A small suggestion for your platforming part. Platforming could work as a pallet cleanser between puzzles, BUT I would suggest you have either no fail state or the price of failure being very low. The reward would be FUN and QUICK platforming. For example: if you have a platforming section where you propel yourself with magnets, maybe doing midair maneuvers to get to faster "lanes" so if you do it right you go faster. There is no fail state since the worst the player can do is just go slower, but there is still a small skill component to keep it interesting and fun.
this could be applied to any game type: "you [the developer] are the worst judge of your game" whether that be the readability of your level design (is that climbable or just decoration), the animations of your enemies (is that an attack or just an itchy nose, can I dodge/parry what is the window), the difficulty of your puzzles, is this upgrade actually interesting/impactful/meaningful (take 5% less damage, so I can take 102% of the damage that enemy deals thanks...) if you have the same testers constantly testing your game they could be 'too good' at your puzzles, combat, control scheme (Alien Resurrection for reinventing dual stick FPS controls before Halo evolved combat) leading to a question of "did I make it too easy if the testers are getting through too quickly"
Puzzles generally. (Though there's even an issue if you're using 'people who are very experienced with sudoku' to test your sudoku. What your testers tell you 'oh this is a really elegant use of this ruleset. 10-20 minutes. This might work with folk who've never seen this puzzle type before' might take someone who's never seen that ruleset before three hours to solve. (Not kidding. This happened to me fairly recently with a puzzle I set.) - Assessing the difficulty of a puzzle is an absolute nightmare.)
Mark, I've been working in AAA as a designer for 5 years at two different studios. I'm sure you already know you're popular among industry professionals and we share your content all the time. What I love above videos like these is that they really highlight the iterative process of game design. No matter how good your instincts are or how analytical you are about design, you will still run into issues like "I forgot to make it fun" or "woops, it's tedious" and that's ok as long as you're able to constructively digest feedback (the actual hardest part) and find solutions to the actual problems. Thank you for your service! 🙇
As a civil engineer for decades now, I still sometimes struggle with preparing shop drawings that will accurately, simply and succinctly communicate the design intent of a system that I will have sometimes spent months iterating on. It's easy to assume that the people using your plans have more knowledge of the final product and the intricacies that shaped the design than they might actually have. Getting feedback from the project manager and supervisors is helpful in learning how to better convey the required information and sometimes even simplifying aspects of the final design.
That makes me think of when Suzaku from code geass says he doesn't have trust in people, just systems It's like no matter how good you are at game dev you're still jusr a person. So what's important is setting up a system, a feedback loop, and having that system inform the game development process. Because a system (or plan) is easier to stick to and hold yourself accountable to than nebulous ideas about how a game should be made. Interesting
As a QA analyst who entered a level design contest for Mega Man some time ago, I encountered this when I put together my entry. I was told that some of the mechanics I'd used weren't taught to the player very well, and that I might need to add some antepieces or other teaching moments for the players. Thankfully I saw the testers' point, and even though these mechanics are very heavily used in the series, a player who'd never encountered them before might not know how they worked. Plus it allowed me to show off some of the more unusual things I was doing with the mechanic before players encountered those twists "in the wild", so to speak. I ended up placing fairly well in that contest (on my first ever try at such a thing), and a lot of it was due to listening to feedback like that.
I think it was Valve when making Portal 2 who said they found it better to watch people play your game but to NOT be in the same room, as people will give somewhat false positive feedback face to face, whereas if you just watch their face on a webcam alongside what is happening on screen, you can get a better sense of what they *actually* think. Obviously there's all kinds of value in all kinds of testing, but I thought this was worth putting forward as an alternative to what you said about being in the room when they play
psychologically, i fell like that makes a lot of sense. thanks for sharing that perspective as i think it really does posit a nice alternative to mark’s approach - which also seems intuitive at first glance but, as you’ve pointed out, can have obvious problems in terms of feedback.
Valve also integrates playtesting into the core development cycle. The first iteration of the original Half-Life was so bad that they had to completely scrap it and start from scratch. The Half-Life we know and love was the result having the second iteration of the game constantly playtested during development. Since then, they have weekly playtest sessions of all of their games, administered by the developers themselves.
the worst puzzles (imo) are the ones where you figure out the solution fairly easily but then actually implementing that solution is really tedious. Towers of Hanoi is a perfect example of this kind of puzzle, because once you work out the steps the act of actually performing those steps is really monotonous but still requires focus because if you make a mistake and don't immediately catch it, it then also requires a lot of focused monotonous work to undo that mistake.
Omg, is Tower of Hanoi considered a puzzle game? lol. I agree with you tedious implementations are generally terrible. If I am almost certain I can complete a level without any enlightenment but have to grind through the whole thing looking out for inconsequential details that could screw me over along the way, then I probably just give up.
@@Y2B123 It's not so much a 'game' in and of itself, but Towers of Hanoi is a puzzle. And it's one that I've seen in some form or another in many games throughout the years as a puzzle among many other puzzles (usually in mid-tier action explorers). [Note that sometimes it's pretty well-disguised]. I get *why* it's in a lot of those sorts of games. Because it's easy to implement and easy to solve. It's like a maze. (Does a maze count as a puzzle?) But whenever I encounter it in a game, I just sigh with distain. I'd rather there just be no puzzle than do Towers of Hanoi again.
wait, really? I thought those puzzles were kinda cool. In the case of towers of hanoi, it definitely becomes unnecessarily tedious, but thats just because the solution is pretty much an algorithm you just repeat over and over and over again. If thats what you mean, then yeah I get it, but puzzles such as the ball-following puzzles in Crosscode I found super satisfying even if the solution was rather easy to figure out but required a large sequence of actions that required timing and precision. If you want to know what I'm talking about, you can find the longest and most notable of these puzzles here: ua-cam.com/video/5RW-63GFOhE/v-deo.html (not really a spoiler if you have no clue whats going on) That being said, there are numerous comments under that video that complain about the exact puzzle I'm talking about. I personally loved almost every puzzle in crosscode and I guess I just don't understand how it may be frustrating. The video even does some sections in a weird order and still got it, which makes me question the comments that claim they aren't fast or coordinated enough to do it. I guess I'm just really good at puzzles?
Another thing is that players don't necessarily just like hard puzzles, they like the feeling that comes from SOLVING puzzles. Getting that balance between challenge and reward is something a lot of game devs miss and I'm glad you're covering it
It's actually such fun watching a guy that knows and teaches a lot of video game stuff actually be an amateur at game making, this actually motivates me to maybe try out something someday
I feel that when teaching little quirks in the way a game’s mechanics function, it can be very satisfying to engineer a situation where the player might accidentally use it while doing something else and then immediately follow it up with a very simple and isolated problem that can only be solved with the mechanic. For the people who just found it by accident, it can be very rewarding and even a source of pride. For those who didn’t, they still get to learn it with no clutter before going on to use it later.
That’s actually really good if you can pull that off. And the players who do find that quirky mechanic probably won’t be too bothered by the one “useless” level since they’ll be quick to solve it and see it as somewhat of a short breather.
7:02 I'm of the firm belief that a puzzle game should never allow you to get irreversibly stuck and force you to (actively) reset. It can be very hard for players to recognize that there is no way to salvage the situation and many may not even get the idea to start over. The only exception to this are clearly communicated _Game Over_ states, which automatically trigger a level restart - like "key component X was destroyed", "you were squished between 2 objects" or "the objective timer ran out".
But always, ALWAYS give the player some way to start the level over. Even if there's no way to get stuck, players will MAKE a way to get themselves stuck.
@@Tigersight0 only example that doesn't do that would be the Portal games, which are really hard to softlock yourself in. I mean, if you lose a key component, they just, give you another one. Pretty hard to lose there. They actually give you an achievement if you figure out a way to do it.
@@leaffinite2001 just playing devils advocate here but a possible reason some puzzle games include the potential to get ireverseably stuck on a puzzle is because it takes aditional time and money to make that not the case. Nowadays the standards for game development have risen substantially and so this game dev opinion is basically a given for making puzzle game. Everything looks obvious in hindsight
As I'm playing through TOTK's shrines, I'm reminded of this video. A lot of shrines start off with a "puzzle" that is literally just implementing the mechanics of the game in the simplest way possible before opening up a second room where the "real" puzzle is. It's pretty smart that they make sure your brain is in the right place before being faced with an obstacle.
This is a common thing in Nintendo puzzles, the idea of the four-step puzzle. You start with a simple implementation of it, something very basic. Then, you have the player do something a bit more complicated. Do that four times,, upping the complexity each time, to ease the player into the element, and now they'll know what to do when you spring it on them in future.
The idea of swapping your hands on the controller is very interesting. There's a similar concept in music teaching. If you want to walk in a guitar student's shoes you can try playing left-handed (or right-handed if you learned as a leftie). It's eye-opening. The guitar feels like a completely unknown object in your hands. It's a very powerful experience.
the best part is, if your puzzle is "too easy" it often ends up just being a trick question people will assume that's not the answer to the question, so they'll try something harder, and then when they finally realize it was right there they laugh at themselves and it's a grand old time
@@jeandouyeth6682 Totally. The nice thing about D&D as opposed to game dev, too, is that a DM can dynamically adjust things on a moments notice, and more easily react to the players. If they were let down by how easy it was, you can add complications behind the scenes, or throw in some more combat or something. If it's too hard, you can throw some hints/help their way.
@@jeandouyeth6682 Depends on the type of player methinks. I know people who genuinely enjoy spending hours/days on puzzles and time out of the game to figure things out. On the other hand, I've also run games for people who much prefer puzzles that can be solved within 10 to 15 minutes and serve a narrative purpose. I'd think that question is probably a lot more challenging for video game devs since they'd be trying to appeal to a much larger audience as opposed to a DM/GM who runs a game for 3 to 6 people. Especially since odds are good the DM/GM already knows the preferences of their players if they've been running the sessions long enough.
I believe that this was the reason for early NES games being known for being "Nintendo Hard" at the time. The only playtesters for a game would often be the devs themselves. And it's not like there was an internet around to get rapid feedback done anyways even after the game was released. So as a result it was extremely common for NES games to be really really hard. Which to be fair also worked for helping artificially extending playtime since it was hard to make a game that could last more than a few days of playing when you only had 40kb to work with.
@@SimuLord Even for home console games, they needed to justify the price of a game by making it last longer, and the cheapest way to do that is to make it stupidly hard. You could breeze through most retro games if they were easy because they don’t have a lot of content
I think the reason was that they were extremely short, like, 30 minutes long to cover the whole game. And they were expensive as hell, "60 $ for 30 minutes? Are you nuts???" So they were extremely hard to cover for the lack of content. Take Sifu, for example. Sifu can be finished in about 2 hours, its 5 levels are great, there is content, but it unveils itself as you become more skillful. The game is hard, but naturally hard, not artificially. Artificially hard is "Nintendo hard", "battletoads hard" or else, naturally hard is when you have fair rules in the game and you know you can succeed, just need to roll a little earlier, or change your tactic. Old games rarely had such space for gameplay.
@@SimuLord Ubi game at least doesn't milk your nerves, you just play until you're interested. And they also make giant worlds, so you discover for as long as you want, you don't have to finish 100%, you can just finish the main story, for example. But yeah, both aren't that good :)
It's hard to say because these are all valid or possible reasons. Sakurai cited the "playtime length" reasoning in a recent video of his. But cartridge prices, memory limitations, arcade game design, or lack of play testing all likely apply. Also far shorter development periods in general.
