Hi, I (with other friends) am doing a pixel art 32x32, top-down game. The game would be around 15h long and the whole game is going to be in a city divided in 5 main areas.

The question is: how many tiles should each part be? We want to give the vibe of gigantic capital city but we don't want to make the map bigger than it should be.

It wouldn't make sense remaking shangai if the main story is going to use only small parts of that city and most of the game is going to be walking simulator. Also, this is our first game and it wouldn't make sense to overwork ourselves. But I don't want to risk making it so small that it looks like a pokemon city with 4 houses.

Any ideas on the size?

Im working on an isometric RPG and had originally intended to have enemies on the map directly to begin an encounter that way. As I’m developing the maps, I’m realizing that having encounters like this will force me to increase the traversible areas of the map so it doesn’t feel claustrophobic.

I feel like random encounters have been avoided in a lot of modern RPGs and I definitely have some trauma about digimon world 3 random encounters, but shifting over to primarily random encounters would immensely help me in my map design because I want to avoid increasing the scope of the game’s world as much as I can.

Essentially, am i shooting myself in the foot by abandoning avoidable static encounters, or are players still ok with random encounters if some of the pain points are well managed?

I think I found a way to make a firework deckbuilder interesting... hear me out... and please help me out if you disagree...

You are playing a show for an audience of animals and they want to see fireworks. Every round the player has to choose whether to play fireworks for the current round or add them to the finale. If the player adds to the round launcher, the audience is happy for now, but risk a bad finale. If the player adds to the finale launcher, the finale will be bigger, but the audience might leave or not be happy.

The main resource cards generate is "Starfire", which is what increases the audience "Starfire Gauge" or their excitement about the show. Starfire comes in 4 colors, red, blue, green, and yellow, and the audience allows certain colors to increase their gauge. If you add the wrong color starfire, it doesn't excite them for the show.

Lastly to play cards, you use different colored gems which cards allow a certain subset of. Gems come in the same 4 colors as Starfire and when attached to a card, it generates some amount of Starfire in the same color. For example if a card has a description of +4 Starfire matching first gem color, if you add a red gem it will generate +4 Red Starfire.

Your goal is to max out the audiences and the finale "Starfire Gauge" by the end of the show so that you can get a max rating, a 5 out of 5. During each round, you manage your gems and cards in hand along with the round and finale launchers to make an interesting show and an entertaining finale.

Do you think the concept is too complicated? Is there things you think would be more interesting? Let me know what you think...

EDITED:

I realize I didn't add enough of a description. This would be a solo video game, think like Slay the Spire or Wildfrost.

You start with a deck of cards that don't produce a lot of Starfire and don't provide any other benefits than just Starfire. As you finish each show, you open packs of cards that give you stronger cards that make cards cheaper to play, more draw, or what ever other common benefits in deckbuilder type games.

The audience would also control what color Starfire they accept and that changes each round. Also the acceptable list of Starfire colors for the finale would change each round. Other effects could include like a color block effect which "blocks" the Starfire Gauge from going up by a color Starfire until you reach some threshold over a round, think like a shield that only stops some amount of damage.

Cards also have certain effects based off the gems added, like if a card has a gem cost of 2, it could add a lot of Starfire matching the first color and a little bit matching the second color. The player would then decide what gem to add first, what to add second depending on what the audience wants. Card costs could also limit the type of gems that you can add, like only allowing red or blue for the first gem and the second gem is like green or yellow.

So I think there could be a lot of complexity built into the core concept of cards go to finale or round launcher, cards generally produce color Starfire using colored gems, certain color Starfire increases a gauge which you need to "win" a show, and you get some amount of each color gem and some amount of cards each round.

In my browser MMORPG, the opening lets players attack a dummy, gather a plant, and open the world map within the same minute. That freedom feels MMO-like, but it also creates competing prompts. Would you gate each verb until completion, or let players wander and make the quest tracker recover gracefully?

