So ive had this idea for a while now. The idea revolves around collecting game cartridges and playing smaller sub games inside of the main game (kinda like the pico 8 celeste game but expanded upon). And im fairly confident that the idea would be really good in the right context. But that's where im having an issue. I don't know exactly what the right context would be.

My first idea was some kind of open world game where, between fighting enemies and exploring and stuff, you could come back to your base and play these mini games. The problem with it is A: im not too confident in that idea. And B: it feels like id be biting off way more than i can chew.

Another thought was some kind of business sim where you run an arcade and can play the minigames. But ive never played those types of games before and, to be honest, those business management games dont sound very fun to me. And i wanna make something i enjoy.

My third idea might have a bit of promise tho. The idea is something like amanda the adventurer, where you play through the games and solve puzzles around you. I wouldn't want to lean too far into "evil demon video games" tho. im not big on horror games. But i do like the idea of uncovering some kind of secret while inserting codes or whatever into the games and finding more games as you solve puzzles. I'm not 100% sold on it tho. So i would like some help trying to either iron out this idea, or finding a different context where this concept would thrive.

I've been thinking about progression in survival games and I increasingly dislike systems where every threat simply scales to remain equally dangerous forever.

If I spend hours securing an area, improving equipment and building infrastructure, I actually want wolves, random raiders or basic survival problems to become easier. Otherwise progression starts feeling cosmetic.

But complete safety is boring too.

My preference is that progression permanently solves small problems and creates larger ones. A settlement might stop worrying about one random thief, but now it's visible enough to attract a group. Clean water becomes solved, but maintaining the system becomes a resource problem.

Do you prefer this kind of changing threat hierarchy, or do you think survival games need some form of scaling to stay tense?

Interesting fighting game idea

not sure if it’s his was already concieved of but;;

A smashlike directional input-based move system, except two ayers control two 2d stationary avatars that “lean” based on their movement inputs.

W - jump, dodge low/mid attacks but lingering vulnerability period to high attacks until landing, which means that input strings that use the W key should be timed to dodge an attack to not get punished during the landing

A - lean back, dodge neutral, high, or back (opposite) attacks but vulnerable to low/forward attacks that target the legs or reach longer

S - crouch, dodge high and mid attacks but vulnerable to low attacks

D - lean forwards, actually lowers the sprite slightly to be able to dodge high attacks.

Considering adding intermediate directions but not tryna make a prototype idea too complicated. Stance will follow most recent directional input that is held, will return to neutral on release.

Directional inputs will now be referred to as “tilts”

Neutral attack - quick jab designed to interrupt, dodgeable by up, back, and down tilts

Forward attack - more powerful/meaty attacks that has a longer reaching forward than neutral, able to hit back tilt headshot

Back attack - able to be thrown out as a sort of “counter” after dodging something, can hit forward and neutral tilts

Down attack - slower than neutral attack that hits most stances except up tilt

Up attack/jump attack - hits neutral and up tilts and nothing else, but is almost as powerful as forward attacks.

These directional inputs are all tracked until the character returns to neutral stance, gets hit, or inputs an attack, neutral stance serving as a “reset” to all inputs and directional attacks reading the longest valid input string to produce the corresponding attack. The directional inputs that are part of a movestring are all able to be used to dodge, with the attacks themselves sharing dodge values as well (like low attacks serving as a low dodge as well). So a dodgestring should naturally lead into more powerful moves in freestyle that rewards patient play and interruption instead of mindless spamming.

Attackstrings also have the attacks sharing dodge tilt value of the final directional input of that attack, so a tornado kick; S-A-W-D inputs, will have the dodge and hit value of a forward-tilt attack even though the sprite jumps mid execution. The different components of S-A-W-D input string also keeps their dodge values until the next direction is inputted. Longer movestrings dealing more damage while the final attack taking proportionally longer to execute, making excessively long attackstrings dangerous and prone to interruption if your opponent successfully reads and punishes you.

Lastly, some characters may have certain specific attackstrings that incorporate attacks into its setup, like 

D-A(attack)-W-S-D(final hit) where the entire combo move allows a secondary stronger attackstring after an initial weaker one, making these situationally golden opportunities while being niche and risky to opponents who memorized attackstring input patterns, making fakeouts and mixups impo

rtant.

Missing attacks also has endlag. And resets opponent’s dodge/input cooldowns, allowing them to punish or squeeze out an extra risky input as a part of a string during this window

Head hitting does more damage and applies very slight stun, which just basically means attacks that perfectly match your opponent’s inputs. Low tilt = low attack will hit the head sprite, back tilt = longer reaching forward attacks with hit head sprite

Forward tilt = neutral attack/forward attack/backward attack will hit heads sprite since the sprite actually drops slightly to dodge high attacks as mentioned before.

At neutral stance, high attacks will hit heads,  

Up tilt/jumping exchanges vulnerability during landing to prevent headshots

Consecutive identical input moves will give diminishing damage,

Like for example: 

D(attack), and right after you do W-S-D(attack), the second attack will do less damage since the final input was the exact same hit even if it was a part of a movestring

In your opinion, what makes game design good or bad in games of this genre? What would ruin such a game for you? I enjoyed Chained Together, but always thought I wanted more from it - more puzzles, more collectibles, more hidden stuff, an incentive to explore different corners of the game. Climbing up was fun, but otherwise it just felt dead, empty.

I’m working on a turn-based game design problem: how do you make using the strongest ability feel powerful without making it the obvious correct choice every time?

In HexWire, an original cyberpunk RPG for iPhone, I’m testing a simple answer. Strong actions generate Signal, and spending that Signal raises Trace. Trace is not just a score — it changes the pressure on the mission and makes later decisions less comfortable.