@@SimuLord That's another big one, but also rental markets (meaning that you ideally wanted a game that required multiple rental sessions to beat. When most people are renting, you're audience - rental stores - are going to want a game that causes people to rent it out over several weekends rather than just for a weekend) paired with limited cartridge sizes meant the only real way to extend the length of a game was to make it harder. Plus if designers are used to designing for arcades they're going to default to those methods.
This series is so insanely down to earth! As a newbie gamedev myself this really speaks to me, seeing someone like you just talk about your game's development so casually, in such a friendly tone is truly lovely. This series was a great idea Mark, and your execution of it even more so!
Omg a two hour, in real time, feedback video 🥺 I can’t think of anything kinder to give to someone working on a project. (Emotionally quite horrifying, but so so valuable)
That's what I was thinking, real-time feedback is the best especially when you can't help them and have to watch them struggle. Emotionally horrifying, but priceless.
Once in high school I was dealing with people who made the same mental mistake as described here and looked it up. I've always LOVED that it's called "The Curse of Knowledge"! 😁
You can have them hidden behind breakable walls or secret passages in levels and leading to some optional collectables. Kind of like some of the grub rooms in Hollow Knight or the strawberries in Celeste.
Underestimating difficulty is certainly something that seems to plague every jam game I ever make. I think I got it right once and then never got it again lol.
Well in all fairness if you contribute to a game jam, you wont really have the time to flesh every last detail out Buuuut something that can be done is using ideas you got while making your jam game and polishing those up if you like them enough
Jam games are literally never well balanced for difficulty. They're either easy as hell or seemingly impossible. They're really just meant to be a demonstration of an idea though, so that's not unreasonable.
@@ledumpsterfire6474 The reason is obviously jam games get so little time so some things will have to be left ignored/unpolished, difficulty is an easy one especially for a game that will probably be quite short
@@RandomHandle837 Not to mention that most experienced devs are working professionally and don't really have time or want to do jams, so most of what you have left are indies who don't have a lot of experience or skill, and a jam game will often only have a couple or few of those people working on it.
Yeah jam game balance is tough, i recently took part in one and my game was way too easy (didn't help that there was an exploit that was extremely easy to use that left the player pretty much untouchable) i've been working on it a lot since and now it's maybe a bit too hard, though i'm kinda okay with that because of the genre the game is
This is an interesting exploration of “knowing the path” vs “walking the path”. Mark is one of the best game design theorists and teachers, but as a practitioner he could re-watch some of his own videos. I’m specifically thinking about the “Jonathan Blow” puzzle video, which teaches a lot of the same lessons learned here.
Then what I like about Jonathan Blow's puzzles is that they're basically designed as: "there's an interesting idea, and I wrapped it in a puzzle to help you understand." I love the moment in the Witness where you come out of that tiny starting area, see the door with several starts exits and a bunch of dots and are completely stumped, then by solving those two little sequences of puzzles on the side, which you really don't have to think THAT hard about you suddenly understand how to solve the puzzle at the door. The satisfaction comes less from "I solved this hard thing" and more from "I understand this concept now", but understanding such a concept can simply be difficult.
@@PauLtus_B Making puzzles and solving puzzles are pretty fundamentally different skills, as counter intuitive as that seems. Ask any puzzle game fan to design a puzzle for your game, and unless they've had experience doing it before, it's going to be nonsense and probably not fun at all.
Well the problem with just being a "theorist" is that you don't have enough practical experience to know if your theory is even possible or just bunk that can only function in an academic setting. Kind of like certain economic systems that shan't be named, but the concept is the same.
I’ve had this experience so many times, especially when I started out game dev, it’s crazy. Every single time I thought I made a mildly challenging level it turned out to be near impossible for play testers. Every time I thought I made a level for babies it was nearly perfectly balanced for playtesters. It’s such a natural instinct to use the information that’s been bouncing around in your own head for so long intuitively that it’s truly an exercise in patience and trial and error to learn that you are the only human on the planet who feels that way about your game. It’s your baby. It’s a personal, intimate thing to make a game and tooling that for the public is not a natural skill set for 99.9% of people.
The trouble is, I agree about needing hand-holdy tutorials. As for overall level of challenge, it depends entirely on your target audience. Do you want younger or gaming-inexperienced players to finish the game? That's totally fine... But that means experienced players aren't going to enjoy it. Like the video said, he wasn't targeting the people who loved Baba is You and and rocked every level. Personally, I find that most 'puzzle' games are tailored towards very inexperienced players, and that means they're very, very easy, and that's just no fun. "inbento" is a great example: it's an adorable game, I love the character of it, and not a single puzzle took me more than a few seconds of staring at what I had available before I 'solved' it, because every set of puzzles was a very basic mechanic that built slightly on itself and never, ever actually presented a challenge.
@@softxpandguest708 you hit the nail on the head. Is it a puzzle game built for people who play puzzle games, or a puzzle game built for people who don't play puzzle games. What confuses me with this whole video though is why is he trying to target people who don't play puzzle games? They aren't likely going to be the ones looking for it unless he's just relying on his YT following to buy it. I think it's a poor strategy overall unless you're actively trying to introduce new people to a genre. Better to know your audience and have samples from the target audience playtest, not your dad
You also know all the answers from the start which skews your perception of the balance. This doesn't just apply to puzzle games either. Let me cite what I think is one of the most egregious design oversights in popular gaming history: the path up to Undead Burg in Dark Souls 1. Yeah, you may scoff, but _countless_ gamers have reached Firelink Shrine and managed to completely miss the stairway up the cliff to the aquaduct in favour of either blundering into the graveyard leading to the Catacombs (and getting torn apart by hordes of high level skeletons) or stumbling down into New Londo Ruins and getting slaughtered by invincible ghosts, because those two paths are far more obvious than the cliffside path leading to the _first_ half of the game. Then they assume that the whole game is as hard as those two late-game areas (since Dark Souls already had a reputation of being super-hard) and get frustrated and quit. Believe me, it happens more than you might think- in fact I think it happened to me the first time I tried playing, I had to come back to it later. The problem was that the level designers _knew_ which way to go before the way to go even existed, so they failed to make that way as easily noticeable as the other two (you had to run towards what looked from a distance like a blank cliff, compared to going through the big water courtyard where Frampt will eventually arise, or going down the obvious staircase past Anastacia's cage). Every time you get lost in a game because it isn't properly telegraphing where you need to go next, that's probably because the developer (who already KNOWS the answer) thinks it's self-evident and doesn't need to be more obvious, because they're afraid of being _too_ obvious and insulting their players' intelligence (another, more old-school, example I can think of is Lufia and the Fortress of Doom for the SNES, which has one of the worst laid-out world maps I've ever seen with far too much open space and not nearly enough landmarks, and too vague directions given about where your next objective is, especially once you get the ship and have access to the ENTIRE world map via the ocean).
I think 2D mario games figured out tutorials perfectly. the goomba checks if you can jump, and gives you a prompt only if you can’t. Most players don’t even know that prompt exists because we don’t need it. The first level teaches you ALOT of mechanics and you don’t even notice you’re being taught.
I like this comment-- particularly the end line-- as it highlights another step of that process that most game makers don't like to talk about or admit: players are the users, but they aren't the experts. You need player feedback to figure out how best to serve them, but they don't know how to serve themselves. Players will tell you what they find frustrating. But that doesn't mean you change what they don't like. At least not right away. A classic example: inventory limits that force you out of the main loop to send you back to town in an ARPG. Players will demand unlimited inventory space in games like that because they find that interruption frustrating. But as the expert, you know they actually need the downtime to appreciate the uptime. And you've got to slow them down so they don't devour everything and feel bad for having gorged themselves. Players don't understand that those design choices, even if apparently frustrating, serve a higher purpose. They don't realize that if they got what they were asking for, they'd be worse off.
One of the most important lessons I've learned is how I can't make a game to show how clever I am, but rather, make a game that makes people feel clever. Often the complexity creep/fluff of levels/games comes from this desire to feel clever as the designer.
I recommend using those old levels in like a challenge pack after you beat the game for the people who want a challenge as they have already figured out all the mechanics😊 hope this helps.
I love what Rayman Legends did with the timed challenges and shadow you levels. Added a lot of content and challenge for those who have mastered the game
This applies more broadly than just game dev -- the Curse of Knowledge as it's sometimes called. Once we Know something, it's fundamentally extraordinarily difficult for us to understand, empathise, and model what it's like to be someone who doesn't Know That Thing. It very much is a skill, and an exercise in empathy. It's very valuable to learn how to do, and perhaps it's not wrong to say it's something that you can never fully master, only get a little better at in small areas at a time.
Have a kid and you'll understand this Curse intimately. 😂 Go into it thinking out how you're gonna teach a fresh soul how to read and tie shoes and multiply fractions..."how can I do that? I'm not a teacher!"...inevitably find yourself trying to assemble a tutorial level of *The Steps Of Blowing Your Nose Into A Tissue And Then Throwing It Away,* or *How To **_Not_** Pick Up Something That's Too Heavy To Lift* ... Most of my (very dated) game dev experience had to do with kiddie games -- Dora the Explorer and whatnot -- and an amusing/frustrating facet to this Curse when approaching products for little kids is that both the devs expectations for player ability, and _actual_ player ability vary _wildly..._ even if you've only got two buttons and a joystick, you've gotta go into it knowing some of your players are likely going to be literally still developing the understanding of the _concept_ of cause & effect, let alone button-press-causes-effect-on-screen, let alone have any prior knowledge scaffold for main-button-is-generally-affirmative and smaller-button-is-generally-cancellation... 😅 On the plus side you get a LOT of practice breaking through your preconceived notions of What My Players Need... (minus side you'll be reflexively making "Swiper No Swiping" jokes for decades).
@@bsidethebox You're reminding me of my middle school math classes. Actually, just my school days in general. In my high school days, I was always complaining to myself about how bad teachers were with avoiding this bias.
words cannot express how jealous i am that you can hand a game you’re working on to your parents and they actually give it an honest try. my parents would never even consider it.
My takeaway from this video: Mark is one of the bravest people on this planet for being able to calmly continue his script while being in the same room with, and I quote, "jesus christ that's a big spider! uhh, uhh, where was I?"
I personally think that skippable tutorial levels are a good addition to a puzzle game. That way an experienced player can jump into the deep end, while a new player can build up their comfort and confidence with the easier levels. With good communication players can dictate their own difficulty and you don't really have to worry about them finding it too easy, or too hard.
Players will often overestimate their abilities, skip tutorials, and get stuck. I have watched a friend install a new game, fiddle with the controls before playing, and get mad that the controls were strange, he still maintains that the game has awful controls.
@@peacedustinc.7108 But at that point they'll hate it no matter what you do. Have a forced tutorial and the game is treating them like a baby. Instead of catering to that specific group of players, which will probably hate it anyway, it's better to cater to the majority of people that will play your game. And a significant part of that are players that are already familiar with the genre. Partially optional tutorials allows the largest group to get the most out of it, and makes replays significantly more berable.
If you sent an hour long puzzle game to a puzzle game maker and it takes him 2 hours to finish it, that may have been your first hint it was a bit convoluted xP Gongrats on every step of the process thus far, I've greatly enjoyed this series.
@@dusklunistheumbreon I mean, of course, but even if it were 50% discussion it still took an expert 100% of the expected time to finish a game intended for a general audience.
