I'd say the Silent Hill games. I don't find a lot of horror movies scary at all, but Silent Hill makes me scared to go through it.

If you sit down in a bright room, play pop music, have friends over, it's really not that bad, the worst thing that can happen is you take damage. But when you're really into it, it's one really scary game for some reason.


Also the original Mafia; the game got you really attached to those guys, especially when they're fighting and doing stuff with you. And having it turned around later sucks.

You'll only get cliches with this, there's always a way out of the box if you think long enough about it. These are just a really obvious type.

Heck, read the actual Conan the Cimmerian stories. They're good fun, and describe the combat beautifully. Conan is not even really a berserker type when it comes to fighting, but that doesn't change how people view him.

You can get an honorable berserker too. Or a calm one.

Yeah, I mean, that's where I disagree. Pretty much every antagonist that I hate is someone who I can understand. An antagonist that I don't understand is usually just a plot hole. Even true when you look at it IRL.


E.g.
Antagonist kidnaps princess (for no reason) - no hate
Antagonist kidnaps princess to rape her. Or to sacrifice her for personal youth. Or because he's a creepy lonely stalker guy who dresses her nice and chains her trying to stockholm syndrome her - a little more hate


I think the most shocking antagonist I've ever faced in a game was in Live a Live, that final boss guy. He was a former player character, so you understood him perfectly, you understand why he's so angry and bitter. You'd completely sympathize with him, because you play as him before he became evil. He tries to kill off your other player characters, point out how they were also selfish and evil. You end up hating him because he's a fucking hypocrite. Also because he's tough to beat.

An article on that guy I found through google. (also has a lot of great case studies on hateable villains)

Very, very nice information for a character art noob like myself. I love how short it is and illustrates the point nicely. Bookmarked.

If you want to demonize an antagonist, make sure to avoid telling the story from their perspective.

Disagree somewhat. I think humanized antagonists are believable.. the ones who are plain evil seem shallow. It's a little different between games and other media - with games, the experience is personal. Everyone expects a movie to be scripted, but people hate it when games are scripted.

Make them too competent and it starts to seem like cheating.

I'd say the key to a good villain is to have the player understand them, but disagree. I think Lord Frollo from Hunchback of Notre Dame was the best villain ever made. You understood him perfectly, but he was just... wrong. You could sympathize with him, you can understand his love/lust (but he refuses to call himself lustful. He'd push your beliefs to an extreme fanaticism.

Traits like arrogance really help in pulling it off too, the kind of person who refuses to admit to being wrong. If you want to make them overcompetent, their Achilles Heel could be their arrogance, a refusal to do something any other way.

Or some could be just completely selfish. Like the typical capitalist, who destroys everything around him for a little personal gain. Make it a little personal, maybe have a little tax every level where the king takes like 30% of your adventuring bounty, and have guards around your area complain about how much the king takes.

Love these, especially since they're so short and explain themselves. Hmm... would love to apply them to game designs too, but one thing to keep in mind is that movies tell stories differently to games. Movies want to illustrate a story, and tell it within 2 hours. Games want to stretch a story over a week, ideally in 30 min to 2 hour bursts of gameplay.

A lot of these translate really well to games, though.

#4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

Perfect example of something that doesn't translate well to games.

#5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You'll feel like you're losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.

#8: Finish your story, let go even if it's not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.

Even more important in indie games than movies, especially with all the feature creep.

#6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?

I love this one. In the early levels, throw something that the character is GOOD at fighting, something that showcases their strengths. In later levels, give them an enemy that's not simply hard to beat via skills, but hard to beat because it's the character's weakness. Like if the character relies on flamethrowers, have water levels.

One thing I remember from high level AD&D campaigns was that past a certain stage, the heroes become much too powerful, and fights become dice rolling grinds. The solution: Make the enemies smarter. Trolls are vulnerable to fire, make the encounter in some explosive cave where the heroes die if they use fire. Vampires are burned by running water, so hide them in still water or a spell that freezes water.

#14: Why must you tell THIS story? What's the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That's the heart of it.

Also a very solid tip for games. What makes your game different? What stands out? That's your gameplay.

#15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.

Very underdone in games - too many cheesy, unbelievable, stereotypes. I think we all grew up with those NPCs who were just repetitive and were conditioned to think that it's what a RPG should feel like. When you make a NPC, just take 10 mins to empathize for them.

Antagonist hating is really easy with a MMO.

In most single player games, it seems scripted, though. Like I don't care what he does, it's all part of the story. It's easier to hate a reality show contestant than a supervillain in a movie because of this.

