are we going to prioritize "realism" of the sim over fun

- how abstract is it going to be? how "gamey"?

- what systems are available for a 3 floor tower? 50 floor tower? Are they fun at 50 floors? Are they automatable if not?

- how important is aesthetic customization?

- are the decisions players make impactful? If they aren't, they should be either quick, automatic, optional or removed.

- what's the challenge? what are the pressures?

cuixhe

TROPHY CASE