I honestly admire the humility you have throughout this series. As an aspiring Game Designer, I view you as someone on the high tier of the spectrum, but you admitting to basic mistakes and difficulties throughout the series just shows the high level of integrity, because of which I'll keep coming back to this channel.
I love how well-made these videos are. I would have never in a million years thought I would be interested in how video games are designed. I have been a fan of your channel for years now and your content never gets boring or tedious. 😂 Thank you so much, Mark. Well done.
This is why I love your videos. I'm not a game developer, but I'm a product designer. There are so many parallels between our worlds, including the importance of user research (of which there are many kinds) to know how people will *really* react to what you've created.
As a game designer, I offer you my sympathy. I fell for this as well at one point. Generally found it pretty liberating to lower the difficulty on games after having pushed it to feel challenged by my own design and then seeing people begin to access the fun.
I'm not a game designer, just a curious one and a lifetime gamer. I think one possible issue to complex puzzles is that the more stuff you add, more messy it becomes, and the problem is not the puzzles being too hard (take The Witness, for example, it has hard puzzles), I believe the problem is that the puzzles become messy and hard to understand. If I was making a game, I would possibly keep the hard puzzles, but make them as simple as possible, not as easy as possible, if what I say makes sense. You for sure have more experience in designing games, but I think the key is the simplicity and clarity, not the ease.
Something I think worth emphasizing; It's not JUST easy to assume the player knows as much as you do about your game, but it's also easy to fall into that fear of "Is my game too simple? Is that boring? Do players really feel engaged performing a simple, straight forward task?" This video helped hammer it in that, maybe this is what I should be trying to challenge more than anything. I'm making a game and this is one of my biggest struggles. Designing areas, enemy attacks, etc. I've found myself fearing that I've been too simple, that I need to force myself to get more creative and convoluted, I need some extra layer of 'depth'. But maybe I'm just over thinking things, and this mindset is going to lead me to creating something overwhelming. I guess that's why play testing is important though. You need to understand if people feel that way or not.
You're describing exactly how I felt! And so if this video is any indication, please try and get a demo of your "simple" game in front of people and see what they actually think!
@@GMTK Yeah, I'll be sure to. The block I've hit recently myself is, I've been trying to make a Metroidvania and thoughts like "Is this room too hallway-esque?" and "Is it alright if I go a while without introducing new mechanics? How do I make these rooms feel different? Will the player even make it far before getting bored?" The problem I hit that you didn't though is, I've felt a sort of creative block when it comes to adding "more" to an area. It's hard to think of something really complex that just... works. Even if your puzzles were too complex, you make it look so easy coming up with so many creative and interesting ideas that iterate on eachother. Really makes me wonder if maybe I'm over thinking it. Hoping to just go for it, get some people to play test it, and keep the mindset of "I can make changes to the game design and progression" as I go along.
I took game design classes and dropped out after a few months because I wasn't really learning much but I will always remember something a teacher told me: your goal is not to beat the player.
The hardest part is remembering that you are reverse-engineering your puzzle from the top, where your players will be engaging it from first principles and from the bottom.
What you said about redoing a level all over again - this is a technique I used all the time when writing book analyses etc in school. Rewriting, redoing, from start over and over again until you get a pretty good paper you can be proud of.
It's true for a lot of other things too! Sketch a thing not once but a dozen times; take the best 6 and develop those a little further; take the best 2 even further, and then look at the best one and go "OKay, now I know what to do. Let's start with the real painting!"
I think it'd be an awesome idea if instead of scrapping the harder puzzles, you instead used them to make a bonus collection of hard puzzles for people after they beat the main game
Sometimes harder puzzles are just too similar to the original, take Portal 1's advanced chambers as an example, they aren't particularly difficult as it is just the same thing, but with a few twists, that slow you down for a minute or two.
I had a simmilar realization with my own game when I saw youtubers and players play the first version of it a few years back for the first time. Stuff I thought was obvious - was not. Stuff I thought was easy - was hard. I learned so much from that. The game is still in development, so very helpful with these well-made reminders. Good luck on the game! 👏
Hey Mark! I was at the Dome Keeper kiosk at the IGF Pavilion. Wanted to say hi and thanks for this series, it's been super insightful to someone like me who is new to the industry. Unsurprisingly you were a popular guy around indie devs so I didn't get the opportunity. But I'll say it now: this has been a great video series!
As a fan of snakebird, I'd say it's fine the for the *later* levels to be highly convoluted (once players already have the core mechanics), but not at all ok to have red hearings. Good puzzles are hard enough as it is without having stuff you have to ignore.
I think there's two kinds of red herrings - those that are there to just waste your time, and those that just mislead you in how to *use* them. The former generally suck. It's clutter and just distracts the player. Tropes are tools, of course, so sometimes the game will benefit from just a bit of clutter, but most of the time it's something to be avoided. The latter can be very good in the later stages of the game. Baba is You has *multiple* levels where words are used as spacers to push other words around, or as junk to remove obstacles (such as with WATER IS SINK), or where you're using a word in an unusual way, and it deliberately baits you into thinking it's used in the usual way. They generally work well
I have to say these videos are pure gold.. I recently made an intro to my game and no one had a problem finishing it because I followed your advice and explained everything to the players.. even things I felt didn't need to be explained, e.g. I have a hover effect that shows the text of what player have to do, but I went a step further and also put in static text of what to do.. this turned out to be the right choice as it helped a lot of people playing on smartphones where is no hover effect.. little things like this make a huge difference in games, so I'm really grateful for these videos..
7:20 You perfectly described Rian Johnson's approach to Star Wars Episode VIII. He was more focused on making a movie that subverted everyone's expectations and was different, rather than making a good Star Wars movie.
The funny thing is that at the time I thought it was good simply because I thought they were introducing Gray Jedi lore in the movies. It turns out it was supposed to be safe and simple and boring, and that movie ruined the trilogy by forcing a reckoning.
I don't think it's "90% tutorial". More like, the tutorial of the game prolongs within the game and they are adding more and more mechanics, so you always have to keep up and kind of never stop learning new stuff. Inscryption is the same. You play, you die, then you're taught there are bones, then there is also something new, but what you play isn't the tutorial, you play the game, they're just adding new mechanics on top of each other.
@@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360 Lol, we said the same :) And then I read your comment. This is indeed the best way to introduce new mechanics and keep players engaged and entertained.
@Sasha Bagdasarow That... is what a tutorial is. At least what a good tutorial is. When you're learning as you play, and the game itself is teaching you new mechanics, that is the definition of a tutorial, and a damn good one at that.
100% agree ! A game must be clear enough (at least in its first levels) to show you what to do and how to do. I have been working on my own platformer for 2 years now and I have added many more "simple" levels and help elements than I first thought after watching friends trying it. What is clear for you isn't the case for everyone !
TBH, a British guy making fun of American food is very much the pot calling the kettle black. Also, great vid. Glad to see you making inprovments and growing as a designer.
Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny. The British are sort of notorious for having bland food and having stolen just about everything good they have from other cultures.
Right? If he was French or Italian or Japanese or Indian, I wouldn't say a word. Like I don't necessarily agree in some of those cases, but it's a fair take. But beans on toast over here gonna talk shit on *American* food? He's just mad because he's not used to his food having flavor.
@@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360 That's not the point. Fundamentally speaking, anything you make will be exponentially easier for you than it will be for an inexperienced player, and the exact amount can fluctuate depending on the target audience.
@@MizunoKetsuban I understood the idea. But with such approach there will be no games for gamers, who are more experienced than game designer himself.
My level design philosophy is divided up into three parts: 1) Introduce - Show off the mechanic in a safe and controlled environment without extra fluff. Make sure the player has to use that mechanic to complete the section or level. 2) Expand - Now that the player understands the core concept, you can throw in other stuff from previous sections or levels in ways that interact with the new mechanic. The levels should still be pretty small so that the player can test out a comple possibilities and understand it fully. 3) Test - Finally, after the player has had room to explore a couple different ways the mechanic can interact with other stuff, you can test the player's understanding of it in an especially hard and/or bigger level.
This really reminds me of Boneworks, sorry, but in a bad way. Maybe you get me if you played it. The puzzles there are cumbersome, because they are so "structured". I don't feel like something is happening, I feel like an experiment rat that is being put into a maze.
@@sashabagdasarow497 Never played it, but this isn't really a completely rigid structure that I abide by. It functions more like guidelines how not to throw a player into something they can’t solve.
Having designed video games for 30 years, the one true lesson I've learned is no one will understand and love your game as much as you do. In other words, if you think it's too easy, it's probably still too difficult for your audience. Fantastic video! 😃✍
Might as well not include any puzzles. Just make a game that requires pressing a single button. Or heck, just make a game that beats itself when you start it up because pressing a button is still too hard and complex.
When I need to gauge the difficulty, I always have my parents play it first. Their gaming background is quite sparse, so it shows exactly how a “new” player will see the game, from knowing 0 mechanics about it, and even shows how it controls for someone without the typical gamer reflexes.
You are 100% correct about In N' Out burger fries, and ironically the reason they are bad is on theme for the episode. In N' Out wanted to serve fresh, high quality food so they implemented a policy that none of their ingredients can be frozen in advance. They did this because they made the assumption that frozen food was inherently worse than fresh food. However, fries are actually BETTER when you freeze them in advance--that's how you get the crispy-on-the outside, fluffy-on-the-inside texture. If the potatoes are room temp then you can either under cook the inside or burn the outside, whereas frozen fries cook slower leading to that perfect texture. If you get French fries at a gourmet restaraunt? Guaranteed they were frozen in advance. By sticking with their assumptions and ignoring user feedback, InNOut ended up with the freshest fried potatoes in fast food that are also the least pleasant to eat.
This series gave me the right attitude and mindset to learn C# and Unity and I can really relate to the hurdles explained and I really like all of your creative solutions to things like tutorials and level design, don’t feel obligated to try to pump these out but it really boosts my mood to see an upload to this series, go at your own personal pace and don’t make yourself feel rushed. Rock on!
I was needing this video! Yesterday I sent the very first build of my game for patrons to test, and some of them struggled with the difficulty. This video helped a lot!
There's an extremely useful axiom - the "Riddle Problem" - that came out of a writer trying to write riddles for a D&D campaign decades ago, thinking every single riddle was just way too obvious. It's real simple: "Things you already know, are obvious to you." It's hard enough to assess difficulty, but it's harder to assess obviousness. It's not only worth looking at your audience (and potential other audiences), but also challenging your assumptions of what is and isn't difficult/complex/confusing. The axiom's also a good reminder to let yourself off the hook! Your puzzles are probably decent. Your riddles are probably not too easy. But they probably still need some more work. Always will. Would've loved to catch up at GDC, but very glad you had a good time!
This series is incredible. I'm facinated to hear about all the complexities and pitfalls of game making. Like any other skill, it's a lot more complicated to learn than it first seems. I imagine this series must be hugely helpful to anyone who wants to make a game of their own, but it's also wonderfully insightful and interesting for the rest of us.
Simplify, Simplify, Simplify. I think this is great advice - save the hard stuff for later. Seeing that level comparison made me want to play this game MUCH more than before. Portal is also a great point of comparison - it's one of my favorite puzzle games, and feels like a challenge, but it never overloads you with mechanics and still feels great when you find a solution.