Current build for context: https://realm-of-echoes-auth.realmofechoes.workers.dev/

Disclosure: I'm the developer; some 3D assets are Meshy-assisted.

my game intends to have spells and tying them to A/B/X/Y feels right... A is usually reserved for interaction or forwarding dialogues but i wondered what if we use START since it's barely used for anything

been messing with an asymmetric multiplayer thing on the side (4v3, round-based, "powered team vs guards" energy) and keep circling the same problem.

the core: one team starts weak with their abilities switched off. to switch them on, they have to get one specific teammate to go sabotage a thing mid-round. so the whole round hinges on that one player which reminds me of every VIP/escort mode i ever liked (CS assassination, halo VIP) that eventually died, because babysitting one guy isn't fun and one troll tanks the round.

my current fix: make that "carrier" role a droppable object (like the CTF flag / CS bomb) so if they go down anyone can grab it and keep going, and rotate it every round so nobody's permanently stuck being the fragile one.

stuff i'd love outside eyes on:

1. does the droppable-carrier idea actually solve the single-point-of-failure problem, or is there a cleaner pattern i'm not seeing?

2. the team spends the first part of the round weak/powerless before their abilities kick on — is that a satisfying build-up, or just a boring wait?

3. what's the most likely way this whole loop ISN'T fun that i'm probably too close to notice?

also trying to meet other people messing with asymmetric stuff, feels like a small niche —what are you all building?

the writing side of this i mostly get. what im chewing on is the systemic version.

say you want the player to slowly stop trusting a member of their crew. what actually works in play instead of a scripted "he was bad all along" beat? stuff im toying with: advice from them that is subtly wrong often enough to notice, a cut of the take that never quite adds up, an option they push that is always a little too convenient.

the goal is the player building the suspicion themselves out of how the game behaves, so by the time anything happens they already felt it. what have you seen actually land, and what tips the hand too early?

In my deckbuilder, some cards, I just know players will always have to read the tooltip and I wonder if that's a problem. An example is this ability on one of my cards: "Any time this attacks, it also deals its attack damage to a random surrounding unit". They will read the tooltip because some cards have "surrounding unit" while others have "surrounding ENEMY unit" and I expect it will be impossible to remember, so players will not know precisely what this card does until they reread the tooltip quickly. This reading will ofc take only a fraction of a second if you have used the card many times, but still, not sure if this is to be avoided or if it is fine.

Hey everyone, working on a small multiplayer game idea and wanted some outside feedback before I sink real time into building it.

The concept is a bus racing game where you and a friend team up as one bus crew, racing against other bus crews to the finish. One of you drives, one of you is the conductor, roles picked by a coin flip each round, and you're each on separate screens, not split screen. You're on the same team, but the driver's choices directly affect how hard the conductor's job is.

The driver is first person, picking up passengers at stops and racing other buses to the finish. Drive too recklessly, hard turns, sharp braking, and passengers get scared and angry, you'll hear it and feel the bus start to tip. Push it too far and the bus can actually flip, which ends your team's race entirely.

The conductor is also first person, inside the same bus. While the driver races to the next stop, the conductor walks seat to seat checking tickets, some are obviously marked fake, and missing one costs the team points. The twist is every time the driver takes a sharp turn, the conductor's screen shakes and they get thrown to the side, making it harder to check tickets accurately. So a reckless driver is directly sabotaging their own teammate's ability to do their job.

Scoring is shared and based on total race time, how many passengers fell from bad driving, and how many fake tickets got caught. Collisions with other bus crews are cosmetic, just a wrecked paint job, but scare passengers, and whoever caused the collision eats the bigger team penalty.

No fancy graphics planned, leaning into a simple stylized look instead of trying to compete on visuals.

Would love honest thoughts, does this sound fun, any obvious issues you can already spot, anything similar out there I should look at?

I've been designing (not coding yet, just paper stage) a game idea and want to see if it's actually interesting to anyone besides me. If you find it interesting and you have ideas to take this further, please tell me!

