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How to make better games (99.9% success rate)

Guide to making better games. Works just about as well as most hand sanitizers.
Yosi
Lv. 46
· 2 min read · 6189 views
  • Don't have a screen at the beginning that tells you a bunch of controls. Instead, show the controls to the player during the tutorial level or during normal gameplay. Otherwise players will forget that pressing Up makes their character jump.
  • Volume slider / button to save headphone wearers.
  • Add difficulty levels so even noob gamers can experience everything.
  • If the game is repetitive, give players some sense of how far they are in the game so they don't quit right before the epic boss fight that you spent 10 hours to make.
  • For platformers, add coyote time. Otherwise you will get a lot of similar looking feedback...
  • Make the thumbnail a gif to increase the CTR (click-through rate).
  • Leave feedback on a bunch of other people's games so they will feel obligated to play yours.
  • Include more screenshake than you need but less than what you want.
  • Focus on art instead of gameplay because games with bad art are physically unable to place top 10.
  • Adding leaderboards will make your game go up the leaderboards.
  • Don't use blindingly bright colors, or your reviewers might not be able see the screen when rating your game and will accidentally give you a 1 in Art.
  • The immersion category is a mysterious being.
  • Add support of lots of input types so the people who are getting their controllers fixed can still play your game.
  • On the same note, if you find yourself only clicking the "voice" input option, you probably made a grave mistake.

That's it for today. Hopefully reading these tips will make you a better gamedev ;)