Game Design lessons from the year 2020

Game Design lessons from the year 2020

ยท

6 min read

This year has been crazy, but we were blessed with a ton of great games, and we had the time to play a ton of great games and also had time to make really awesome games.

Here are personally, the game design lessons I learnt from playing games this year. As a game developer, I no longer play games for just entertainment but wanna learn stuff from them๐Ÿ˜….

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Fall Guys

  1. Keep it Simple and easy to understand
  2. You can make a genre more fun by going against some of its common tropes(here being guns and grenades ๐Ÿ˜‚ in the battle royale genre)
  3. Bright colours and cuteness invites all ages
  4. Give everyone a reward even for just participating(here being experience points)
  5. Filling up progress bars can addictive when there is a reward at the end of it
  6. Physics-based movement adds to the replayability and creates different crazy scenarios(other great examples are human fall flat, gang beasts and a mobile gem from this year,Gumslinger)
  7. The Grabbing mechanic is one way of encouraging bad behaviour in a fun way
  8. Sometimes frustrating adds to the fun(the pleasure in pain).
  9. Community engagement through social media is one marketing strategy to keep players engaged and still talking about your game

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Among Us

One of the giants of the games this year... We all thought at one time to make a clone or something similar to it...

  1. Keep it simple and easy to understand and readily accessible
  2. Using colour codes help keep it simple and also cute
  3. As physics can bring about a lot of replayability, social deduction makes playthroughs never the same, as people have different personalities ( A good example is Uno)
  4. Multiplayer that require a large number of people to cooperate and participate attracts a lot of Youtubers and Streamers cause of the content
  5. Putting people is chaotic situations is one cool way of bonding them together and bonding them to your game
  6. The game design lets players be smartly evil or a smart detective
  7. Character customization adds to the experience(which I believe is a common design knowledge)

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Minecraft

I was pretty late to the Minecraft lore, started this year ๐Ÿ˜ช but it was crazy fun.๐Ÿ˜

  1. Letting players be creative is crazy addictive and fun(Another example is Fortnite)
  2. A style of game design that lets players choose what to do and not follow a linear path can be hooking as a player choose their own fun and never have a boring time
  3. As much we are mostly gameplay focused, good lore and unanswered questions can be a great selling point(One good example from this year is Geshin Impact)
  4. Crafting is successful fun gameplay element that appeases to many players if well designed and streamlined

Other Cool Lessons

  1. Feedback loops that are auditory are really effective, example; the announcer saying "delicious" in candy crush after a combo and "frag" in frag pro shooter after a kill
  2. Slow-mo is crazy cool and very rewarding and also can be gameplay element(Some cool examples are Cookies must die,Balls?, Super Disc, Bullet Boy ).
  3. Creating a hard, insane challenge of a game is an excellent selling point, and players get hooked, and it's really rewarding when you overcome it( Good examples are Stick with it, Redungeon, most of the hypercasual market).
  4. Innovation requires implementation (ref. GTMK).
  5. Dual purpose design is one approach to make to well design game. ref
  6. As much as resource decay is an evil way of hooking your players, Idle mechanics( which means players still earn rewards even while being off game) is a far better way to engage players and keep them coming back. Funny how this year brought games where the idle genre is mixed with different genres, for example AFK Arena, Farm and Click, and Adventure Captalist

What were the game design lessons you learnt over the year... Feel free to tell me in the comment section๐Ÿ˜€. I remain The Awesome Mike and have a happy new year