Here's the game as of now:

• Instead of watching a full simulated match, you get a timeline of "moments" you can travel to - big action plays, emotional reactions, and quiet in-between moments (like a keeper standing alone before a corner). You can't cover everything, so you have to choose what's worth your limited time.
• Taking the shot is a real mechanic: aim with the mouse, roll the camera for a deliberate tilted/creative angle, zoom with the scroll wheel, and hit a button to capture. There's an optional slo-mo assist for people still learning the controls.
• The scoring isn't just "did you get the shot in focus." It's built to reward creativity - a technically safe, dead-center photo scores lower than a shot with a thoughtful angle, composition, or an artistic technique like a slow shutter capturing motion in an otherwise still scene. The "obvious shot" is deliberately a trap.
• You earn money per photo based on how it grades out, and spend it upgrading from entry-level camera bodies up toward real pro gear (think a Sony A7 IV or Canon 5D Mark III-tier body), each with different mechanics like better autofocus tracking, bigger buffer, low-light performance.
• Long-term, you're working toward promotion from photographer up through the team's marketing org, eventually running the whole marketing department.

Questions for anyone reading this:

1. Does this sound like something you'd actually want to play, or does it sound more like a neat idea that wouldn't hold up over time?
2. Is there a genre/game this reminds you of that I should look at for inspiration (or avoid repeating)?
3. What would you want out of the "quiet moment" / creative photography side that I haven't thought of?

Appreciate any honest feedback, positive or brutal.

I was sitting here, wondering if I wanted to implement a lock-on feature in my ARPG game when I thought, "hey, I wonder what other people think of the topic."

So how about it? Are you for or against lock-ons, and why? When is it a good feature, and when does it suck?

Hi everyone,

I'm developing Heistfest, a solo heist game:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1451220/Heistfest/

Currently, the gameplay length is around 3-5 hours. I want to expand it to 10+ hours by adding a second gameplay layer, not just more missions.

Right now, after the heist, the player escapes the police with a top-down driving section inspired by GTA 1/2.

I'm thinking about adding another system, for example:

- A management layer (building your criminal operation, buying upgrades, managing resources)

- A shooter/combat layer

- A progression system

- Something else that creates a stronger gameplay loop

For people who played heist games, what kind of second layer would make you keep playing?

Would you prefer managing a criminal empire, upgrading equipment/base, more action gameplay, or something completely different?

Looking for ideas and honest feedback.

This question has a couple layers of context, so bear with me. I am writing a tabletop miniatures game. The current prototype for that game is a Warhammer 40K port so that I can focus only on designing the game and develop an original setting later.

The system is currently in such a shape that it makes sense to seek out feedback but I need to work on presenting the rules and statblocks well so that testers will know what to do. Each unit has some equipment, which may or may not have some swap icons next to them; that's the sets of bullets next to some of the items. The upgrade options section for each unit has items with corresponding "swap icons" that reference lists on the second image posted here, which is where all the point costs for weapon and armor upgrades are listed. This allows me to save space and time by only having to list those things once.

I am open to feedback on my statblocks if people have strong feelings about that. But my main concern is the equipment list with all the point costs is just kinda... there? It does a serviceable job? but this like newsprint style I have come up with is just really jarring compared to the otherwise compact and modern arrangement of the statblocks.

I am looking around for interesting design styles for longer lists but I thought I'd ask other people to see if I am just missing something crucial.

Here is a couple samples in the style I have developed so far.

(This is my first time developing a game and also my first time posting on this forum. My English isn’t very good, so I used AI to help explain the idea and translate the post.

Besides feedback on the game itself, please let me know if there’s anything wrong or inappropriate about the way I wrote or posted this. I’ll do my best to improve.)

We’re a team of five students working on a multiplayer party game.

The basic idea is inspired by Ultimate Chicken Horse: players change the next stage together, then enter it and compete. Players earn points by completing the objective, and whoever has the most points at the end wins.

But instead of placing platforms and traps, we want players to change the rules of the stage through a “wish” system.

