Hi this is Mark Brown with Game Maker's Toolkit: a series on video game design.
This is an iPhone game called Random Heroes. It's a run and gun platformer and it's fine.
It exists. But it feels kind of limp and lifeless, like the video game equivalent of a cabbage.
It doesn't even really look much fun, right?
Now compare it to a game like Super Time Force and it's a completely different experience.
It feels alive and responsive. It pops and crackles, like electricity is surging through
your Xbox. It's just much more fun.
I think this is a good example of how one developer, Capy in this instance, has maximised
an elusive quantity in games that some call "game feel".
This is a mostly abstract, largely invisible art, but getting it right is essential when
making a great action or platforming game and it's something that players can immediately
detect as soon as they start waggling analogue sticks and jabbing at buttons.
It mostly occurs in the fundamental action of the game. It governs the second to second
play, and is felt in the very undercurrent of the game.
A good way to test for this is to think how does the game feel even when you strip out
the points, the story, the graphics, the music, and the clever level design. Even without
all those trapping, is your game still fun to interact with?
The Super Mario games are. In Mario 64, the plumber is such a fun avatar to control, with
his bouncy jump, his wall kicks, his triple leaps, his long jumps, and his stomach dives,
that you could lose hours just hopping around a blank room. And it's said that for the first
few months, that's exactly what Mario 64 was like as Shigeru Miyamoto fine tuned every
aspect of Mario's movement before making anything else.
The "game feel" here is about the friction and momentum and weight of Mario, and it's
the most important thing. In fact, the level design and enemies in Mario 64 exist simply
to facilitate Mario. The levels let players express his movement, and challenge them to
master his underlying move set.
Other developers have clocked this. Super Meat Boy, for example, feels fun at a primal,
kinetic level. But plenty of platformers are hampered by loose controls and stodgy movement.
Likewise, the best action games would still be fun even if you're just blasting enemies
in a blank room forever. But many others lack that vital energy.
When it comes to the fundamentals, there's not much I can do to help right here. It's
going to be completely different for every type of game, and I'm not sure that "be Shigeru
Miyamoto" is particularly useful advice.
But there are lots of little tricks, often used in the polishing stages, that you can
crib from great games to make yours feel 100 times better. And in the spirit of brazen
theft, I stole most of these from talks by Vlambeer, Cactus, and Grapefrukt. I've linked
to the full talks in the description below if you want more.
So. First up, is screen shake and Vlambeer is the king of this stuff. All its games wobble
uncontrollably when you fire a gun or hit an enemy or saw through a fish. It feels satisfying,
and provides instantaneous feedback that the player is touching the world.
Vlambeer also likes to pause the game for a split second when you hit or kill an enemy,
just to make those impacts more impactful. You see this in fighting games too - watch
how the action judders in Street Fighter, to really make those kicks hit home. God of
War does this also and most Zelda games do it as well.
To be honest, anything you can add to make it really clear that you're damaging an enemy
is worth it. I'm talking about making them flash white, get knocked back, spray blood,
change animation, or make a satisfying sound. It all provides useful feedback, and it improves
the game's feel .
Similar effects can make playable characters feel like they're really part of the world.
Like tiny dust particles when you hit the ground and recoil when you fire a gun.
And sound effects are key. Make them bassy and loud. A gun shouldn't sound like this…
It should sound like this.
You can use randomised sounds effects to avoid repetition, or steal the rising pitch idea
from Mario and Peggle to sell the tenuous joy of nursing a combo.
Next, be creative with your camera. In Luftrausers, the camera doesn't follow your plane - it
intelligently moves to frame the action and reveal nearby threats. And in Hotline Miami,
the camera juts out far in front of where you're looking to help know how your hero
is orientated.
And make stuff big. Really big. Make the bullets as big as your face like in Nuclear Throne,
make the explosions mini atom bombs like in Super Time Force, and make the blood spatters
into geysers of red goop like in Hotline Miami.
And Hotline Miami has a permanence that many other games lack. Bodies and blood sprays
stick around when you walk back to your car to give you a little short-term nostalgia
of the chaos you've caused, and make battles feel really hard won.
Ultimately, this stuff, which some call juice, is all about doubling down on whatever your
game is about. If it's about shooting, then make the guns kick and make the fire rate
fast and have the camera shudder with each shot. But if it's about jumping, give your
character friction and keep the camera stay still so you can land each jump.
Game feel is something that developers can spend months, if not years working on, so
I doubt you're going to find the secret to making your game feel fun and satisfying in
a five minute YouTube video. But hopefully there's something to take away here, about
making the fundamental action feel good, and making every lick of polish speak to what
the game is really about. Follow that advice, and maybe, just maybe, I won't have to play
so many limp and lifeless iOS games for my job.