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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

#51

Post by megy »

> - Involves huge Mechs and giant city-sized bugs (the word mech is literally written on the screenshot)

>- Is turn-based

>- You have a number of units.

>- These bugs are doing something bad to the cities and tanks.

>- Things are exciting and literally on fire

>- The kind of tile you are standing on has a tactical effect (advance wars-style)

>- It's science fiction and involves TIME PODS (also literally written on the screen, these guys are geniuses)

I get none of this from the screenshot, it looks like a huge mess

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#52

Post by slavik81 »

megy wrote: post #51

> - Involves huge Mechs and giant city-sized bugs (the word mech is literally written on the screenshot) >- Is turn-based >- You have a number of units. >- These bugs are doing something bad to the cities and tanks. >- Things are exciting and literally on fire >- The kind of tile you are standing on has a tactical effect (advance wars-style) >- It's science fiction and involves TIME PODS (also literally written on th…

Into The Breach is readable because it looks like Advance Wars[1] / Fire Emblem[2] / X-COM[3]. I'm not convinced there's much more to its understandability than familiarity with the genre[4]. But, making the familiar look familiar was definitely a good move. The people who loved those classic games are the people most likely to buy another. Having the inspiration be visually obvious is a good marketing strategy.

[1]: https://www.mobygames.com/game/gameboy-advance/advance-wars/... [2]: https://www.mobygames.com/game/gameboy-advance/fire-emblem/s... [3]: https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/x-com-terror-from-the-dee... [4]: I saw this screenshot a few days ago and thought it looked cool. I basically only understood: "has spider tanks", "plays like Advance Wars", and "has decent production values".

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#53

Post by fjsolwmv »

flixic wrote: post #50
Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But it is how you do things. You took $ in exchange for letting that happen. That's your right, but you shouldn't pretend that's not your responsibility, unless you are offering refunds to anyone who is now dissatisfied.

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#54

Post by TangoTrotFox »

nkrisc wrote: post #40
TangoTrotFox wrote: post #21

As a counter point here, there are an immense number of articles on "good" game design. But the problem is that you'll have a million exceptions in games that do phenomenally well breaking all these notions, and a million games that flop abiding all of them. Really I think the point is that games are more of an art than a science. The regular inability of companies to replicate their own past successes should itself…

This isn't about game design (rules, mechanics, balance, etc.), it's about design of GUIs for games.

The interface is very much part of the design of a game!

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#55

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

The lead programmer for itb stated the UI/UX and tutorials were the most difficult part to make

I played every game the author mentioned minus some of the small mobile /webapp games mentioned later.

I found this article interesting though, I had never considered how similar designing a poster ad in photoshop or building a catalog in indesign is similar to building UX/UI in video games or even UX/UI in webdevelopment. Things like simple intuitive animations, color schemas, font choices, element positions, ratio sizing, etc. They are really all the same thing. At the end of the day a good UX/UI design is really just a well thought out teaching style.

A bad teacher/tutorial is like a bad UX designer, vice versa for good teachers/tutorials.

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#56

Post by MattRix »

fjsolwmv wrote: post #53
flixic wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But it is how you do things. You took $ in exchange for letting that happen. That's your right, but you shouldn't pretend that's not your responsibility, unless you are offering refunds to anyone who is now dissatisfied.

It's a free game, so I'm sure he wouldn't mind giving refunds ;)

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#57

Post by MattRix »

V-2 wrote: post #47

What's with the chess pieces setup?

It's his game Really Bad Chess. The game is similar to a normal chess game, except that instead of the AI getting harder as you advance through the game, the AI gets better pieces (and you get worse pieces).

It's a fresh take on chess and is well worth trying. You end up ranking to a level where every game is challenging.

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#59

Post by MattRix »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #21

As a counter point here, there are an immense number of articles on "good" game design. But the problem is that you'll have a million exceptions in games that do phenomenally well breaking all these notions, and a million games that flop abiding all of them. Really I think the point is that games are more of an art than a science. The regular inability of companies to replicate their own past successes should itself…

The article is about the area of UI design, which is part of a game's design but not the entire thing. It's entirely possible for a game to do well despite having a bad UI, but it would be foolish to assume that it did well because of the bad UI.

If you're arguing that no UI can be better or worse than any other because it's all "art", that is absurd.

Re: Building games that can be understood at a glance

#60

Post by otempomores »

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…

One thing often I ignored is the learning by example of valve fame. In a complex situation avscripted ai actor will do something stupid to explain the new rules. Stay of the sand.
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