I think you have to humanize them somehow, make them believable as real characters. Then introduce something the player would really disagree with. You'd have to make it so it doesn't become scripted, like maybe have a really emo character who turns on you if you say the wrong things (like Myron in Fallout). I also hated Yoshimo in Baldur's Gate 2 because I trusted him! Gave him good stuff, put a lot of effort into leveling him up, then suddenly he turns on me.

Betrayal works well in games because you're putting effort into something and suddenly they betray your trust. Like maybe you can have a banker who borrows money and gives you tons of excuses when you ask for it back. Or someone who just kills off the best characters in your party.

Sengoku Rance (18+) did that really well.. some characters were hard to get, and the villains were downright brutal. The game actually told you that characters were meant to die, so you eventually stop savescumming and live with it. But you get really pissed when the character you spent half the game bringing up is killed.

Personally, I just get the design philosophy done. Like what it is, what makes the game fun, what are the designs that take higher priority.

Say, I have a typical action game.

Maybe I want it to be a gory game, so the focus is on ragdoll physics, explodey weapons, bloody animations, fine aiming.
Maybe I want it to be fast paced, so the design philosophy is on having limited time/punishing delaying tactics, easy enemies who don't delay, minimal cover, less hidden stuff to discourage player from exploring.
Maybe I want it similar to a bullet hell, lots of enemies, lots of baddies, maybe a little extra HP, lots of powerups, focus on movement.


You've got limited resources to this. Sometimes you get a design conflict. Getting the philosophy down at least tells you what to work on first.

the idea of giving "feedback" to "ideas" is a contradiction. you can't give feedback to something that doesn't exist yet

Yeah, basically this.

The implementation itself is what shapes it. You can have a really bad idea (like a real life simulator that's so realistic it includes pooping and pissing your pants in front of friends) with really good execution (like The Sims). Or a really great idea with poor execution (like Spore).

If you want people to feedback on them, at least give something that can be judged from reading, like a ruleset.

Can't judge a shooter from design doc, no matter how good the docs are. You can have a brilliant shooter idea, but if it lags or if the pacing is wrong, it won't be a fun game.

Or like the strategy thing can't be judged if it's good, because you've just basically designed a UI with no hint of the gameplay.

IMO, go ahead and prototype these. If you get excited at the thought, you've got a good idea. If you get bored and decide it's not worth the trouble, you haven't found any gold just yet.

love between a (wo)man and a muddy plant

the life and thoughts of a cloud that has been made sentient by nanobots

a rogue brain cancer cell who eventually created a revolution inside a good person and then turned that good person into an entirely different other slightly less good person using the power of cancer. this new cancer brain goes on a spree enjoying his freedom, having sex with prostitutes (he created a penis in the brain using cancer cells, but it didnt last so he had to call prostitutes who he trick into having sex with cancer), he binges on soya milk, gambles, eat lots of food, and later on gets fat and realizes that all he has is the body he once overthrew and destroyed and feels sorry, and decides to make lots of money which he donates to cancer societies. ironically and tragically, this creature later dies of cancer.


In other words, there's too many ideas untried. 90% of them are crap.

Oh, and I find from experience that creating something completely new and fresh just doesn't appeal to people. People tend to go from one genre to another slowly. Sometimes it's another take on a favorite genre.

Depends what you mean by first game

First thing I coded was some dice rolling game using tutorials from a BASIC book (You hit, do 126 damage! Enemy misses you!) Was 5 years old, should've had a major games company by now.

First thing I modded was some "football game" similar to Pong, where the ball bounces between two characters, including an "AI" that finds good angles to bounce the ball into the goal.

First thing I designed all by myself and did custom graphics for was some action RPG where two guys hack at each other. Was actually fun for its time, pretty good given the technology (klik and play), just poor presentation. Actually had around 6 people email me telling how much they liked it, but it's still going through 12+ years of feature creep.

First actual 100% "completed" game is some troll game, plays similarly to Space Invaders. Did it as sort of a 'fuck you' to my habits of overdetailing stuff. Apparently it's still linked around and archived on the Internet, even has some front page highlights embarrassingly enough.

First serious game. Was on Softpedia for a while, but I guess nobody downloaded it

Programming is like learning a new language, I'd say it "clicks" only when you figure out what the hell you're talking about. Chances are that you didn't learn your first language by some teacher or book, you picked it up by just imitating, repeating, and babbling until you 'hit' a few words right and people started understanding and getting excited.

Learning to program is quite natural, literally anyone who can talk can learn to program, but because you're used to teachers and books, it can feel a little odd.