Before each stage, the game gives players a few incomplete sentences with the nouns removed, such as:

When 【　】 touches 【　】, it explodes.

Players fill in the blanks using nouns they have collected.

For example, if a player has already encountered “Wolf” and “Player A,” they could create:

When a wolf touches Player A, it explodes.

That sentence then becomes an actual rule in the next stage. If a wolf touches Player A, an explosion is triggered.

Players cannot type in whatever they want.

The nouns they can use must come from things they have already encountered in the game, such as wolves, treasure chests, rivers, carts, or other players.

Before entering the stage, players can only guess what the stage will be like based on the wishes they created.

For now, the main objective is to collect treasure scattered around the map. Players have to find as much treasure as possible and bring it back. When time runs out, the player with the most treasure wins the round and earns points.

(We chose this system because fully open text input would be way too hard for us to handle.

If players could type any noun they wanted, we would have to deal with all kinds of objects that do not even exist in the game, and we would have no way to predict every possible input.

By using fixed sentence templates and collectible nouns, players still get a lot of freedom, but we can test every possible combination beforehand.

Since we are only a five-person rookie team, this is our way of balancing player freedom with a manageable amount of work.)

Right now, we’ve hit a design problem.

It is very easy for us to keep listing things that could appear in a stage, such as monsters, traps, terrain, treasure, and special effects.

But we haven’t really answered the more important question:

Why would combining these things actually be fun?

The most obvious use of the wish system is creating evil rules to mess with other players.

For example:

Wolves explode when they touch Player A.

Player B gets chased by every monster after picking up gold.

These rules could definitely be funny and fit the party game feeling.

But we’re worried that if the whole game is only about finding new ways to screw over other players, it might get old pretty quickly.

So we’d like to ask:

In a multiplayer party game where players can freely combine rules, what other interesting player behaviors could come from the system besides sabotaging each other?

Any ideas are welcome.

My dream game to make has always been my own Pokemon-Style creature collector/battler, with my own twists on combat, creature design, etc.

Something I think about a lot but have never come up with any great solutions for is how to make creature typing, and type interactions in combat, more unique or interesting.

Cassette Beasts had an interesting system, where instead of certain types doing more or less damage to other types, type interactions would trigger different status effects. For example, attacking a plastic type with a fire type gives it a poison effect, but attacking a water type with a fire type gives it a regen effect. It was cool, but not my favorite, since it made combat really messy, and it was really difficult to keep track of all the different status effects that could be triggered.

Coromon had a system that was pretty much like Pokemon where certain types do more damage to others. The difference they had was that certain types, like slashing type, only existed as moves and not as creature types. This is a cool addition, but it's still basically the same system as Pokemon.

Some ideas I've had: Types could just be treated as tags, where there are no direct type interactions, but certain moves, abilities, etc. only effect certain types of creature. Type interactions could also just be between your two creatures on the same side of the field (double battle format) and having specific types next to each other could trigger different reactions.

I'm just wondering if anyone else has any interesting ideas on this. I haven't seen much discussion about it elsewhere. Maybe there's a way to move away from types entirely and have a different way classify/categorize creature. It's also possible that Pokemon's type chart system is just inherently the best system and there's no point in trying to design around it.

Let me know what y'all think.

The MtG draft experience is considered one the best parts of the game, and is responsible for huge parts of it's revenue.

What other games, either Card, Board, or Video, have a Draft experience as good as magic, or a gameplay system that is similar to draft even if it is not totally the same?

For example Flesh and Blood is another TCG, but even it's fan say that although they like Draft, it is not in the same league as MtG.

Or Slay the Spire has it's deckbuilding singleplayer gameplay loop that is very compelling, but it not multiplayer.

I'm really looking for good alternatives and how they can compete with MtG.

Many thanks!

There is a design pattern that bugs me and I keep coming back to it. When a player fails in most games, the loop just resets. You died, try again. You lost the battle, reload. The game essentially says your failure was invalid and here is your chance to pretend it did not happen.

