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Building games that can be understood at a glance

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Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#41

Post by jamesgeck0 »

megaman22 wrote: post #11
MaikuMori wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The continuous push to make everything easy (as in gameplay and also learning) is annoying. Not all games have to be simple. I believe games have huge potential for teaching problem solving and systematic thinking, but by dumbing them down were partially eliminating this. The ultimate example are mobile games. They optimized for profit by dumbing them down and adding addictive, simple gameplay loops. They also…

There will always be games with some depth out there - somebody is always going to be hacking away at Dwarf Fortress, or Gary Grigsby-type games. But, if you're building games on an input device as limited as a mobile phone, your options are sorely limited. It is frustrating when something that was on the grognard end of things gets juniorized; I've seen a lot of complaints in that vein about the last Paradox Hearts…

There are a lot of ways that a game like Dwarf Fortress could have a better UI without compromising the depth of gameplay.

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#42

Post by kirkules »

edmundhuber wrote: post #30

I basically spent this entire weekend playing "Into the Breach" so I feel qualified to comment on that game being identified as "visually well-designed". Here's one great thing about ItB that was not discussed in the article (probably for brevity!). When you're deciding what moves to take, the game will show you the effect of the move you're about to do. This is really handy because often your moves have knockback, o…

Would this be resolved for you if there were an option (hotkey or mouseover, like checking order of actions in a turn) that dimmed all other things and highlighted either 1) all enemy planned actions, 2) all environmental modifications like fire/smoke/floods/etc., or 3) all unit locations, friendly in green and enemy in red?

Otherwise I think there's a bit of growing visual complexity inherent in the growing actual complexity of the grid, and reducing it in some other way might hide from you information crucial to your next tactical decision.

I think the game's supposed to be pretty moddable, so I imagine this kind of thing might even appear as a mod at some point, if you don't want to do it for yourself.

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#43

Post by flixic »

amputect wrote: post #27
flixic wrote: post #7

I've designed and built a quite popular game called ∞ Loop ( http://loopgame.co ). One of the goals was to have no text in the game at all, and try to design it so that the "right thing to do" would be the first thing you'd try to do, to make it truly intuitive. We've sold the game and now it includes a tutorial with written explanations of what to do. In my view, the tutorial is unnecessary, because it's far nicer t…

Oh shit, I absolutely love Infinity Loop! I played it a bunch and got a ton of mileage out of it. It hits what in my experience is a very difficult to achieve balance of relaxing and engaging, and even though it's simple it never really feels repetative (meditative, maybe?). I played the pre-tutorial version and I found it highly intuitive and easy to get in to, I think you really nailed that aspect. Thanks for the g…

Thank you for the kind words, really wonderful to hear!

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#44

Post by flixic »

ghostbrainalpha wrote: post #33
flixic wrote: post #7

I've designed and built a quite popular game called ∞ Loop ( http://loopgame.co ). One of the goals was to have no text in the game at all, and try to design it so that the "right thing to do" would be the first thing you'd try to do, to make it truly intuitive. We've sold the game and now it includes a tutorial with written explanations of what to do. In my view, the tutorial is unnecessary, because it's far nicer t…

This is such a great game! It actually became my go to and helped me break an addiction with League of Legends. Do you mind letting us know how much you were able to sell the game for?

Very happy this filled your LoL slot. I hope it helped you relax (:

And sorry, I'm not sharing details about the sale, but I'm quite sure the new owner was able to turn quite a profit. He built an entire company around Loop, making around 10 new games.

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#45

Post by ryanx435 »

flixic wrote: post #7

I've designed and built a quite popular game called ∞ Loop ( http://loopgame.co ). One of the goals was to have no text in the game at all, and try to design it so that the "right thing to do" would be the first thing you'd try to do, to make it truly intuitive. We've sold the game and now it includes a tutorial with written explanations of what to do. In my view, the tutorial is unnecessary, because it's far nicer t…

Just installed it, played until level 14, then uninstalled because of the ads: they break the experience and destroy the relaxing effect.

Probably not your fault since you sold it, but just fyi that their are too many ads.

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#46

Post by notahacker »

jamesgeck0 wrote: post #39
notahacker wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cf Paradox's Crusader Kings etc., where you can start off with a tiny county with an army your larger neighbour can effortlessly stackwipe to avoid the issues of managing subordinates if you want, but if you don't read the manual to find out what all the options mean, you'll struggle to get beyond the tutorial never mind understand why people find it addictive (or buy any DLC...) And weirdly the mystery UX forcing yo…

The second paragraph here seems like it can be summarized as, "reading about things the game doesn't tell you about is good because you'll learn about other things that the game doesn't tell you about." What if the UI was good enough that it exposed some of those gavelkind inheritance implications?

It does supply you with warnings for stuff that might go wrong. It's just that there's a lot of things that might go wrong, may of which need longwinded explanations, and you're probably never going to love micromanaging all that stuff (never mind enough to buy shiny add ons giving you more symbols and options!) if you don't like reading manuals. And the whole point of differentiation from the Civilization series is to start off with an enormous choice of unbalanced real life historical scenarios which may need immediate attention rather than a blank slate to gradually build up. I mean, the UX is terrible in many other respects: but the first this looks like it's designed for people that enjoy complexity glance probably reveals more about the games than anything actually intuitive could!

Fair to say it's targeting a different market from mobile games where you see a screenshot of something that looks like Tetris crossed with Scrabble or Solitaire with poker hands and instantly understand the rules and what a good strategy might look like.

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#48

Post by flixic »

ryanx435 wrote: post #45
flixic wrote: post #7

I've designed and built a quite popular game called ∞ Loop ( http://loopgame.co ). One of the goals was to have no text in the game at all, and try to design it so that the "right thing to do" would be the first thing you'd try to do, to make it truly intuitive. We've sold the game and now it includes a tutorial with written explanations of what to do. In my view, the tutorial is unnecessary, because it's far nicer t…

Just installed it, played until level 14, then uninstalled because of the ads: they break the experience and destroy the relaxing effect. Probably not your fault since you sold it, but just fyi that their are too many ads.

Yes, yes there are. Nothing I can do about that, sadly. They really do break the experience and ruin everything I was going for with the design...

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#49

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

flixic wrote: post #7

I've designed and built a quite popular game called ∞ Loop ( http://loopgame.co ). One of the goals was to have no text in the game at all, and try to design it so that the "right thing to do" would be the first thing you'd try to do, to make it truly intuitive. We've sold the game and now it includes a tutorial with written explanations of what to do. In my view, the tutorial is unnecessary, because it's far nicer t…

> We've sold the game [...]

Ah, that explains why after an update a while back, I started getting notifications advertising other games. That shit earns an app an instance uninstall.

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#50

Post by flixic »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #49
flixic wrote: post #7

I've designed and built a quite popular game called ∞ Loop ( http://loopgame.co ). One of the goals was to have no text in the game at all, and try to design it so that the "right thing to do" would be the first thing you'd try to do, to make it truly intuitive. We've sold the game and now it includes a tutorial with written explanations of what to do. In my view, the tutorial is unnecessary, because it's far nicer t…

> We've sold the game [...] Ah, that explains why after an update a while back, I started getting notifications advertising other games. That shit earns an app an instance uninstall.

I’m very sorry about this. It’s not how I would do things — but it’s also not me doing things anymore.
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