Love this vid! I am currently finishing my college degree (Math and Computer Science) and I find it amusing how you essentially discovered Human-Computer interaction concepts on your own. Yeah, you have to think about your system (game in this case) and design its interaction based on how your target group already processes information. In this case, since your mechanics are already readable and mostly understandable enough, you just had to make some fixes on the overall level design, but I´ve seen some projects where everything had to be fully rebuilt to be actually usable. I remember when some of my buddies were annoyed by this subject because they just wanted to focus on the technical affairs of computer science, but you proved that considering this stuff actually makes the difference between a good or a mediocre system/game/program/etc. Props to those people that can be interested in both sides of the mirror and congratulations for this wonderful video!
I really love how reflexive this series is. I’m not in game design at all, but I am a social science PhD student. I find so many similarities between your insights in this video and to my own academic journey so far. I guess things like ‘how you perceive audience assumptions’ is something that plagues any creative progress. Great work as always!
I've dabbled in puzzle design in the past, and this is definitely a trap I have also fell in. My puzzles always ended up being too difficult. Edit: I just played the new demo, and the "stumper" level was my favourite because it took me a while to figure out! That just further proves my point though. I love really hard puzzles, so in the past I've made hard puzzles that weren't fun for the players because I fell into the trap of not checking my assumptions about the player.
I love the way celeste teaches its new mechanics to players, by forcing you to interact with objects in a new way, so then you can apply that new knowledge in the later puzzles. There's an assist mode and harder versions of all the levels for post game, and even in the post game you're taught new mechanics that you can bring back to the original levels and that make them easier to get through
I think puzzle games should always use portal as a reference. The first few puzzles are so ridiculously easy. But they take time to intuit you the mechanics
@@noahsabadish3812 Yes, the first ones are not so much about solving the puzzle as its about solving the mechanics of the game. If you do not know what you can do, any puzzle can prove almost impossible, so the reward for the first ones is figuring out things you can try to do, then when you get to later levels you have the tools to start really thinking about the puzzle. The alternative is pure tutorials, but tutorials are often skipped, or does not feel as part of the game, by using the first puzzles AS tutorial the game gets bigger and players will not skip them.
This reminds me of teaching! Especially something like mathematics. Coming up with good ways to explain a method and coming up with projects to help hone students' skills is really difficult! I constantly find myself over and under estimating understanding. It's hard.
It's really good that you said that part in the end about your target audience, and about how you had been originally subconsciously designing for people who completed games like Baba and Steven, because when you were describing what made your levels super convoluted I just thought "That's just the kind of series of curveballs I love whenever they throw them at me in Baba" and while you were of course right to simplify the game, there is definitely a group of people like me that delights in super convoluted and devious puzzle design.
Totally unrelated to your game but your editing and/or editor is PHENOMENAL. These videos always have such cozy vibes and I can never get enough of your channel’s intro outro music.
I always wished you could write unit tests for game design problems. It’s difficult (if not impossible) to find a person who has never seen your game and have them play for a few hours every time you make a change.
That’s a great point - perhaps AI could fill that role. If you trained a model to the desired skill level, once you stop training it, it should give you fairly repeatable performance. You’d need to have it fairly general though, otherwise you might need to retrain it if you introduce a significant change. I read somewhere that the Total Warhammer team did something similar for balancing their games (though, using more traditional game AI, not neural nets) - basically, have the AI play a lot of simulated battles, and if one faction always comes out on top in otherwise “fair” fights (ex. Same unit cost), then the balance is likely off.
A good QA tester (as in testing is their profession) could probably give you a heads up in most cases if something is likely or potentially going to have a bad design effect. If they regularly manage play testing for example they should know the common hiccups players hit.
@@cristymatthews1189 That's a good point. QA's job is to try and find those kinds of things. Even in my own software dev (not games), they will regularly find things that maybe they could figure out, but wouldn't be obvious to a normal user. And sure enough, I usually agree with them. It's difficult to separate what we know from what others would know. It's definitely a skill that requires practice. Most of us developers don't practice that skill often, but QA certainly does.
I personally enjoy seeing earlier levels way later in the game, but harder It gives that feel of "Oh! I remember this!" and it gives a strong sence of progress and lets the players feel like they improved
I'd love to see a game use the similarity as part of a narrative. Imagine having to revisit the location and it's become more difficult because some of the mechanisms have worn down and corroded, or the antagonist you need to fight reengineered them to be actively hostile.
Mark, overcoming one's ego is a key skill you must develop for doing playtests. Putting your creation in front of others, watching them be frustrated with it or not get, if you're fearful of failure you might stop doing that but it's necessary to improve. Good advice throughout this video, but you need to learn to let go of yourself and your negative fears
Congrats to you for realizing where in the difficulty spectrum you want your levels to be. Also for not making them hard for the sake of being hard, and remembering that push and pull between challenge and fun is what makes ppl want to play games.
As the maker of my own puzzle game, having gauged how people received many puzzles in the demo version, I definitely felt this in spades about worrying about straightforward puzzles being "easy", as well as similarly witnessed the fallout of designing puzzles that way. It's a very valuable lesson to learn.
I needed to see this video from ya Mark. It's great to see your magnet game evolve overtime as it has the past year since you started this series. I myself have been slowly building my very first game as well and would love to thank you for being one of the encouragement on tackling GameDev as a hobby. I'm building a arcade shootemup game. That is losley based on my two faves growing up. Ikuraga and asteroids. Learning python as a beginner for my journey and having tons of fun. Thanks for being a huge inspiration Mark. :)
So great to meet and hang out with you at GDC Mark! Glad you had such a good time. Some really, really great takeaways from this video! Really glad you had a lot of great feedback on the game. Look forward to seeing more! :D
That part of simplifying the game - its a good advice, i heard something similar in the Portal (or Portal 2) developer commentary, if i remember correctly they said sth that it can be hard for a developer to just make a level easier, so that its less confusing/frustrating, but it sometimes has to be done. a small compromise they did was bundle a lot of these harder versions of the levels into the optional challenge mode you unlock after finishing the game
In-n-Out are famous for their burgers, their fries less so ;) Alas, I love these videos! It’s inspiring to see your journey through game development as someone who’s doing the same. Keep up the amazing work!
That "a-ha" moment you describe reminds me of one of my favourite things to keep in mind when designing any kind of puzzle: Epiphany is not like the feeling of solving a complex puzzle. Epiphany is about finding a solution that was too simple to see. When everything falls into place and you wonder how it was ever possible to not know the answer - that is the feeling a puzzke should evoke.
I gotta say Mark, I've always loved your content. I've got 20+ yrs in level design for AAA games. You're on the right track... crushing it. I've never (ever ever ever ever ever) seen a n00b designer who doesn't make it: 1. Too big. 2. Too complicated and 3. Too hard. For your next game, you'll see the world in a whole different way. Congratulations sir, and keep up the great work!
I absolutely love your videos about this game! It's so relatable to what I am experiencing right now - apart from that I am not as far with my game as you are, but still! Thanks!
3 months in with my indie game development. I play tested some of my game mechanics to my friends and learnt a lot from them. To the basic feel for the camera, to movement and level design... Still a long way to go to polish what ive made so far. 😅 Wish me luck 😅
THANK YOU for such an important video! I'm often met with anxiety by senior corporate leaders that don't understand why being able to think like a beginner is an important skill for their teams to train and practice. Keep sharing and inspiring! Your game is really coming along swimmingly and I can't wait to wishlist it on Steam :)
That "watch other" hold perfectly true for any thing you develop that people interact with like websites, normal applications and even real hardware, and its equally humbling to get the feedback :) And its at least as important to do. "You are not your user" is a quite we had on the wall on my last work and its so true.
If anything is gonna get you cancelled, Mark. It's your summary dismissal of American cuisine based on one fast food chain in one state as a Brit. Great video!
Need to catch up? You can watch the full Developing playlist here: ua-cam.com/play/PLc38fcMFcV_uH3OK4sTa4bf-UXGk2NW2n.html
first
HOW IS IT 3 HOURS AGO WHEN IT WAS JUST RELEASED??
A small suggestion for your platforming part. Platforming could work as a pallet cleanser between puzzles, BUT I would suggest you have either no fail state or the price of failure being very low. The reward would be FUN and QUICK platforming. For example: if you have a platforming section where you propel yourself with magnets, maybe doing midair maneuvers to get to faster "lanes" so if you do it right you go faster. There is no fail state since the worst the player can do is just go slower, but there is still a small skill component to keep it interesting and fun.
The "stick around to find out!" garbage reminded me of old buzzfeed-style clickbait. Ruined an otherwise respectable video.
How big was the spider really
gauging the difficulty of your own puzzle game is near-on impossible by yourself as knowing the puzzles' solution really screws you over.
It's super hard when your a solo developer. Having a couple team members to knock some sense into you is always helpful.
You could also just take a break from design and test it a day later or so, though it's not quite as efficient
Try playing a fair game of poker with yourself.
If you do not have multiple personality disorder... there is no way to blend other infos out.
this could be applied to any game type: "you [the developer] are the worst judge of your game"
whether that be the readability of your level design (is that climbable or just decoration), the animations of your enemies (is that an attack or just an itchy nose, can I dodge/parry what is the window), the difficulty of your puzzles, is this upgrade actually interesting/impactful/meaningful (take 5% less damage, so I can take 102% of the damage that enemy deals thanks...)
if you have the same testers constantly testing your game they could be 'too good' at your puzzles, combat, control scheme (Alien Resurrection for reinventing dual stick FPS controls before Halo evolved combat) leading to a question of "did I make it too easy if the testers are getting through too quickly"
Puzzles generally. (Though there's even an issue if you're using 'people who are very experienced with sudoku' to test your sudoku. What your testers tell you 'oh this is a really elegant use of this ruleset. 10-20 minutes. This might work with folk who've never seen this puzzle type before' might take someone who's never seen that ruleset before three hours to solve. (Not kidding. This happened to me fairly recently with a puzzle I set.) - Assessing the difficulty of a puzzle is an absolute nightmare.)
Mark, I've been working in AAA as a designer for 5 years at two different studios. I'm sure you already know you're popular among industry professionals and we share your content all the time. What I love above videos like these is that they really highlight the iterative process of game design. No matter how good your instincts are or how analytical you are about design, you will still run into issues like "I forgot to make it fun" or "woops, it's tedious" and that's ok as long as you're able to constructively digest feedback (the actual hardest part) and find solutions to the actual problems. Thank you for your service! 🙇
Cheers Jose!
As a civil engineer for decades now, I still sometimes struggle with preparing shop drawings that will accurately, simply and succinctly communicate the design intent of a system that I will have sometimes spent months iterating on. It's easy to assume that the people using your plans have more knowledge of the final product and the intricacies that shaped the design than they might actually have. Getting feedback from the project manager and supervisors is helpful in learning how to better convey the required information and sometimes even simplifying aspects of the final design.
Thanks for sharing good to hear AAA devs make the same mistakes as us inides!
That makes me think of when Suzaku from code geass says he doesn't have trust in people, just systems
It's like no matter how good you are at game dev you're still jusr a person. So what's important is setting up a system, a feedback loop, and having that system inform the game development process. Because a system (or plan) is easier to stick to and hold yourself accountable to than nebulous ideas about how a game should be made. Interesting
As a QA analyst who entered a level design contest for Mega Man some time ago, I encountered this when I put together my entry. I was told that some of the mechanics I'd used weren't taught to the player very well, and that I might need to add some antepieces or other teaching moments for the players. Thankfully I saw the testers' point, and even though these mechanics are very heavily used in the series, a player who'd never encountered them before might not know how they worked. Plus it allowed me to show off some of the more unusual things I was doing with the mechanic before players encountered those twists "in the wild", so to speak. I ended up placing fairly well in that contest (on my first ever try at such a thing), and a lot of it was due to listening to feedback like that.
