Harness just the right balance of randomness and determinism to make something special and truly engaging.
If you haven’t heard, open world video games are all the rage. Again.
We’re not talking about Minecraft, Elder Scrolls Skyrim, and GTA 5 of the early 2010s. The new games on the block like Valheim, Spider Man: Miles Morales, and Cyberpunk 2077 would like to have a word with you. Heck, we even have an open world Pokemon game coming in the form of Pokemon Legends: Arceus. We can’t ignore it anymore — open world games are back.
But what exactly is an “open world” game? There are many schools of thought, but at the end of the argument…
And the genre was assumed to be all but dead and oversaturated. What did they do right? How did they defy the odds where others failed?
If you told me that indie games have no chance in 2020–2021, I would laugh you right out of the room. Looking at the past year, indie games have rocked the boat and then some. From Fall Guys, to Among Us, to Rust’s resurgence in popularity, indie games are far from dead. The “Indiepocalypse” as it were is far out of the mind of PC game developers.
Iron Gate Studios, the developers of Steam’s fastest rising game this year, would have to agree. Started by Henrik Törnqvist and Richard Svensson, the Swedish game studio has been working hard on their…
To deliver on your vision, you need to come to terms with what you’re capable of creating.
Independent game developers truly have it hard. Whether you are flying solo or work in a small team, there’s always hurdles to overcome. Unless you work at a major studio that is geared towards making your dream game, you are likely not seeing tremendous progress on your big passion project. Why is that?
As I present some reasons why in this article, maybe one, two, or even all of them resonate with you and your team. Heck, nearly all of them resonate with me! The key to uncovering and managing a pain point is by planning the solution. …
Just a few hours of time will help you implement changes that make your game more fun, interesting, and addictive to play
If you have been making games for years, or have just started, take a look at some of your first creations. When you are just starting out, your projects will lack depth and interesting mechanics — or sometimes be downright unplayable.
What makes a game interesting and fun? What makes a game a hit instead of a flop?
Sometimes it is a matter of when you release your game — think about the hit game Among Us, which has raked in millions of users, and dollars. …
Test your mobile game projects on your PC, and get the Camera, UI, and game feel just right.
How many smartphones have you owned in your lifetime? Have you ever had to worry about whether an app or game would render well on your new phone? Or if your device resolution is supported by your favorite game?
Of course you haven’t — it’s the developer’s job to figure that out for you!
Unity game engine has been around since 2005, but only in 2019 did they release the Device Simulator feature as a preview package. As the name implies, Device Simulator allows you to preview how your game will look on multiple devices without all the hassle of…
CODEX
Take Twitter by storm and mobilize your audience to play and make content for your game with a single method.
Video game developers on Twitter use the platform in a way that is very different from your average social media denizen. The core value add of Twitter for game devs is to attract eyeballs on their game project, find their prospective target audience, and wow them with the most eye-catching visuals possible. Tags like #screenshotsaturday and #indiegamedev and #madewithunity help developers get the word out about their prospective hit game.
This formula of posting an attractive screenshot or gif with the relevant tags works quite well — but what if I told you there was more you could do? What…
Among Us in on its way downhill and fast — unless Innersloth can make some smart changes, and fast
The game Among Us reached unprecedented levels of success in the year 2020.
If nothing is done, it will hit a rock bottom low in 2021 and only pull mediocre players and viewership for the rest of its life.
Among Us, the online multiplayer social deduction game that took young people by storm in 2020, is not looking so hot now in early 2021. The previously recorded 700,000+ viewers it once pulled on Twitch.tv is now down to a dozen thousand. Twitch viewership has become a barometer for success recently, and it is easy to tell that viewers and streamers…
Track health, mana, timers, cooldowns, and more by making health bars for your entities in Unity. Let’s look at two methods.
Oh no! Your health is low — find a health potion, gold coin, or med-pack!
Almost every video game has an abstraction for health, and consequentially a means of displaying it. Even the least gaming literate people know what a health bar is — you know, that menu UI item at the top of your screen that shows how much health, or mana, or whatever else you have left.
Putting the debate of whether health bars are overused or not aside, if you do decide to implement a health bar, you need to make sure it appropriately conveys what it…
CODEX
“Games as a Service” is having its start on Youtube and Twitch, but there is much more under the surface of true distributed gaming
The Beginning of an Era
The year was 2014, the place was Twitch.tv. The popular Amazon-owned video game streaming website had a very unique channel: “Twitch Plays Pokemon”. TPP, as it came to be known, had a very simple premise — the chat was to play the classic GameBoy game Pokemon Red. Yes — all the viewers of the Twitch channel had to play through Pokemon Red collectively, typing in their desired inputs one button at a time.
And after 16 consecutive days of gameplay, they won. Not only did they win the game, but they also won a spot in the Guinness Book of…
Proving once again that a nostalgic premise, love for the fans, and an original thematic upgrade is a recipe for indie game success
If you are a fan of nostalgic-feeling games reminiscent of the late 90s Flash game boom, then you may have already heard of Friday Night Funkin’. The small indie game has gained a modest audience since November 2020, due in part to being a fun, free game. But to fully understand how Friday Night Funkin’ gets its gameplay and execution just right, we have to take a trip back in time to the year 1998.
The Dynamite Rave of ‘98
Back in 1998 when Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) was first released, games that required physical exertion with full-body controls were in their infancy. …
C. James
Freelance game designer / developer. Full stack developer. Board game geek and cat tamer.
