Dutch Game Garden
10 HN recommenders · recommended in 11 months, 2014–2025
44:10 · 386K views · Dec 16, 2013
Vlambeer's Jan Willem Nijman shows how to make an action game feel great by stacking small effects like screenshake, recoil and particles onto a basic shooter. It was presented at INDIGO Classes 2013.
A perennial recommendation for anyone learning game feel and juice, praised for showing concrete steps that turn a bland prototype into a satisfying game.
13 comments from Hacker News
Once I gave this sometime I actually enjoyed the concept quite a bit. I think it's a novel twist on the bullet hell genre, and I'm a sucker for single button/input style games. I'm playing on a mouse, specifically a Logitech G502 that I can "unlock" the screen wheel to be almost frictionless, which to me feels like the right meta for a game like this. Couple constructive criticisms: - Is there a pause button that I'm missing? If not, add one, I want to actually play this more but I need to be able to take breaks - The beginning is too easy. I'm biased as I like difficult games that encourage mastery, but I found myself dying early on runs because I was getting impatient with how slow the early progression is - I haven't played enough yet to know whether monsters eventually come from the top, but eventually they should, it would greatly increase the difficulty curve - Hitboxes feel a little meh, and don't seem to match the sprites - If there's sound, it wasn't working for me, which leads to... - Pump up the juice. You've got a great core loop, but you need the juice. One of my favorite game dev talks of all time would be perfect for you to watch and iterate with ( this video ) - Monster diversity. Again, maybe I didn't play long enough yet to get to newer monsters, but from what I can tell the only diversity is their looks, health, and approach angle. Monsters that are faster and incentivize different movement, or that shoot back at you, or blow up after shooting so you have to a
Ultimately pretty shallow. This is more an exploration of how it feels to make a "sticky" game rather than how to actually make a sticky game. I certainly don't have any expertise or deep insight but I will say that one of the best videos I've seen on this is "The art of screenshake" by J. Nijman of Vlambeer [0]. There, he walks through what's a very basic 2d sidescroller shooter and adds in effects until it looks like an actual fun game. The idea being that layering feedback and effects so that every aspect of the game becomes more fun to play. It sounds like this podcast was focusing more on Hearthstone and Marvel Snap, both games which I haven't played but are more strategy and luck oriented than the kind of games Vlambeer makes. I think one of the insights there is that there's a non-commutative aspect of the game that allows for different strategies based on context. For example, A > B, B > C but C > A, like in rock paper scissors, or some of its generalizations [1]. I think this is what Magic the Gathering did with each of the colors. Maybe the keyword here is "mixed strategies"? Nijman's video highlights, to me, the importance of polish and how we basically understand that many core mechanics are fun and so don't need to be innovative if you add in enough polish or support around it. One other thing I'll mention is that A. Bruce who developed Antichamber had a GDC talk about his process of development [2]. One of the interesting points he made was that he got it in fro
> vlambeer, if anyone knows them I absolutely love their "art of screenshake" lecture. this video It really shows how there's a very high ceiling for polish and _feel_ when it comes to interactions. "Screenshake" is something that I'm sure a lot of people might look at and say: "oh, that would take 15 minutes to add", and if you're just talking about shaking the screen a bit, absolutely! But if you want to make the screenshake _really_ communicate a feeling and an emotion, there's so much more you can do.
For me, the "owl" was all the polish and game feel. "The art of screenshake" by Jan Nijman of Vlambeer [0] was what helped fill in the steps to "making the owl". I think most people with reasonable know-how can make a basic game, whether it's asteroids, flappy bird, breakout, etc. For me, I never understood how to get past the "finished the tutorial" to "looks like an actual game". Screenshake, aka game feel/polish/production effects, was what made it gel. [0] this video
I don't think books and tutorials help that much. Playing and making games — a lot of games — might help you grow more as a designer than reading and watching YouTube. 1. Do master studies. Take a tiny environment or mechanic of a game you love and reproduce it for education, knowing you'll throw it away. Do this often. Get faster at it. 2. Ask people what their favourite game is. Play it. If it's fun to you, why? If it doesn't resonate with you, why? 3. Internalise the idea that ideas don't matter that much, execution is what matters. Good game designers can make otherwise boring games feel fun to play. (See "the art of screenshake" below.) 4. Make a lot of games. Make them small enough to finish. You don't have to release them all, but you should watch other people play them sometimes. 5. Don't listen to people who tell you not to watch YouTube for game design ideas, there are plenty of great videos out there that have positively changed how I think about game design: The art of screenshake (starts a little slow, but stick with it!): this video Designing to reveal the nature of the universe: [LINK] Game design is a search algorithm: [LINK]