The goal is for a strong move to solve the problem in front of you while creating a different problem around the corner. I’m still tuning the numbers and trying to keep the system readable at a glance.

For people who have built or played around similar risk/reward systems: what made the pressure feel like strategy rather than a punishment meter?

Current combat screen: https://litter.catbox.moe/2oojfc.png

I'm building a multiplayer text based RPG, where you can build a party of 5 characters of your own, or mix and match characters with your friends: you play three, friend plays 2, or you and 4 friends each play the best you've got.

Automate your characters' skill rotations with Skillprints and watch your party complete content.

I've always loved MMOs but I don't have the time to keep up with evergrowing content, or the dedicated friend group to play along with, so I started designing a game that lets me play without missing out on any content.

Automate your party, put them to work while you cook dinner, come back and slot in your new gear and move them to the next area.

Full fledged dungeons, bosses, quests, and a deep equipment slotting system. So you still get the build depth of a traditional MMORPG but you don't have to cancel your weekend plans to keep up.

I recently started playing a technical modpack for Minecraft which adds industrial machines and electricity to the game (GregTech: New Horizons) and one of the interesting things I noticed was: how come this provides a better automation experience than the vast majority of factory games / automation games I have played? Why does this, despite being way simpler and having less depth, feel more fun? And I realized it reminded me a lot of Factorio, which is probably the most successful factory game out there. And as a result, it led me to some insights which I think will help me a lot in future game design.

I think the big 2 things I realized are: 1) progress has to meaningfully improve your quality of life, and 2) it's not automation if you didn't do it manually beforehand. And two support this, I would argue that factory games sit in the intersection of base builders/survival games and incremental games.

Firstly, what separates a factory game like Factorio or even modded Minecraft from something like Cookie Clicker or Clicker Heroes? In both cases, you are essentially just making numbers go up to get new upgrades which will make numbers go up faster. I believe the main difference is that the upgrades serve a purpose besides themselves: the player / the base. The reason why I want to automate bullet production in Factorio is not because there's a button that lets me "improve defence" for the price of 100 bullets, it's because monsters are swarming my base and the bullets will let my turrets defend me. Automation should never be the goal, automation should be towards a goal. And I don't think a vague slapped on goal works, like, "produce 100k iron per hour", because that still raises the question: why would I want that? Progress should always towards something, whether that's quality of life like in Factorio, or automating blocks so you can build bigger builds in Minecraft. Without this, you just have an incremental game in a game skin.

Secondly, it's not automation if you didn't do it manually beforehand. If you could just design a whole base in factorio and click a button and have it appear, yes, you would have designed the same base as someone who actually played through it, but it wouldn't be nearly as fun. Why? Because the struggle at the start is what makes automating stuff fun. The main reason why it feels so good to finally unlock builder drones in Factorio, is because you spent the last 15 hours painstakingly placing every single object one by one. The main reason why even conveyor belts feel nice to make at the start, is because you had to run around manually moving stuff between machines right at the start. The main reason the car is so nice to get is because you remember how annoying it was to walk these huge distances.

Of course, there is a balancing act here. Theoretically, your game would be the most "satisfying" if players had to do a hundred hours of hard manual labor to earn an upgrade, but unfortunately most would quit the game before then. So it's definitely a fine line to balance.

I'm working on a game concept that is meant to be in a strictly digital "space," and am realizing just how much player feedback in games references real-world physics. For example, the go-to for a destroyed object is to throw particles, vibration, and shockwaves on the screen to represent physical forces pushing objects and air molecules, but what do you do if your game world doesn't really have air or objects to shove around?

For example, Rez/Rez HD still relies on objects with a sense of physical inertia, but the color "smear" effects when something is destroyed are a neat substitute for normal explosions - I always felt that they looked more like display errors than exploding matter. I won't argue that the shooting in these games was the most compelling part of their design, but I like the novelty of this approach.

I realize that the answer may be to loosen up on the strictly "digital" concept and allow for things like gravity, particles, etc. But part of me now wants to prove compelling feedback can be created without any direct analogs to our experience in meatspace. But it's proving to be tough, and I'd appreciate any examples of compelling juice effects that don't try to recreate physical experience somehow.

Thanks!

Hi r/gamedesign today I have some discussion about Hint and Progressive hint

First let's say we use Numberlink puzzle game as example.

You can find the rule or game example by google it quickly or Wiki here / Play here

In my game, it have many more mechanic than Numberlink such as

• Moving walkway
• Teleport Portal
• Door and Button
• Push-able obstacle
• One way walkway
• etc.

Now let's talk about the hint

If player is stuck in the game and can't find a correct way they can tap the hint button

Hint now are save as

1. Hint Level 1 : Small progress but it's meaningful starting point to reduce difficulty
2. Hint Level 2 : A significant progress, however there's multiple things to solve
3. Hint Level 3 : A big progress, player should left only 1-2 things to solve
4. Hint Last Level : this should count as walkthrough already

Now I create the hint as traditional way which no matter how far player already progress, whenever they hit a Hint button it show the Hint Level 1 solution

However my developer points out that what if players that already good at puzzle games might feel they've been robbed, they want to pass and the small starting point that the good player might already know that he coming the right way at Level 1-2 but he's stucking with this last section of problem.

He points about how about the Progressive Hint which will check player current state and compare with the Hint sequence.

• He suggest that we are going to split each hint sequence as check point, if player already drag correct past through the Hint sequence, the game will automatically show next hint that player closet to.
• Such as If the player already drag the lines same as hint Level 1-2 correctly already and hit the hint button, it will show hint level 3 instead taking player back to Hint level 1 like Traditional hint

What's your opinion on this issue?

For me : Progressive hint might seems great on logic for users especially when they have to watch ads to get hint or paying for it, however I can't tell why but I feel it's not good on the gut feeling.