I'd say learn the basic stuff first, find out how to do things. Don't be too obsessed with writing perfect code, don't worry about programming techniques just yet. I just learned PHP, which is a rather easy language; it took about 2 months full time to find out how to 'do it right' and not stare at the screen wondering what to type.

Once you can "fluently" read and write code and don't have to refer to a dictionary every day, you should start learning proper technique.

For pretty much all freemium android apps I've tried so far, there hasn't been a single one where I felt that I wanted to buy something in-game. Probably because none of them has been all that great.

Zombie Cafe did it fairly well. Like, you could buy a celebrity or sumo wrestler zombie with money, or just use more mundane zombies for free. It helps you advance a little faster, but the game is already fun enough at the current pace, just that you might want to compete with someone and show off a bigger cafe.

I'm not that much a fan of Facebook games where you log in every day to click something then exit, but on a mobile, those kind of games are actually quite fun.

What's IAP? In App Purchase?

The freemium models that work best, IMO, are those that charge for things you don't need. Or maybe bits of the grind that you don't need to win. Virtual luxury items can sell quite well. Once you can pay to win, the system fails.

Personally, the only freemium model I've paid for was Trophy Manager - where paying does absolutely nothing (or at best, like a 1% improvement) to your chances of winning. But by paying, you unlock (larger) logos, forum smileys, friendly tournaments, multiple teams, analysis tools, autobidding (which also adds an in-game fee), that sort of thing. A lot of people join for a free game, but after 3 or more years in the community they end up buying something just for the sake of it, and many have clicked on over $10 of ads. They make a hell lot of money on multiple teams too.

Of course, the more profitable ones are the ones that you pay to win, but if you're going to be doing that, you might as well stop selling games and start selling cigarettes.

I really hate scrolling text. I've always assumed it was some kind of way to show off the dialog engine rather than be anything useful.

Most of the time it's because it's much too slow, and reminds me of those people who drone on in political speeches. If you can pace it to the rate at which someone would talk, like faster or slower based on how excited they are, it would be quite awesome.

And sometimes you want to just skip the text because you don't give a damn about the story, and scrolling text means I'd have to press a button twice to do that.

It makes it feel more interactive when you have to press a button each sentence instead of sitting back and watching.

I like sitting back and watching, it's a lot less tiring. If I wanted interaction, I'd play the game.

Thanks! A lot of really nice stuff to look through here.

Basically just learn colour theory.

Tried to, but most of the color theory articles that appear on most searches are basically "these are common color schemes, but it's up to you what looks good". Not really much help; thought I was missing out on something.

Sounds like your searching turned up some pretty crap results. Yeah, you're missing out on actual colour theory.

In addition to Bones' links I'll supply this. The sections relating to colour and light will probably help you a lot.

Well, I found stuff similar to what Bones linked. What I meant was that yeah, they go through stuff like analogous, complementary, warm cold colors, tones, shades, etc. But I haven't found any that say what to pick. Nothing says why I should pick like a triad color over analogic.

There are a few good notes like "triad is easy to work with" and "complementary is hard to read", but other than that, no actual usage tips.

Would be interested in seeing something like what color to pick for foreground/background, what's good for text, or things like picking a proper nature/dark/happy palette.

I'm not sure you're disagreeing with me.

The point I'm making is that abstract games are less fun than non-abstract games.

Not really meant to disagree either, but it's an interesting point on what makes realism fun.

I don't like the health system. But it works.

Like with a RPG, you want the focus to be on the storyline, on training and building up strength and power to beat someone. The health is to abstract out who's got the strength to win.

Or a beat em up, you want the focus to be on well beating up; the health is a decider on who's the most successful at beating up.

There are better ways of abstracting it out. Like on some RPGs, a body part HP system works better if you want to simulate arms getting chopped off and the like. But JRPGs focus on story not combat, so the abstraction works. Or for beat em ups, sometimes it's unrealistic to have someone die to a small flick, but sometimes it's gameplay to taunt by using the weakest possible move to finish someone off like that.

I really don't mind either resolution just as long as a game supports it natively. Hate seeing games squashed up because they don't want to support both.

By focusing merely on rules and by ignoring how these rules relate to real life, you're essentially reducing games down to problem-solving, which is boring on its own.

Problem solving on rules is essentially why people video game RPGs. You have a set of rules; you want to make the most powerful character based on those set of rules.

Also why realism is fun too. I like wargames because you can pick up a standard RL war manual and apply real theory to win a game. Or similar with grand strategy games. Or why I play browser games, so that I could apply statistics and interpersonal communication theory to online games. You're applying real problem solving methods to a simulation, and that's fun.