Creating games and fun experiences is my passion!
I am a fast learner who self-taught programming, modeling and animation and successfully published two mobile games on google play store in 3 months.
I do and love anything related to games and game design.
Updated: Jul 26
I always find it amazing that sports are so simple, yet people never get tired of watching and participating in the same sport every day. Is there anything we can learn from sport and apply it in game design?
Sports are simple and fun to play, but why? Do we have similar examples to compare in video games? Let's take a look at the long-lasting classic Mario and Counter-Strike.
While both games have simple objective and fun to play with, counter-strike has much higher repeating value. I used to play CS day after day but I wouldn't play the Mario game for more than 10 times. It doesn't take long for me to understand that simple objective + competitve is the key for a long lasting game that people will always find it fun, just like sport.
Both Counter-Strike and Dota 2 have simple objective and competitive gameplay. Counter-Strike still gain popularity after all these years while Dota 2 play base gradually decline due to more heroes and item system added which makes the community harder to catch up.
How simplifying the game design makes my game run faster and more fun!
This is the main game mechanic for my game Karate Master 3D. Since the game was meant to be a hyper-casual game, my main design concept was "Satisfaction". Player has to break as many bricks as possible to gain the black belt and the title of karate master. The 3 designs above are the hit indicator for perfect combo. Design 1 was the original, it was too colorful and difficult see when there are many bricks on the scene. Design 2 cost a lot of performance speed since the computer have to generate random space and calculate multiple touch detection. At the end I reduced the hit marks to randomly spawn white mark for perfect hit and black mark to avoid. This change made the hit mark more obivious, clean and self-explanatory, while increasing the challenge of player's reflection and focus. Design 3 has the best performance, visual and clear objective campare to other design.
"I look for verbs that nobody used when I design games." – Satoshi Tajiri (Creator of Pokémon)
After watching an interview with Satoshi Tajiri, I have learned that design game concept from a keyword was such a wonderful idea. Developing from keyword can lead to unique mechanic, focused depth and more easy to brainstorm interesting idea to build up the game. We can use any keyword we can think of to design anything. For example, pokemon was created with the keyword "exchange" when the gameboy link was released. Satoshi came up with the idea of Pokémon from his childhood memory of catch and swap beelte with friends. The famous anime "Gurren Lagann" was created with the keyword "evolve", the team explored the idea from evolve>possibility>DNA>spiral which leads to the signature design of using drill as weapon.
"Evolve" was represented as a drill to implies that human has infinite possibility and able to achieve anything
Game Designer can start the design process from a simple keyword, then decide how to represent the keyword as a game.
I couldn't finish the tutorial in the latest Nobunaga's Ambitious and closed the game in 5 minutes because there were too many buttons and everything is clickable on the screen. Player are free to do anything at the beginning and the tutorial shows up when you clicked something for the first time. This is how I was completely lost in this game. Complex control can makes player avoid your game even if it has the best content in the world.
Although I praise a lot about simplicity, complex is not necessary a bad thing. I would say "Simple on mechanics, complex on details", we can gradually provide more options for player to acheive game objective based on simple game rules. Even Pokemon has a super complex type chart that I can never memorise. I believe that the good balance of simplicity and complexity will result in big successful game.
If I were designing a new game, I would definitely make the control as simple as possible with minimum tools, then gradually introduce new tools and system to intensify the gameplay experience.
Simple ≠ Plain. Game is much more enjoyable when it has clear objective and simple control so that player can obtain satisfaction from achieving goal without being bothered by complex design.
Here are my principle of game design:
In conclusion, make it simple! Everyone loves it.