I think it was Valve when making Portal 2 who said they found it better to watch people play your game but to NOT be in the same room, as people will give somewhat false positive feedback face to face, whereas if you just watch their face on a webcam alongside what is happening on screen, you can get a better sense of what they *actually* think. Obviously there's all kinds of value in all kinds of testing, but I thought this was worth putting forward as an alternative to what you said about being in the room when they play
psychologically, i fell like that makes a lot of sense. thanks for sharing that perspective as i think it really does posit a nice alternative to mark’s approach - which also seems intuitive at first glance but, as you’ve pointed out, can have obvious problems in terms of feedback.
In fact that's the way on how many Focus Groups test works for a variety of industries and products.
It wasn't *just* Portal 2. ua-cam.com/video/9Yomqk0C6kE/v-deo.html
Valve also integrates playtesting into the core development cycle. The first iteration of the original Half-Life was so bad that they had to completely scrap it and start from scratch. The Half-Life we know and love was the result having the second iteration of the game constantly playtested during development. Since then, they have weekly playtest sessions of all of their games, administered by the developers themselves.
I wonder if this was the inspiration for Mark's video on how Valve playtests.
the worst puzzles (imo) are the ones where you figure out the solution fairly easily but then actually implementing that solution is really tedious. Towers of Hanoi is a perfect example of this kind of puzzle, because once you work out the steps the act of actually performing those steps is really monotonous but still requires focus because if you make a mistake and don't immediately catch it, it then also requires a lot of focused monotonous work to undo that mistake.
Such a simple, exponentially long puzzle
Omg, is Tower of Hanoi considered a puzzle game? lol. I agree with you tedious implementations are generally terrible. If I am almost certain I can complete a level without any enlightenment but have to grind through the whole thing looking out for inconsequential details that could screw me over along the way, then I probably just give up.
@@Y2B123 It's not so much a 'game' in and of itself, but Towers of Hanoi is a puzzle. And it's one that I've seen in some form or another in many games throughout the years as a puzzle among many other puzzles (usually in mid-tier action explorers). [Note that sometimes it's pretty well-disguised]. I get *why* it's in a lot of those sorts of games. Because it's easy to implement and easy to solve. It's like a maze. (Does a maze count as a puzzle?) But whenever I encounter it in a game, I just sigh with distain. I'd rather there just be no puzzle than do Towers of Hanoi again.
wait, really? I thought those puzzles were kinda cool. In the case of towers of hanoi, it definitely becomes unnecessarily tedious, but thats just because the solution is pretty much an algorithm you just repeat over and over and over again. If thats what you mean, then yeah I get it, but puzzles such as the ball-following puzzles in Crosscode I found super satisfying even if the solution was rather easy to figure out but required a large sequence of actions that required timing and precision. If you want to know what I'm talking about, you can find the longest and most notable of these puzzles here: ua-cam.com/video/5RW-63GFOhE/v-deo.html (not really a spoiler if you have no clue whats going on)
That being said, there are numerous comments under that video that complain about the exact puzzle I'm talking about. I personally loved almost every puzzle in crosscode and I guess I just don't understand how it may be frustrating. The video even does some sections in a weird order and still got it, which makes me question the comments that claim they aren't fast or coordinated enough to do it. I guess I'm just really good at puzzles?
Quantum Conundrum too
Another thing is that players don't necessarily just like hard puzzles, they like the feeling that comes from SOLVING puzzles. Getting that balance between challenge and reward is something a lot of game devs miss and I'm glad you're covering it
It's actually such fun watching a guy that knows and teaches a lot of video game stuff actually be an amateur at game making, this actually motivates me to maybe try out something someday
It's like that part in the Menu where he asks the food reviewer the cook and he cooks the most uncooked shit ever haha
Have you tried it yet? If not, you should start right now.
It's just a skill, you can become good at it
I feel that when teaching little quirks in the way a game’s mechanics function, it can be very satisfying to engineer a situation where the player might accidentally use it while doing something else and then immediately follow it up with a very simple and isolated problem that can only be solved with the mechanic. For the people who just found it by accident, it can be very rewarding and even a source of pride. For those who didn’t, they still get to learn it with no clutter before going on to use it later.
I like that approach a lot, though I feel this is best fit for finding optional secret areas
I get the sense that you had an example in mind when you made this comment. Care to share?
That’s actually really good if you can pull that off. And the players who do find that quirky mechanic probably won’t be too bothered by the one “useless” level since they’ll be quick to solve it and see it as somewhat of a short breather.
@@hoodiesticks the entrance to the area in the bottom-right corner of hollow knight is one example.
being accidentally rewarded with a secret is unsatisfying to me, but a piece of knowledge is different somehow. Go figure.
7:02
I'm of the firm belief that a puzzle game should never allow you to get irreversibly stuck and force you to (actively) reset. It can be very hard for players to recognize that there is no way to salvage the situation and many may not even get the idea to start over.
The only exception to this are clearly communicated _Game Over_ states, which automatically trigger a level restart - like "key component X was destroyed", "you were squished between 2 objects" or "the objective timer ran out".
Honestly not sure how you get into game design without coming to have this opinion. Though I'm not in game design so what do i know
But always, ALWAYS give the player some way to start the level over. Even if there's no way to get stuck, players will MAKE a way to get themselves stuck.
@@Tigersight0 only example that doesn't do that would be the Portal games, which are really hard to softlock yourself in. I mean, if you lose a key component, they just, give you another one. Pretty hard to lose there. They actually give you an achievement if you figure out a way to do it.
@@leaffinite2001 just playing devils advocate here but a possible reason some puzzle games include the potential to get ireverseably stuck on a puzzle is because it takes aditional time and money to make that not the case. Nowadays the standards for game development have risen substantially and so this game dev opinion is basically a given for making puzzle game. Everything looks obvious in hindsight
@Vinicius Dugue thats fair, though im not sure if its advocating my comments devil if that makes sense.
As I'm playing through TOTK's shrines, I'm reminded of this video. A lot of shrines start off with a "puzzle" that is literally just implementing the mechanics of the game in the simplest way possible before opening up a second room where the "real" puzzle is. It's pretty smart that they make sure your brain is in the right place before being faced with an obstacle.
Yea but alot of the time the second puzzle is still really easy and there isn’t always even a second room.
This is a common thing in Nintendo puzzles, the idea of the four-step puzzle. You start with a simple implementation of it, something very basic. Then, you have the player do something a bit more complicated. Do that four times,, upping the complexity each time, to ease the player into the element, and now they'll know what to do when you spring it on them in future.
The idea of swapping your hands on the controller is very interesting. There's a similar concept in music teaching. If you want to walk in a guitar student's shoes you can try playing left-handed (or right-handed if you learned as a leftie). It's eye-opening. The guitar feels like a completely unknown object in your hands. It's a very powerful experience.
until you get too good at swapping hands xD Absolutely agree though, it's like you become a beginner once you swap hands!
This is a lesson I learned ages ago as a D&D DM, haha. Your puzzle is never "too easy", and even when it is, that can be pretty fun! :D
the best part is, if your puzzle is "too easy" it often ends up just being a trick question
people will assume that's not the answer to the question, so they'll try something harder, and then when they finally realize it was right there they laugh at themselves and it's a grand old time
I mean, bottom line, what's worse : a puzzle that players find too easy, or a puzzle that players get stuck on ?
@@jeandouyeth6682 Totally. The nice thing about D&D as opposed to game dev, too, is that a DM can dynamically adjust things on a moments notice, and more easily react to the players. If they were let down by how easy it was, you can add complications behind the scenes, or throw in some more combat or something. If it's too hard, you can throw some hints/help their way.
@@jeandouyeth6682 Depends on the type of player methinks. I know people who genuinely enjoy spending hours/days on puzzles and time out of the game to figure things out. On the other hand, I've also run games for people who much prefer puzzles that can be solved within 10 to 15 minutes and serve a narrative purpose.
I'd think that question is probably a lot more challenging for video game devs since they'd be trying to appeal to a much larger audience as opposed to a DM/GM who runs a game for 3 to 6 people. Especially since odds are good the DM/GM already knows the preferences of their players if they've been running the sessions long enough.
I always laugh at the meme of “puzzles for babies, by a DM”
I believe that this was the reason for early NES games being known for being "Nintendo Hard" at the time. The only playtesters for a game would often be the devs themselves. And it's not like there was an internet around to get rapid feedback done anyways even after the game was released. So as a result it was extremely common for NES games to be really really hard. Which to be fair also worked for helping artificially extending playtime since it was hard to make a game that could last more than a few days of playing when you only had 40kb to work with.
@@SimuLord Even for home console games, they needed to justify the price of a game by making it last longer, and the cheapest way to do that is to make it stupidly hard. You could breeze through most retro games if they were easy because they don’t have a lot of content
I think the reason was that they were extremely short, like, 30 minutes long to cover the whole game. And they were expensive as hell, "60 $ for 30 minutes? Are you nuts???"
So they were extremely hard to cover for the lack of content.
Take Sifu, for example. Sifu can be finished in about 2 hours, its 5 levels are great, there is content, but it unveils itself as you become more skillful. The game is hard, but naturally hard, not artificially.
Artificially hard is "Nintendo hard", "battletoads hard" or else, naturally hard is when you have fair rules in the game and you know you can succeed, just need to roll a little earlier, or change your tactic. Old games rarely had such space for gameplay.
@@SimuLord Ubi game at least doesn't milk your nerves, you just play until you're interested. And they also make giant worlds, so you discover for as long as you want, you don't have to finish 100%, you can just finish the main story, for example.
But yeah, both aren't that good :)
It's hard to say because these are all valid or possible reasons. Sakurai cited the "playtime length" reasoning in a recent video of his. But cartridge prices, memory limitations, arcade game design, or lack of play testing all likely apply. Also far shorter development periods in general.
@@SimuLord That's another big one, but also rental markets (meaning that you ideally wanted a game that required multiple rental sessions to beat. When most people are renting, you're audience - rental stores - are going to want a game that causes people to rent it out over several weekends rather than just for a weekend) paired with limited cartridge sizes meant the only real way to extend the length of a game was to make it harder.
Plus if designers are used to designing for arcades they're going to default to those methods.
This series is so insanely down to earth! As a newbie gamedev myself this really speaks to me, seeing someone like you just talk about your game's development so casually, in such a friendly tone is truly lovely.
This series was a great idea Mark, and your execution of it even more so!
Omg a two hour, in real time, feedback video 🥺 I can’t think of anything kinder to give to someone working on a project. (Emotionally quite horrifying, but so so valuable)
A great gift, especially from someone with a background in game design. I know I’d struggle not being overly critical in a similar position.
That's what I was thinking, real-time feedback is the best especially when you can't help them and have to watch them struggle. Emotionally horrifying, but priceless.
Once in high school I was dealing with people who made the same mental mistake as described here and looked it up. I've always LOVED that it's called "The Curse of Knowledge"! 😁
The platforming version feels more suited to a little separate thing - a couple of super hard levels that need good reflexes for expert players.
