Game creators worry about player understanding of game mechanics
15 posts across 4 communities in the last 60 days; 47% from r/IndieDev.
“I’ve been developing this multiplayer soccer game for quite a while now, and only today did I realize that telling players apart could become a real problem. The game is meant to be chaotic, with tackles, punches and general mayhem rather than realism. Still, its important to…”
“Hello everyone, I'm creating a CCG RPG game for mobile, where the main story is about a Goblin moving through a 100-level tower, trying to reach the last level to get a reward that's very important to him. So, as you understand, my game has 100 levels/zones, but it also has…”
“mobile arcade game, you drag a ball around an arena dodging enemies. There are five enemy types and originally they were just colour-coded difficulty tiers — green, yellow, orange, red, neon red. The problem was players couldn't tell them apart or remember what each one did…”
Multiple posts express concern among game developers regarding how players perceive and understand their games. One post discusses the difficulty of distinguishing enemy types in a mobile arcade game, leading to the implementation of names and personalities. Another developer seeks feedback on a 4v4 PvP game concept, questioning its clarity for potential players.
SOURCES (16)
“I'm thinking about bringing back an old multiplayer math game I made for mobile, but this time for PC. It's a bit like Scrabble, but with numbers and math operations instead of letters and words. My main concern is that the math part could scare…”
“I recently did some research on game balance for my company, QAping, and wanted to share something I found useful. When players struggle, it’s worth checking whether they understand and remember the tools available to them before changing the difficulty. Here's what I found: 1. Players might be taking on a harder challenge than you intended. When you design an encounter, you know players can dodge, interrupt attacks or retreat. But someone who remembers only attacking and healing has fewer w”
“I’ve reworked the phone mechanics in my game; hopefully, it’s better now. You previously gave a lot of sound advice. submitted by /u/Specialist-Hand-6580 [link] [comments]”
“Recently I was trying to replicate the classical arcade game Pac-Man. I treated it as a learning project so I wrote all the code by myself. Then I saw this PacBench on HN . I checked the one scored 100/100 by the author, and because I tried replicate the game myself, I could tell some subtle differences. However, although being different from the original game, the clones made by LLM are playable and keep the main features of the original game. For some one who has never played the original game”
“Hey everyone! I'm a solo developer, and after months of work I finally released my first Android game, Don't Touch Red. It's a simple arcade game where you dodge red obstacles, collect cubes, and try to survive as the game gets faster. I'd love to hear what you think of the gameplay. Any feedback is welcome! submitted by /u/Mickey-Tech [link] [comments]”
“I’ve been developing this multiplayer soccer game for quite a while now, and only today did I realize that telling players apart could become a real problem. The game is meant to be chaotic, with tackles, punches and general mayhem rather than realism. Still, its important to know who’s who on the field. From the start I rejected the idea of Rocket League-style team colors. But it might be the only valid option, even though I love that players can customize their characters with their own colors”
“I recently posted a trailer of my new game and the feedback that I'm mostly getting is that people don't understand why they're a hole, what the goal is, what damages them, etc. I thought it was pretty obvious survivor-like game but anyway, I decided to make a tutorial. I feel like I'm patronizing players with this, but what do you think of this tutorial? https://youtu.be/XZC8E24gjr0 EDIT: I Want a concept where you kill enemies 100% of the time no matter how strong they are. HOW”
“We're currently polishing the combat UI for Gumball Hero and would appreciate some feedback. We're especially interested in whether the health bars, damage numbers, and ability indicators are easy to read while several enemies are on screen. is there anything you would simplify or change? You can wishlist the game on Steam if you'd like to follow development: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3403690/Gumball_Hero/ submitted by /u/HeadCoinGuy [link] [comments]”
“This is one of our basic enemies and players will encounter it pretty often throughout the game. It simply gets close to you and attacks with its normal attack. The Elite version has more health, deals more damage with its normal attack, and also has an extra skill. With this skill, it can shoot electric orbs at you from a distance. submitted by /u/OkurYavuz [link] [comments]”
“This is one of our basic enemies and players will encounter it pretty often throughout the game. It simply gets close to you and attacks with its normal attack. The Elite version has more health, deals more damage with its normal attack, and also has an extra skill. With this skill, it can shoot electric orbs at you from a distance. submitted by /u/OkurYavuz [link] [comments]”
“My game is a flappy bird-esque game but instead of moving the "bird" you move the obstacles to shift them up (tap to go up, nothing and they go down). The game then has plenty of mechanics that give a twist to the genre. One of the requirement to unlock a part of the game is to cross 10 gaps and even tough i gave them an easy gamepaly and text tutorial 90% of the players can't cross the first gap or die after few. So i made the gap MUCH larger for the first 30 gaps, same thing happ”
“It’s a horror turn-based roguelite game. It’s a structure where you spend time using cards to attack the enemy and use turns—do you understand it? If the battle looks uninteresting or unattractive, what should I add? I want honest feedback! submitted by /u/Bot_Ta00 [link] [comments]”
“Hello everyone, I'm creating a CCG RPG game for mobile, where the main story is about a Goblin moving through a 100-level tower, trying to reach the last level to get a reward that's very important to him. So, as you understand, my game has 100 levels/zones, but it also has difficulty levels - 6 in total: Normal, Season, Hard, Brutal, Nightmare, and Impossible. Balance in this kind of game is very important, because I have hundreds of cards and many different builds a deck can have. So I”
“Hello there! We've had many people play the demo to our game, and a lot of people said our battle screen was very confusing to them. To be fair, we may have an audience that likes less. Pokémon and other monster tamers usually don't have this much info on the screen. Do you think our battle system is too complex or just for the wrong audience? You can get the demo on our Alchemic Beasts – A Creature-Collecting RPG by Yinyamina and Trexrell » Alchemic Beasts – A Creature-Collecting RPG by”
“mobile arcade game, you drag a ball around an arena dodging enemies. There are five enemy types and originally they were just colour-coded difficulty tiers — green, yellow, orange, red, neon red. The problem was players couldn't tell them apart or remember what each one did. Rather than redesign the visuals I gave them names and personalities. Lume here is the first one you meet: stationary, fairly harmless, "a nice guy who got in with a bad crowd." It changed more than I expected.”