But what if the failure state was itself a valid branch of the experience rather than a dead end? Not a punishment, not a consolation, but a genuinely different path with its own logic and stakes.

Dwarf Fortress kind of does this accidentally. A fortress collapse is not a reset so much as a story that ended, and you carry that knowledge into the next run. The failure teaches you the rules by letting you experience consequences rather than blocking them.

What I keep wondering is whether a game could be deliberately designed around two parallel experiences, one where you succeed and one where you fail forward, and both feel intentional. Not necessarily in a branching narrative way, but mechanically. Where losing changes what the game is asking you to do rather than just asking you to do the same thing again

The obstacle is probably scope. Designing two coherent experiences is harder than one. But smaller games probably have more room to experiment with this than big studios do

Most Turn Based game I know of simply have gimmicks to make you play differently since just pressing 2 best option choice is boring, so I'm wondering if you know any "raw stats" bosses that has practically no gimmick that you would consider really memorable and why is that so?

Mainly, how to make them interesting enough that you remember them

Gimmick are subjective but I would consider it to be like when boss made you play differently (if these mechanic isn't well-defined into game main identity)

- Boss that force you to play around certain items

- Boss that disable certain strat

- Boss that force you to shift your attention somewhere else

- ex. Run into bullet, protect certain ally, disable gravity, only hittable at certain point

I wouldn't consider these a gimmick fight

- Boss that has list of ability that doesn't interact with player

- ex. Boss that get weaker when parried (doesn't effect parry window) in a game where you parry all the time

- ex. Boss that inflict certain effect on player that there's no action you can do to gain or remove effect

- ex. Bullet Hell boss's unique pattern (unless it's really REALLY unique)

From my observation, the extraordinary "raw stats" fight are cool because it's carried by external effect like story or visual that make the boss look cool or strong

Difficulty alone doesn't seems to just leave mark on you

Like Asgore on Neutral run isn't really unique pattern wise but he WAS Toriel's wife and appear to be final boss

I’m relatively new to game design. I’ve attempted to design TTRPGs in the past while I’ve honed my skills at video game development in Godot and made prototypes and complete games over the course of three years. In short, I want to make a scoped down CRPG. I’m pretty confident in my programming skills, but will often get tripped up when it comes to making the kinds of games I want to make, mainly because I can’t figure out my priorities in terms of design. I don’t know what my goals should be. And I certainly don’t know how to learn how to achieve those goals.

I really like the idea of making tactical combat systems. And, what I mean by that is that I want the player to “play ball” with their skills. I want combat to be a sport that the player engages in “fairly.” I want to discourse cheesing and I want the player’s skills to matter, but specifically when it comes to making decisions in the moment. Pre-planned strategies, pre-buffing, etc. are all things I do *not* want. I want the player to enter combat and *then* start deciding what they want to do and for them to be willing to change their strategies in the moment.

On top of that, I can’t really make real time systems because I’m not somebody who can animate. I only make static pixel art. So my designs would *need* to revolve around being turn based.

The other problem I have is that I keep making assumptions about what a good combat system would need to be. Many of my games revolve around being power fantasies that focus on the player character. So I immediately assume that having companions in combat that are also controlled by the player and are less powerful is a no-no because it’d make the companions feel like a drag. But I also don’t know that that’s the case. I have no real reason to believe that, nor do I have the knowledge to properly surmise that. It’s just an assumption. Another one I make is that if I don’t have companions in combat, the companions won’t feel important to the player or won’t feel like they’re contributing to the effort being made in the story.

I also just don’t know how to design a turn based combat system that relies on player skill at all. I don’t even know if caring about player skill is important.

In short, I don’t know what I’m doing. Where do I start?

I had that thought on the matter of learning and how games instill concepts in the gameplay that the player has to understand.

Discovery of information/knowledge is a result of an action, a train of thought, accident, that can lead to the discovery of "new knowledge"/information. An information/idea that you had no knowledge of was found by you and no other than you or the people trying to discover.