Like a fun final challenge
Or hidden levels you need to find?
Bonus levels!
You can have them hidden behind breakable walls or secret passages in levels and leading to some optional collectables. Kind of like some of the grub rooms in Hollow Knight or the strawberries in Celeste.
Perhaps as a Free DLC? So people who don't care for that won't even see them.
Underestimating difficulty is certainly something that seems to plague every jam game I ever make. I think I got it right once and then never got it again lol.
Well in all fairness if you contribute to a game jam, you wont really have the time to flesh every last detail out
Buuuut something that can be done is using ideas you got while making your jam game and polishing those up if you like them enough
Jam games are literally never well balanced for difficulty. They're either easy as hell or seemingly impossible. They're really just meant to be a demonstration of an idea though, so that's not unreasonable.
@@ledumpsterfire6474 The reason is obviously jam games get so little time so some things will have to be left ignored/unpolished, difficulty is an easy one especially for a game that will probably be quite short
@@RandomHandle837 Not to mention that most experienced devs are working professionally and don't really have time or want to do jams, so most of what you have left are indies who don't have a lot of experience or skill, and a jam game will often only have a couple or few of those people working on it.
Yeah jam game balance is tough, i recently took part in one and my game was way too easy (didn't help that there was an exploit that was extremely easy to use that left the player pretty much untouchable) i've been working on it a lot since and now it's maybe a bit too hard, though i'm kinda okay with that because of the genre the game is
This is an interesting exploration of “knowing the path” vs “walking the path”. Mark is one of the best game design theorists and teachers, but as a practitioner he could re-watch some of his own videos. I’m specifically thinking about the “Jonathan Blow” puzzle video, which teaches a lot of the same lessons learned here.
That's a problem with every skill. Being knowledgeable about something doesn't mean being good at it.
Then what I like about Jonathan Blow's puzzles is that they're basically designed as:
"there's an interesting idea, and I wrapped it in a puzzle to help you understand."
I love the moment in the Witness where you come out of that tiny starting area, see the door with several starts exits and a bunch of dots and are completely stumped, then by solving those two little sequences of puzzles on the side, which you really don't have to think THAT hard about you suddenly understand how to solve the puzzle at the door.
The satisfaction comes less from "I solved this hard thing" and more from "I understand this concept now", but understanding such a concept can simply be difficult.
@@ledumpsterfire6474 With puzzle games gaining the knowledge how to solve the game, is the game.
@@PauLtus_B Making puzzles and solving puzzles are pretty fundamentally different skills, as counter intuitive as that seems. Ask any puzzle game fan to design a puzzle for your game, and unless they've had experience doing it before, it's going to be nonsense and probably not fun at all.
Well the problem with just being a "theorist" is that you don't have enough practical experience to know if your theory is even possible or just bunk that can only function in an academic setting. Kind of like certain economic systems that shan't be named, but the concept is the same.
I write and "thinking like a reader who has no experience with my story" is such a crucial skill that I still struggle with. Great insight
Mad props to the art style. Those drill bits are satisfyingly animated
I’ve had this experience so many times, especially when I started out game dev, it’s crazy. Every single time I thought I made a mildly challenging level it turned out to be near impossible for play testers. Every time I thought I made a level for babies it was nearly perfectly balanced for playtesters. It’s such a natural instinct to use the information that’s been bouncing around in your own head for so long intuitively that it’s truly an exercise in patience and trial and error to learn that you are the only human on the planet who feels that way about your game. It’s your baby. It’s a personal, intimate thing to make a game and tooling that for the public is not a natural skill set for 99.9% of people.
The trouble is, I agree about needing hand-holdy tutorials.
As for overall level of challenge, it depends entirely on your target audience. Do you want younger or gaming-inexperienced players to finish the game? That's totally fine...
But that means experienced players aren't going to enjoy it. Like the video said, he wasn't targeting the people who loved Baba is You and and rocked every level.
Personally, I find that most 'puzzle' games are tailored towards very inexperienced players, and that means they're very, very easy, and that's just no fun.
"inbento" is a great example: it's an adorable game, I love the character of it, and not a single puzzle took me more than a few seconds of staring at what I had available before I 'solved' it, because every set of puzzles was a very basic mechanic that built slightly on itself and never, ever actually presented a challenge.
@@softxpandguest708 you hit the nail on the head. Is it a puzzle game built for people who play puzzle games, or a puzzle game built for people who don't play puzzle games.
What confuses me with this whole video though is why is he trying to target people who don't play puzzle games? They aren't likely going to be the ones looking for it unless he's just relying on his YT following to buy it. I think it's a poor strategy overall unless you're actively trying to introduce new people to a genre. Better to know your audience and have samples from the target audience playtest, not your dad
You also know all the answers from the start which skews your perception of the balance. This doesn't just apply to puzzle games either. Let me cite what I think is one of the most egregious design oversights in popular gaming history: the path up to Undead Burg in Dark Souls 1. Yeah, you may scoff, but _countless_ gamers have reached Firelink Shrine and managed to completely miss the stairway up the cliff to the aquaduct in favour of either blundering into the graveyard leading to the Catacombs (and getting torn apart by hordes of high level skeletons) or stumbling down into New Londo Ruins and getting slaughtered by invincible ghosts, because those two paths are far more obvious than the cliffside path leading to the _first_ half of the game. Then they assume that the whole game is as hard as those two late-game areas (since Dark Souls already had a reputation of being super-hard) and get frustrated and quit. Believe me, it happens more than you might think- in fact I think it happened to me the first time I tried playing, I had to come back to it later.
The problem was that the level designers _knew_ which way to go before the way to go even existed, so they failed to make that way as easily noticeable as the other two (you had to run towards what looked from a distance like a blank cliff, compared to going through the big water courtyard where Frampt will eventually arise, or going down the obvious staircase past Anastacia's cage). Every time you get lost in a game because it isn't properly telegraphing where you need to go next, that's probably because the developer (who already KNOWS the answer) thinks it's self-evident and doesn't need to be more obvious, because they're afraid of being _too_ obvious and insulting their players' intelligence (another, more old-school, example I can think of is Lufia and the Fortress of Doom for the SNES, which has one of the worst laid-out world maps I've ever seen with far too much open space and not nearly enough landmarks, and too vague directions given about where your next objective is, especially once you get the ship and have access to the ENTIRE world map via the ocean).
I think 2D mario games figured out tutorials perfectly. the goomba checks if you can jump, and gives you a prompt only if you can’t. Most players don’t even know that prompt exists because we don’t need it. The first level teaches you ALOT of mechanics and you don’t even notice you’re being taught.
I like this comment-- particularly the end line-- as it highlights another step of that process that most game makers don't like to talk about or admit: players are the users, but they aren't the experts. You need player feedback to figure out how best to serve them, but they don't know how to serve themselves.
Players will tell you what they find frustrating. But that doesn't mean you change what they don't like. At least not right away. A classic example: inventory limits that force you out of the main loop to send you back to town in an ARPG. Players will demand unlimited inventory space in games like that because they find that interruption frustrating. But as the expert, you know they actually need the downtime to appreciate the uptime. And you've got to slow them down so they don't devour everything and feel bad for having gorged themselves.
Players don't understand that those design choices, even if apparently frustrating, serve a higher purpose. They don't realize that if they got what they were asking for, they'd be worse off.
the humor and editing in this video totally landed for me, one of my fav vids since zelda boss keys
Same here!
One of the most important lessons I've learned is how I can't make a game to show how clever I am, but rather, make a game that makes people feel clever.
Often the complexity creep/fluff of levels/games comes from this desire to feel clever as the designer.
Understanding game better than game designer may be fun too.
Look what speedrunners do for example.
“Test your assumptions” is a life rule, not just for game design.
I recommend using those old levels in like a challenge pack after you beat the game for the people who want a challenge as they have already figured out all the mechanics😊 hope this helps.
I love what Rayman Legends did with the timed challenges and shadow you levels. Added a lot of content and challenge for those who have mastered the game
This applies more broadly than just game dev -- the Curse of Knowledge as it's sometimes called. Once we Know something, it's fundamentally extraordinarily difficult for us to understand, empathise, and model what it's like to be someone who doesn't Know That Thing.
It very much is a skill, and an exercise in empathy. It's very valuable to learn how to do, and perhaps it's not wrong to say it's something that you can never fully master, only get a little better at in small areas at a time.
A words of wisdom ;-)
Have a kid and you'll understand this Curse intimately. 😂 Go into it thinking out how you're gonna teach a fresh soul how to read and tie shoes and multiply fractions..."how can I do that? I'm not a teacher!"...inevitably find yourself trying to assemble a tutorial level of *The Steps Of Blowing Your Nose Into A Tissue And Then Throwing It Away,* or *How To **_Not_** Pick Up Something That's Too Heavy To Lift* ...
Most of my (very dated) game dev experience had to do with kiddie games -- Dora the Explorer and whatnot -- and an amusing/frustrating facet to this Curse when approaching products for little kids is that both the devs expectations for player ability, and _actual_ player ability vary _wildly..._ even if you've only got two buttons and a joystick, you've gotta go into it knowing some of your players are likely going to be literally still developing the understanding of the _concept_ of cause & effect, let alone button-press-causes-effect-on-screen, let alone have any prior knowledge scaffold for main-button-is-generally-affirmative and smaller-button-is-generally-cancellation... 😅 On the plus side you get a LOT of practice breaking through your preconceived notions of What My Players Need... (minus side you'll be reflexively making "Swiper No Swiping" jokes for decades).
Finally found someone mention this here.
@@bsidethebox You're reminding me of my middle school math classes. Actually, just my school days in general.
In my high school days, I was always complaining to myself about how bad teachers were with avoiding this bias.
I really enjoyed watching his 2 hour playthrough, thanks for sharing the link at 2:25 :D
Lmaoooo i came looking for this comment
/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
this link brought to me to another video. Could someone help me find it pls?
So this is what it feels like. LMAO, this is actually genius I thought I was being clever by typing it out myself only to get rickrolled
never gonna forget that XcQ 😂
words cannot express how jealous i am that you can hand a game you’re working on to your parents and they actually give it an honest try. my parents would never even consider it.
"How To Pitch To Your Parents", and "How to Get Your Parents To Do QA Testing" would both make awesome videos IMO
Rather than jealously, you should feel hatred 😊
"what the fuck is this shit? I don't have time"
@@ilovecairns5181 Yes, this is the path to the dark side.
Sounds like you have some crappy parents.
My takeaway from this video: Mark is one of the bravest people on this planet for being able to calmly continue his script while being in the same room with, and I quote, "jesus christ that's a big spider! uhh, uhh, where was I?"
What u mean
Fear is not the spider you see on the wall. It’s the spider you no longer see on the wall when you look back again.
Fair point, fair point.
I personally think that skippable tutorial levels are a good addition to a puzzle game. That way an experienced player can jump into the deep end, while a new player can build up their comfort and confidence with the easier levels. With good communication players can dictate their own difficulty and you don't really have to worry about them finding it too easy, or too hard.
Players will often overestimate their abilities, skip tutorials, and get stuck.
I have watched a friend install a new game, fiddle with the controls before playing, and get mad that the controls were strange, he still maintains that the game has awful controls.
@@peacedustinc.7108 But at that point they'll hate it no matter what you do. Have a forced tutorial and the game is treating them like a baby.
