Polish your game
Polishing a game is an essential part of development. After all, games are all about emotion. Shiny effects and great camera work can make your game stand out from the crowd.
Here are some great talks on the topic of game feel.
Polish your visuals
The art of screenshake
A great talk on how to beef up your camera work. It's chock-full of helpful tips and great fun. If you haven't seen it already go watch it now.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJdEqssNZ-U
Juice it or lost it
It's hilarious to watch how these guys take a boring break-out clone and make it into something entertaining. In the end, it's still the same game but wow, this is a prime example of what polish can do for a game.
Source: GDC 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy0aCDmgnxg
Indie Polish: Making the Most of the Last 10%
From the creator of "Thomas was alone" comes this light-hearted talk about how you can make a game about rectangles carry emotional weight. Sadly the audio has some unnerving high-frequency pitch, but I urge you, don't let that scare you away.
Quote of the talk:
Those of you who wanna hear about Polish game development. My friends, you have walked into the wrong room.
Source: GDC 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYBvYWf_dTg, https://gdcvault.com/play/1022080/
How much time to spend on polish (4:44 Rule)
This one is just about 4 minutes long but it contains a valuable lesson. If you have 48 hours to make a game then spend 4 hours on your game and the remaining 44 hours on polish.
I wouldn't take this rule too seriously but it definitely is a good reminder that polish should not be an afterthought.
Source: Nordic Game Jam 2016, Rami Ismail (Vlambeer), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPyYZjCQ0Is
Sense Of Speed in Racing Games
This one-minute video shows you five easy tricks on how to make your racing game feels fast.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JVM7mbVh6U
Tricks for speedy games:
- Increase the field of view (FOV)
- Lower the camera angle. The closer to the track the faster it will feel.
- Add particles and reference objects. Racing in empty space never feels speedy. That is until the asteroids are added.
- Add post-processing effects like motion blur or chromatic aberration. The game Thumber is a nice example of this.
- Add a camera shake (who would have guessed that)
Thoughts on visuals
The references above are about polishing visuals. Visual polish is undoubtedly an important aspect but one should not forget to polish the mechanics too. Even the nicest effect can only distract from dull mechanics for so long.
Especially in the UI the implementation is sometimes lacking. Anyone who played Skyrim on the PC will know what I mean. Using that menu was a real chore until Sky UI came along. But is this visual polish? I'd argue no. The icons are nice, the buttons animate smoothly. What's lacking here is the mechanic. It worked fine on a console but on PC players felt restricted.
Source: Nexus Mods https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/3863
There are games out there that work totally fine without visual polish. The old versions of Dwarf Fortress* or Minecraft* are good examples.
* These probably are cases of survivorship bias, but still, they prove that games can be very successful even if visual polish is lacking.
Source: Wikipedia (fair use), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dwarf_Fortress_embark_scene.png
If your game is all about mechanics then maybe polish can be neglected. However, it should always be a conscious decision.
Polish your mechanics
To the player, polished mechanics are not as obvious as visuals, yet they are no less important.
Forgiveness Mechanics
This video gives a nice overview of things like coyote time and other tricks to make a game feel responsive. While bad controls are not something that shows up in a trailer they are immediately noticed by the players. Don't be too strict with your controls.
Quote of the talk:
You could just blame the player. Or you can recognize the truth. Which is that people are inconsistent.
Source: GDC 2020, https://youtube.com/watch?v=HCnZhs-92j0, https://gdcvault.com/play/1026606
Why Does Celeste Feel So Good to Play?
In this video, Mark Brown from Game Maker's Toolkit gives a nice in-depth analysis of why the platformer Celeste has such snappy controls.
Source: Game Maker's Toolkit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yorTG9at90g
Asset Recommendations
I hope you liked the article. Here are some assets that may be useful to you. If you get one of them then some of the money will go towards funding this project. Thank you.