Is It Possible To Add TOO MUCH Polish To A Game?
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- Опубліковано 27 чер 2024
- A well polished game can only make a game better, right? Or is there a limit to how much improvement you can add?
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I'd add some Polish if I knew any, but for now I should probably just stick to working with English.
I suppose it might be possible to get caught up in an endless cycle of polishing, which could prevent a game from ever being released. But I can't say this is a common problem in the development community. A more likely issue preventing release would be scope creep.
adding polish feels like an endless cycle to me that i just can’t bring myself to start
There is a lot of work that goes into polish. But of course, it might be helpful to create a list of priorities to make sure you don't get caught doing things that don't really make a difference. :)
@@Artindi I imagine this is another place where good old playtesting comes in handy. An extra set of eyes and ears looking around for anything that seems like a rough patch.
Although if I had to hazard a second guess, after polishing the game physics and the menus, animations are a good thing to spend some extra time making look nice and crisp: I think a huge part of what makes a game look very good or very bad is how natural the animations are, and whether certain things even HAVE animations. It’s one thing that makes the Genesis Sonic games really stick in people’s minds visually, for an example, since basically everything Sonic does or interacts with will cause him to have at least SOME reaction to the situation, and his walk and run cycle is actually adjusted in speed to avoid desynching from his actual movement speed and causing a “slide” effect
You totally should add Polish to your game, as well as French, Spanish, Dutch, Czech, Hungarian, Russian, Korean etc. This will allow more people to fully enjoy your game. Even adding Belarusian and Ukrainian will make more impact than you may think.
too much polish would probably mean something like spending too much time on things players won't see and delays development or promised release dates, of course a decent amount of polish i think should be added right after the core mechanics have been added so you have a presentable prototype of a game, and it should be polished more towards the end, it really depends on what game you're making though, like rpgs usually have more polish than to say a bullet hell
Great point, why spend hours on something small that only a few people might see and less even care about. And having a presentable prototype is for sure important. :)
Definitely agreed, polish is one of those things that you don't really know you miss until you don't have it. The new menu and animations look awesome, great stuff!
The face of that character in the old main menu added a lot
hm.... maybe I'll add it back in as part of the slide show in the new menu. Thanks for the feedback! :D
I agree with your view, if the cake tastes bad, no amount of icing will make it good. But overall polishing is a good way to do things and a must in any high quality product.
BTW, i'm eager to play your game, will there be a demo release?
Yes, there will be a demo, when will it release? yeah, not so sure about that. :)
Nice video!
I think that it's important that one doesn't make animations too long, they may make the game worse if the player has to wait for long animations to finish.
Yes, especially for things that repeat often, like menu transitions.
Great quick video, with thought provoking topic. The thumbnail sales it allot 🥳
No example comes to mind of a game that was "too polished" that felt bad. If you do not compromise the design and stylistic choices you set out or the game feel you want to achieve, why not make the quality improvements you mention? As long as you remember there is no thing as perfection and find the sweet spot to say "this is now enough", and publish, I say keep trying! In this day and age you can also very easily share a revised version of the game if the feedback you receive warrants one, so maybe its harder to make that choice, but on the other hand it's not definitive.
Great seeing new flashing lights and effects! Good luck and keep going!
Perhaps this is one of the things that makes game dev so fun: Trying to figure out where that sweet spot is. Or at least trying different ways to discover that sweet spot. :D
I think people also tend to get stuck in this idea that adding particle effects and screen shake and lots of animation to every single action will automatically make their games better, and while that's generally a good mindset in 95% of cases and is a worthwhile habit to build up and think about, you can absolutely go overboard with it to the point that it ends up feeling worse to play and can easily break the look you're going for depending on what you're trying to do (i.e: an N64-style game probably doesn't need 100,000 particles)
Thanks for quality content!
Thanks for watching quality content! :D
Yes there is, it's perfectionism. Reworking and polishing already polished and good thinks, in order to make your game "perfect" and wasting years, just to be dissatisfied IF you ever release it :)
Gotta polish my polish! Yeah, that could be a downward spiral for sure. :)
@@Artindi Well, I know what I'm saying cause I'm Polish xD
adding too much polish can come in the form of like, making something that looks *too* nice, and then you have to sit there and go "do I really want to make *everything* look that nice?"
Another great video
Another great comment
Another great reply
lol
You are an unfound gem!
Why thank you! :)
Great video! IMO games effects and the gameplay itself need to scale their polish together. I've seen so many mediocre games apply their engines default effects to add a layer of polish to little effect. They end up looking garish and bad. I suspect a lot of people just do it for their devlogs or for screenshots they can show off but when it comes to actually playing the game it added no value.
for me too much polish is one of two things
too may effects that the game isn't readable
and as your comment said it, doing it for too long that your game doesn't release
Yup, I failed to mention the possibility of a unplayable game due to over-polishing, Great point! :D
@@Artindi thanks :D
It is quite difficult for me to prevent myself from polishing my game because it is still in very early development. Like, the last thing I need is to spend 2 hours on a new pretty tileset when I still have to add some of the core elements.
yeah, got to be careful to keep things in order, though, a really low level of polish can be good, just enough to keep the game feeling good to prevent burnout. :)
Hello Neighbour would be a good example, although it not only failed due to too much polish by the game devs, but also failed miserably due to the development cycle pretty much following your step by step guide on how to fail at making a game.
Depends
But most of the time its the little things that makes a game big
if devs spend more time on polish than actual gameplay, then yeah it's definitely possible.
I think it's a good idea to set aside a predetermined proportion of the development time for polish. Let's say 30-40%. Any less and it's disrespectful to the audience; any more and you're just hitting diminishing returns on what is essentially just a score multiplier on how fun your base game is. My 2 cent! Great video! :)
Well said! diminishing returns makes sense. After a while your just spending more on soap then the amount of shine it provides. :)
If you haven't done a lot of play testing, then yes, you can over polish a mechanic. Mythbusters showed us that you can, in fact, polish a turd, so be careful to know what you are polishing first. I don't know of any way to do that other than lots of experience as a developer or doing lots of playtesting. If you know you have solid bones of gameplay and core mechanics then polish can let you make the best possible expression of those mechanics.
Well said! In fact, better than how I put it. :)
No such thing as too much polish IMO. even a lot of AAA games are missing seemingly obvious polish things that would drastically improve QoL for the player.
That said, it's important not to waste time polishing the wrong thing. When you're in early design iteration phase, you should be rapid prototyping and finding ways to make your game fun, or a game at all, rather than making every random idea you wanna test be super polished.
For sure! Polishing at the wrong time in development can be very unproductive, especially if you end up cutting out the things you've polished. :)
a translation is enough
the more polish you add, the more the release of the game gets delayed.
so you need to balance enough polish with spending not too much time on it.
also, adding too much polish will remove a game's charm, so you must decide what you want to not polish so the game stays more charming.
Persona 5, is the most polished game in gaming history so far.
Can’t help, but notice that you didn’t answer the question
I think I was mostly just trying to pose the question, to inspire critical thinking for others making games. :)
@@Artindi oh… I see!