Instead of catering to that specific group of players, which will probably hate it anyway, it's better to cater to the majority of people that will play your game. And a significant part of that are players that are already familiar with the genre.
Partially optional tutorials allows the largest group to get the most out of it, and makes replays significantly more berable.
A new developing episode is always a pleasant surprise!
Yes i love these videos so much😅
If you sent an hour long puzzle game to a puzzle game maker and it takes him 2 hours to finish it, that may have been your first hint it was a bit convoluted xP Gongrats on every step of the process thus far, I've greatly enjoyed this series.
I mean, presumably, part of that 2 hour video was providing feedback, not just solving the puzzles :P
@@dusklunistheumbreon I mean, of course, but even if it were 50% discussion it still took an expert 100% of the expected time to finish a game intended for a general audience.
I honestly admire the humility you have throughout this series.
As an aspiring Game Designer, I view you as someone on the high tier of the spectrum, but you admitting to basic mistakes and difficulties throughout the series just shows the high level of integrity, because of which I'll keep coming back to this channel.
I love how well-made these videos are.
I would have never in a million years thought I would be interested in how video games are designed.
I have been a fan of your channel for years now and your content never gets boring or tedious. 😂
Thank you so much, Mark. Well done.
This is why I love your videos. I'm not a game developer, but I'm a product designer. There are so many parallels between our worlds, including the importance of user research (of which there are many kinds) to know how people will *really* react to what you've created.
As a game designer, I offer you my sympathy. I fell for this as well at one point. Generally found it pretty liberating to lower the difficulty on games after having pushed it to feel challenged by my own design and then seeing people begin to access the fun.
I'm not a game designer, just a curious one and a lifetime gamer.
I think one possible issue to complex puzzles is that the more stuff you add, more messy it becomes, and the problem is not the puzzles being too hard (take The Witness, for example, it has hard puzzles), I believe the problem is that the puzzles become messy and hard to understand.
If I was making a game, I would possibly keep the hard puzzles, but make them as simple as possible, not as easy as possible, if what I say makes sense. You for sure have more experience in designing games, but I think the key is the simplicity and clarity, not the ease.
Something I think worth emphasizing; It's not JUST easy to assume the player knows as much as you do about your game, but it's also easy to fall into that fear of "Is my game too simple? Is that boring? Do players really feel engaged performing a simple, straight forward task?" This video helped hammer it in that, maybe this is what I should be trying to challenge more than anything.
I'm making a game and this is one of my biggest struggles. Designing areas, enemy attacks, etc. I've found myself fearing that I've been too simple, that I need to force myself to get more creative and convoluted, I need some extra layer of 'depth'. But maybe I'm just over thinking things, and this mindset is going to lead me to creating something overwhelming.
I guess that's why play testing is important though. You need to understand if people feel that way or not.
You're describing exactly how I felt! And so if this video is any indication, please try and get a demo of your "simple" game in front of people and see what they actually think!
@@GMTK Yeah, I'll be sure to. The block I've hit recently myself is, I've been trying to make a Metroidvania and thoughts like "Is this room too hallway-esque?" and "Is it alright if I go a while without introducing new mechanics? How do I make these rooms feel different? Will the player even make it far before getting bored?"
The problem I hit that you didn't though is, I've felt a sort of creative block when it comes to adding "more" to an area. It's hard to think of something really complex that just... works. Even if your puzzles were too complex, you make it look so easy coming up with so many creative and interesting ideas that iterate on eachother.
Really makes me wonder if maybe I'm over thinking it. Hoping to just go for it, get some people to play test it, and keep the mindset of "I can make changes to the game design and progression" as I go along.
I took game design classes and dropped out after a few months because I wasn't really learning much but I will always remember something a teacher told me: your goal is not to beat the player.
@@amuro9624 It's the same as a DM in TTRPGs. The goal is to let the players have fun, yourself included.
The hardest part is remembering that you are reverse-engineering your puzzle from the top, where your players will be engaging it from first principles and from the bottom.
What you said about redoing a level all over again - this is a technique I used all the time when writing book analyses etc in school. Rewriting, redoing, from start over and over again until you get a pretty good paper you can be proud of.
It's true for a lot of other things too! Sketch a thing not once but a dozen times; take the best 6 and develop those a little further; take the best 2 even further, and then look at the best one and go "OKay, now I know what to do. Let's start with the real painting!"
I write papers at the last possible time while drinking plenty of whiskey.
I think it'd be an awesome idea if instead of scrapping the harder puzzles, you instead used them to make a bonus collection of hard puzzles for people after they beat the main game
Sometimes harder puzzles are just too similar to the original, take Portal 1's advanced chambers as an example, they aren't particularly difficult as it is just the same thing, but with a few twists, that slow you down for a minute or two.
I had a simmilar realization with my own game when I saw youtubers and players play the first version of it a few years back for the first time. Stuff I thought was obvious - was not. Stuff I thought was easy - was hard. I learned so much from that. The game is still in development, so very helpful with these well-made reminders. Good luck on the game! 👏
The more I follow you on this journey, the more I'm appreciating the puzzle design of the Portal games.
Hey Mark! I was at the Dome Keeper kiosk at the IGF Pavilion. Wanted to say hi and thanks for this series, it's been super insightful to someone like me who is new to the industry. Unsurprisingly you were a popular guy around indie devs so I didn't get the opportunity. But I'll say it now: this has been a great video series!
Also fuckin well done on the Rick Roll 🤣
Top tier game there! Impressive job!
@@kaingagame4351 Thanks so much!
Dome Keeper OST rocks! hope we see more of your work.
@@l0rdfr3nchy7 Thank you! 💚 I hope so too 😅
As a fan of snakebird, I'd say it's fine the for the *later* levels to be highly convoluted (once players already have the core mechanics), but not at all ok to have red hearings. Good puzzles are hard enough as it is without having stuff you have to ignore.
I think there's two kinds of red herrings - those that are there to just waste your time, and those that just mislead you in how to *use* them.
The former generally suck. It's clutter and just distracts the player. Tropes are tools, of course, so sometimes the game will benefit from just a bit of clutter, but most of the time it's something to be avoided.
The latter can be very good in the later stages of the game. Baba is You has *multiple* levels where words are used as spacers to push other words around, or as junk to remove obstacles (such as with WATER IS SINK), or where you're using a word in an unusual way, and it deliberately baits you into thinking it's used in the usual way. They generally work well
The latter isn't a red herring.
I have to say these videos are pure gold.. I recently made an intro to my game and no one had a problem finishing it because I followed your advice and explained everything to the players.. even things I felt didn't need to be explained, e.g. I have a hover effect that shows the text of what player have to do, but I went a step further and also put in static text of what to do.. this turned out to be the right choice as it helped a lot of people playing on smartphones where is no hover effect.. little things like this make a huge difference in games, so I'm really grateful for these videos..
7:20 You perfectly described Rian Johnson's approach to Star Wars Episode VIII. He was more focused on making a movie that subverted everyone's expectations and was different, rather than making a good Star Wars movie.
The funny thing is that at the time I thought it was good simply because I thought they were introducing Gray Jedi lore in the movies. It turns out it was supposed to be safe and simple and boring, and that movie ruined the trilogy by forcing a reckoning.
The beauty of portal is that it is 90% tutorial. It is a model I believe all puzzle games should consider.
Tutorial is merged with the game. Same for Half-Life.
It is hard to implement, but it's the best option.
I don't think it's "90% tutorial". More like, the tutorial of the game prolongs within the game and they are adding more and more mechanics, so you always have to keep up and kind of never stop learning new stuff.
Inscryption is the same. You play, you die, then you're taught there are bones, then there is also something new, but what you play isn't the tutorial, you play the game, they're just adding new mechanics on top of each other.
@@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360 Lol, we said the same :) And then I read your comment.
This is indeed the best way to introduce new mechanics and keep players engaged and entertained.
@Sasha Bagdasarow That... is what a tutorial is. At least what a good tutorial is. When you're learning as you play, and the game itself is teaching you new mechanics, that is the definition of a tutorial, and a damn good one at that.
100% agree ! A game must be clear enough (at least in its first levels) to show you what to do and how to do. I have been working on my own platformer for 2 years now and I have added many more "simple" levels and help elements than I first thought after watching friends trying it. What is clear for you isn't the case for everyone !
TBH, a British guy making fun of American food is very much the pot calling the kettle black.
Also, great vid. Glad to see you making inprovments and growing as a designer.
Yeah, I thought that was pretty funny. The British are sort of notorious for having bland food and having stolen just about everything good they have from other cultures.
Right? If he was French or Italian or Japanese or Indian, I wouldn't say a word. Like I don't necessarily agree in some of those cases, but it's a fair take.
But beans on toast over here gonna talk shit on *American* food? He's just mad because he's not used to his food having flavor.
"Give it to your dad (or parent) who doesn't super play video games" is actually a really really good piece of advice just by itself
You truly are a massive inspiration for me. Thank you Mark for all that you've done and continue to do for the sake of helping others
I think Vimlark once said:
" When you're designing the levels, simplify them until they are easy for you... And then make them *easier.* "
Hard games are fine too.
@@sdjhgfkshfswdfhskljh3360 That's not the point. Fundamentally speaking, anything you make will be exponentially easier for you than it will be for an inexperienced player, and the exact amount can fluctuate depending on the target audience.
@@MizunoKetsuban I understood the idea. But with such approach there will be no games for gamers, who are more experienced than game designer himself.
..who's Velmark?
Oh my god, for mobile player grandmas?
This is great advice and not just limited to Game Design. You have described some common downfalls and solutions to Engineering Design too.
My level design philosophy is divided up into three parts:
1) Introduce - Show off the mechanic in a safe and controlled environment without extra fluff. Make sure the player has to use that mechanic to complete the section or level.
2) Expand - Now that the player understands the core concept, you can throw in other stuff from previous sections or levels in ways that interact with the new mechanic. The levels should still be pretty small so that the player can test out a comple possibilities and understand it fully.
3) Test - Finally, after the player has had room to explore a couple different ways the mechanic can interact with other stuff, you can test the player's understanding of it in an especially hard and/or bigger level.
This really reminds me of Boneworks, sorry, but in a bad way. Maybe you get me if you played it.
The puzzles there are cumbersome, because they are so "structured". I don't feel like something is happening, I feel like an experiment rat that is being put into a maze.
@@sashabagdasarow497 Never played it, but this isn't really a completely rigid structure that I abide by. It functions more like guidelines how not to throw a player into something they can’t solve.
@@indecx1878 yeah, I agree, I guess it's important to keep your points in mind, but without creativity it's not gonna be interesting.
Having designed video games for 30 years, the one true lesson I've learned is no one will understand and love your game as much as you do.
In other words, if you think it's too easy, it's probably still too difficult for your audience.
Fantastic video! 😃✍
Might as well not include any puzzles. Just make a game that requires pressing a single button. Or heck, just make a game that beats itself when you start it up because pressing a button is still too hard and complex.
When I need to gauge the difficulty, I always have my parents play it first. Their gaming background is quite sparse, so it shows exactly how a “new” player will see the game, from knowing 0 mechanics about it, and even shows how it controls for someone without the typical gamer reflexes.
You are 100% correct about In N' Out burger fries, and ironically the reason they are bad is on theme for the episode.
In N' Out wanted to serve fresh, high quality food so they implemented a policy that none of their ingredients can be frozen in advance. They did this because they made the assumption that frozen food was inherently worse than fresh food.