Getting taught means that the knowledge was already here discovered by other people, you strip the action, luck, whatever that was put into discovering the knowledge and instill the knowledge itself on the person.

In practice learning is very useful, a person can learn as much as possible on a matter but on the other hand it does strip away the fun of having accomplished something/ discovering something you had no idea existed.
Though I'm not saying that discovery cannot coexist with getting taught as that is a very common occurence.

I was thinking this when I randomly thought about progression through knowledge based games like Tunic and Outer Wilds where the player doesn't really get taught how to do things but has to figure it out for himself through his experience.

Now that you see my idea of discovery and getting taught, I'd like to argue the superiority of discovering in the act of entertaining the person learning, not in its way of making one learn faster but in the way of making one entertained while learning.

I mostly speak of that in the way games make you learn mechanics

Now I don't know if it's a me thing, very well could be but I had way more fun learning the mechanics of a game myself without tutorials or anything to help me than having something or someone tell me how to do so.

I could go on giving examples like comparing traditional video game tutorials with how Tunic and Outer Wilds push you to learn yourself but I don't know if that would be necessary.

Now I post this here because I really wanted to know what people think of this, Please tell me this has been bugging me for hours now..

Recently made changes to the regular character kits and the monster kits

CHARACTER KITS LINK

Im no game dev but I would like to know any feedback or criticism regarding these!
For strength and Intelligence theyre an objective stats that determine how many progress level a character has to complete a machine (ex. one star = 0/8 to complete, six star = 0/3 to complete)

There would be bosses (which I have not made specifics but the layout of it is done)
and there is environmental hazards that gives small damage or debuff, as well as events that can occur on the location

Hello everyone, not sure if this is the right sub for this but.
I love mancala, but after you figure out the “perfect opening” and realize player 1 almost always wins, it becomes a bit boring.

I want someone to make Mancala 2.

Adjustable amount of rows, columns, maybe how many pebbles each person starts with.

Literally calling it Mancala 2 would be perfect, imo.

Let me know if this is possible, I would actually do anything for this

So i just asked Claude to calculate all the possible valid spells that can be cast in my game, with everything unlocked. Endgame grants the speaking ability, where you can not only cast words but also cast weaved sentences (essentially programs).

Sentencecasting: there are 21 slots that fit 24 words (each with innate emotion) and 11 syntaxes.

Considering that:
-adjacent words without a syntax merge into one of 36 dyads (2 emotions merged)
-no adjacent syntax

Claude's table:

┌───────┬─────────────────────────┐

│ Slots │ Distinct writable tapes │

├───────┼─────────────────────────┤

│ 1 │ 24 │

├───────┼─────────────────────────┤

│ 2 │ 576 │

├───────┼─────────────────────────┤

│ 3 │ 20,160 │

├───────┼─────────────────────────┤

│ 4 │ 635,904 │

├───────┼─────────────────────────┤

│ 5 │ 20.6 million │

├───────┼─────────────────────────┤

│ 7 │ 21.3 billion │

├───────┼─────────────────────────┤

│ 10 │ 7.1 × 10¹⁴ │

├───────┼─────────────────────────┤

│ 14 │ 7.6 × 10²⁰ │

├───────┼─────────────────────────┤

│ 21 │ 2.75 × 10³¹ │

└───────┴─────────────────────────┘

ofc i have no idea what is 2.75x10 to the 31st? so i asked claude to eli5.

Cumulative, every tape from 1 to 21 slots: ~2.83 × 10³¹ — twenty-eight nonillion. For scale, that's about the number of grains of sand on a billion Earths. The exact figure: 28,329,945,133,251,215,761,453,139,786,520.

Now i'm wondering if this is even a good idea. Maybe the number is a bit overwhelming, but it makes me question if all the people on the planet played the game for a thousand years, would they manage to cast every valid possible spell? I could probably ask Claude that, but i can feel my brain cells departing from those types of talks. Need some human input.