However, fries are actually BETTER when you freeze them in advance--that's how you get the crispy-on-the outside, fluffy-on-the-inside texture. If the potatoes are room temp then you can either under cook the inside or burn the outside, whereas frozen fries cook slower leading to that perfect texture. If you get French fries at a gourmet restaraunt? Guaranteed they were frozen in advance. By sticking with their assumptions and ignoring user feedback, InNOut ended up with the freshest fried potatoes in fast food that are also the least pleasant to eat.
They also only single-fry their fries. Frozen fries are parfried in the factory.
@@Default78334 You can ask them to double-fry them. Much better that way!
This series gave me the right attitude and mindset to learn C# and Unity and I can really relate to the hurdles explained and I really like all of your creative solutions to things like tutorials and level design, don’t feel obligated to try to pump these out but it really boosts my mood to see an upload to this series, go at your own personal pace and don’t make yourself feel rushed. Rock on!
As a french person I just wanted to say that the subtitles keep helping me to understand your videos. So thanks for that
I was needing this video! Yesterday I sent the very first build of my game for patrons to test, and some of them struggled with the difficulty. This video helped a lot!
There's an extremely useful axiom - the "Riddle Problem" - that came out of a writer trying to write riddles for a D&D campaign decades ago, thinking every single riddle was just way too obvious. It's real simple: "Things you already know, are obvious to you."
It's hard enough to assess difficulty, but it's harder to assess obviousness. It's not only worth looking at your audience (and potential other audiences), but also challenging your assumptions of what is and isn't difficult/complex/confusing.
The axiom's also a good reminder to let yourself off the hook! Your puzzles are probably decent. Your riddles are probably not too easy. But they probably still need some more work. Always will.
Would've loved to catch up at GDC, but very glad you had a good time!
The most Gamerish thing in your Maker's Toolkit is the dying inside
This series is incredible. I'm facinated to hear about all the complexities and pitfalls of game making. Like any other skill, it's a lot more complicated to learn than it first seems. I imagine this series must be hugely helpful to anyone who wants to make a game of their own, but it's also wonderfully insightful and interesting for the rest of us.
Simplify, Simplify, Simplify. I think this is great advice - save the hard stuff for later. Seeing that level comparison made me want to play this game MUCH more than before.
Portal is also a great point of comparison - it's one of my favorite puzzle games, and feels like a challenge, but it never overloads you with mechanics and still feels great when you find a solution.
Love this vid! I am currently finishing my college degree (Math and Computer Science) and I find it amusing how you essentially discovered Human-Computer interaction concepts on your own. Yeah, you have to think about your system (game in this case) and design its interaction based on how your target group already processes information. In this case, since your mechanics are already readable and mostly understandable enough, you just had to make some fixes on the overall level design, but I´ve seen some projects where everything had to be fully rebuilt to be actually usable.
I remember when some of my buddies were annoyed by this subject because they just wanted to focus on the technical affairs of computer science, but you proved that considering this stuff actually makes the difference between a good or a mediocre system/game/program/etc. Props to those people that can be interested in both sides of the mirror and congratulations for this wonderful video!
I really love how reflexive this series is. I’m not in game design at all, but I am a social science PhD student. I find so many similarities between your insights in this video and to my own academic journey so far. I guess things like ‘how you perceive audience assumptions’ is something that plagues any creative progress. Great work as always!
I've dabbled in puzzle design in the past, and this is definitely a trap I have also fell in. My puzzles always ended up being too difficult.
Edit: I just played the new demo, and the "stumper" level was my favourite because it took me a while to figure out! That just further proves my point though. I love really hard puzzles, so in the past I've made hard puzzles that weren't fun for the players because I fell into the trap of not checking my assumptions about the player.
Can't begin to express how happy it makes me when a new video from this series appears in my feed
I love this guy. Always posting well nuanced videos about gaming aspects I didn’t consider.
I love the way celeste teaches its new mechanics to players, by forcing you to interact with objects in a new way, so then you can apply that new knowledge in the later puzzles. There's an assist mode and harder versions of all the levels for post game, and even in the post game you're taught new mechanics that you can bring back to the original levels and that make them easier to get through
I think puzzle games should always use portal as a reference. The first few puzzles are so ridiculously easy. But they take time to intuit you the mechanics
those first few puzzles really are vital huh?
@@noahsabadish3812 Yes, the first ones are not so much about solving the puzzle as its about solving the mechanics of the game.
If you do not know what you can do, any puzzle can prove almost impossible, so the reward for the first ones is figuring out things you can try to do, then when you get to later levels you have the tools to start really thinking about the puzzle.
The alternative is pure tutorials, but tutorials are often skipped, or does not feel as part of the game, by using the first puzzles AS tutorial the game gets bigger and players will not skip them.
It was really cool seeing you at GDC! Keep it up with the game 🙌🏻
This reminds me of teaching! Especially something like mathematics. Coming up with good ways to explain a method and coming up with projects to help hone students' skills is really difficult! I constantly find myself over and under estimating understanding. It's hard.
It's really good that you said that part in the end about your target audience, and about how you had been originally subconsciously designing for people who completed games like Baba and Steven, because when you were describing what made your levels super convoluted I just thought "That's just the kind of series of curveballs I love whenever they throw them at me in Baba" and while you were of course right to simplify the game, there is definitely a group of people like me that delights in super convoluted and devious puzzle design.
Totally unrelated to your game but your editing and/or editor is PHENOMENAL. These videos always have such cozy vibes and I can never get enough of your channel’s intro outro music.
This is a really good reminder. Now I feel like I need to go back and replay/redo some of the early areas of my game.
Cheers!
I always wished you could write unit tests for game design problems. It’s difficult (if not impossible) to find a person who has never seen your game and have them play for a few hours every time you make a change.
That’s a great point - perhaps AI could fill that role. If you trained a model to the desired skill level, once you stop training it, it should give you fairly repeatable performance. You’d need to have it fairly general though, otherwise you might need to retrain it if you introduce a significant change. I read somewhere that the Total Warhammer team did something similar for balancing their games (though, using more traditional game AI, not neural nets) - basically, have the AI play a lot of simulated battles, and if one faction always comes out on top in otherwise “fair” fights (ex. Same unit cost), then the balance is likely off.
A good QA tester (as in testing is their profession) could probably give you a heads up in most cases if something is likely or potentially going to have a bad design effect. If they regularly manage play testing for example they should know the common hiccups players hit.
@@cristymatthews1189 That's a good point. QA's job is to try and find those kinds of things. Even in my own software dev (not games), they will regularly find things that maybe they could figure out, but wouldn't be obvious to a normal user. And sure enough, I usually agree with them. It's difficult to separate what we know from what others would know. It's definitely a skill that requires practice. Most of us developers don't practice that skill often, but QA certainly does.
I personally enjoy seeing earlier levels way later in the game, but harder
It gives that feel of "Oh! I remember this!"
and it gives a strong sence of progress and lets the players feel like they improved
I'd love to see a game use the similarity as part of a narrative. Imagine having to revisit the location and it's become more difficult because some of the mechanisms have worn down and corroded, or the antagonist you need to fight reengineered them to be actively hostile.
a great example of this is Pizza Tower's "Pizzascare"
Celeste B-Side and C-Side
Mark, overcoming one's ego is a key skill you must develop for doing playtests. Putting your creation in front of others, watching them be frustrated with it or not get, if you're fearful of failure you might stop doing that but it's necessary to improve. Good advice throughout this video, but you need to learn to let go of yourself and your negative fears
Congrats to you for realizing where in the difficulty spectrum you want your levels to be. Also for not making them hard for the sake of being hard, and remembering that push and pull between challenge and fun is what makes ppl want to play games.
As the maker of my own puzzle game, having gauged how people received many puzzles in the demo version, I definitely felt this in spades about worrying about straightforward puzzles being "easy", as well as similarly witnessed the fallout of designing puzzles that way. It's a very valuable lesson to learn.
Love when GMTK posts right as I’m opening the UA-cam app to find something to watch with lunch
I needed to see this video from ya Mark. It's great to see your magnet game evolve overtime as it has the past year since you started this series. I myself have been slowly building my very first game as well and would love to thank you for being one of the encouragement on tackling GameDev as a hobby. I'm building a arcade shootemup game. That is losley based on my two faves growing up. Ikuraga and asteroids. Learning python as a beginner for my journey and having tons of fun. Thanks for being a huge inspiration Mark. :)
So great to meet and hang out with you at GDC Mark! Glad you had such a good time.
Some really, really great takeaways from this video! Really glad you had a lot of great feedback on the game. Look forward to seeing more! :D
That part of simplifying the game - its a good advice, i heard something similar in the Portal (or Portal 2) developer commentary, if i remember correctly they said sth that it can be hard for a developer to just make a level easier, so that its less confusing/frustrating, but it sometimes has to be done. a small compromise they did was bundle a lot of these harder versions of the levels into the optional challenge mode you unlock after finishing the game
In-n-Out are famous for their burgers, their fries less so ;)
Alas, I love these videos! It’s inspiring to see your journey through game development as someone who’s doing the same. Keep up the amazing work!
That "a-ha" moment you describe reminds me of one of my favourite things to keep in mind when designing any kind of puzzle: Epiphany is not like the feeling of solving a complex puzzle. Epiphany is about finding a solution that was too simple to see.
When everything falls into place and you wonder how it was ever possible to not know the answer - that is the feeling a puzzke should evoke.
Love how casually you returned after a month, its like an early Christmas miracle
Or a late one😂
I gotta say Mark, I've always loved your content. I've got 20+ yrs in level design for AAA games. You're on the right track... crushing it. I've never (ever ever ever ever ever) seen a n00b designer who doesn't make it: 1. Too big. 2. Too complicated and 3. Too hard.
For your next game, you'll see the world in a whole different way. Congratulations sir, and keep up the great work!
I absolutely love your videos about this game! It's so relatable to what I am experiencing right now - apart from that I am not as far with my game as you are, but still! Thanks!
3 months in with my indie game development. I play tested some of my game mechanics to my friends and learnt a lot from them. To the basic feel for the camera, to movement and level design... Still a long way to go to polish what ive made so far. 😅 Wish me luck 😅
Sounds like it's going well!
So far so good. Surely, will get there someday. ☺️
THANK YOU for such an important video! I'm often met with anxiety by senior corporate leaders that don't understand why being able to think like a beginner is an important skill for their teams to train and practice. Keep sharing and inspiring! Your game is really coming along swimmingly and I can't wait to wishlist it on Steam :)
You can always add new more difficult levels but you can rarely get back players who were turned off from the game
not really a game dev, but a modder. Tbh it's so much fun to see people playtest your stuff (after the nervously sweating part ofc).
That "watch other" hold perfectly true for any thing you develop that people interact with like websites, normal applications and even real hardware, and its equally humbling to get the feedback :) And its at least as important to do. "You are not your user" is a quite we had on the wall on my last work and its so true.
Thank you for being so open about this experience. Hope the spider didn't get you.
If anything is gonna get you cancelled, Mark. It's your summary dismissal of American cuisine based on one fast food chain in one state as a Brit. Great video!
Loved the series so far!
I've been to GDC a few years ago, and your pre-conference activities pretty much checked all the things I also did. In and Out burger is truly a must!
the first thought i had when i saw the title was "don't assume your players are smart" and it was surprisingly on point
Wherein Mark gradually discovers what it means to be a user experience designer!