Five Tips To Making A Viral Game

whoa whoa you clicked on my video thank you so much for joining me my name is Thomas brush I'm the creator of a game called pinstripe I'm also working on a game called once upon a coma I've been making games for 10 years and so I have a little bit of experience and understanding maybe what makes a game successful believe it or not my first game that I ever made when I was 18 went viral over 8 million plays people loved it now it was a free web game so that makes it a little bit different than releasing on something like steam or switch but I understand now why that game went viral so here are five ways that you can make a viral game now the first way is from a guy named David Perry David Perry is the creator of a game called some of you might know it earthworm gym earthworm gym is an incredible game and it's honestly a very viral idea it's a simple idea of a worm in a spacit well David Perry I think has a great idea of what makes a game viral he told me that the games that I'm making need to be sticky what he means is a sticky game is something that makes

sense to the player immediately the moment they see your game the moment they hear the pitch or maybe even just one sentence they get it they know what it is so let's use my two games as an example of a sticky idea my first game is about a boy in a coma now that's a really sticky concept it just makes sense and it's kind of a fun idea to think about an innocent boy in a dark and haunting coma two ju ju juxtaposed ideas almost like yin and yang for some reason that just stuck in players minds and that's what made it viral my next game is about a minister in hell and that was also a sticky idea what made it not so viral and not so sticky at the beginning was it was about a man in hell so I decided that it was a good idea to change it from a man to a minister a minister in hell so again two juxtaposed ideas and honestly if you want to make something sticky just think about two opposing ideas and see if you can fix them together that will make it unique and memorable and hopefully viral

all right the second way to make your game viral is giving the player agency this is simply allowing the player to have control over the environment so obviously a good example of this is something like Minecraft where you can pretty much destroy anything in the world and create anything in the world that's player agency another good example of this sort of on the opposite end is something like a Metroid Vania experience something like Hollow night or obviously Metroid giving the player the ability not really to influence the world but change the way that the story unfolds and the way that the game unfolds in front of them now the next way to make a game viral is very similar to player agency and that is just variability you want your game to change when people play it so if one person's playing your game they might get a different experience than if another person was playing a game now the reason why player agency and also variability is important is Twitch okay hear me out for just a second you don't want your players to experience the same game every single time that means that one one streamer is not going to play your

game because another streamer already did there's nothing new about your game when they play it versus the other person so why play it a really good example of player agency and also variability is something like The Binding of Isaac The Binding of Isaac was not really successful to start for some reason it just didn't do as well as something like Super Meat Boy but northern lion picked up the game and started streaming on YouTube and he decided that he was going to just keep playing the game and making videos after videos after videos because the game had such good variability and also player agency the player was able to do things maybe in a different order or get items in a different order and there was just a new experience every time you played the game this was great and it spread like wildfire across YouTube and ac across twitch making the game viral that is because of player agency and variability some simple things you can do that won't cost a lot of time for you to change is simply making the player maybe have the ability to change the name of the character other things you

can do is just have breakable items right Hollow Knight's a good example of this you can cut pretty much anything in the game there's really no reason other than to give the game variability and also give the player agency you can cut grass or bushes or break lanterns and lamp posts it makes the world slowly change just a little bit around the player and they feel like they have some agency another way that you can have variability in your game is just to change the ending just a little bit based on a decision the player makes for pinstripe I decided that I was going to invest maybe a month or two in just making sure that the ending of the game can be changed based on the decisions of the dialogue trees in the game so if the player is sort of mean to characters he can experience a different ending than if he's nice to characters I mean this isn't a new idea happens all the time in games and RPGs but it really adds value to the experience and it's not that expensive to add to your game all right the fourth one is kind of obvious but we're just going to go through it really quick the fourth way to make sure that your game is viral is make it

recognizable um obviously you want your game to look unique and look special but it doesn't have to just be a visual thing I know for Once Upon a coma my artwork is what really sort of makes the game shine and stand out in the crowd but game functionality can also make you stand out so a gameplay mechanic like a portal gun for example is really what made portal so successful just a simple intuitive and also Innovative idea of shooting a portal and jumping through that portal was what made portal such a viral experience it was instantly recognizable people knew exactly what the game was about they knew what it it meant and uh blah blah blah blah blah I don't know what I'm trying to say another really recognizable game is a game like undertale right even though I would argue that undertale doesn't really look that pretty I mean honestly it looks like a Doss game that's one of the reasons why that game was successful and ultimately viral it just looked totally different than any other game even pixel art games it just had a different feeling obviously it was very funny and also had a new gameplay

mechanic of giving compliments in turn-based battle as opposed to fighting your enemies so that was really what made that game viral and recognizable it had unique gameplay mechanics but it also had a very interesting style so look at your game does it look like a regular game does it look like something that someone else could make try and think of ways that you can make your game look unique and look different all right the fifth and final way to make your game viral is what was it gameplay no not gameplay um I was thinking how do what what what what was it the fifth and final way to help your game become viral is game feel now some of you have already heard about game feel but let me just rehash what game feel is it's basically when the player inputs into the into your game into the computer or the console when they press a button or when they move a joystick something happens in the game it's very instantaneous it's very quick so if my player presses an a button or a B button you want them to H see

something happen on screen immediately so for games like uh here's a good example mowind when you tried to walk forward or when you press jump or when you tried to you know hit someone with your sword it wasn't an instantaneous feedback it kind of took a while and I get the reason why they did that it was an RPG and they wanted the player to start slow but ultimately it kind of made the game feel like it wasn't really alive that it wasn't part of the player you want the player to feel connected to your game so I've included two video links in the description that really explain what makes really good game feel and I've learned a lot about game feel for my games from these two videos the explanations in these videos are way better than anything I could do so just take a look at these videos and see what makes good game feel but really quick I'm going to give you some bullet points about ways you can make your player feel like they're part of your game first you want your player to feel like they have weight and the way that you do this is instantaneous feedback of maybe dust or particles beneath the player's feet this makes the player feel they're heavy you

can also add some scaling so if you're doing a 2d Adventure game like I am once upon a coma I make sure my characters sort of have a bounce to them whenever they're running they're bouncing whenever they're jumping they bounce and something Walt Disney said is if you feel like your animations look good enough if they're maybe exaggerated enough they're probably not so if you look at Walt Disney's animations especially in the old days his animations were very exaggerated because the TVs were small the movie screens were smaller and so you had to express to the to the viewers that something was happening the same is true if you're playing a handheld game like on switch you want to make sure the player can really see that they're making a difference that the player is moving based on their inputs another way you can do this is screen shake or maybe some flashing on the screen or really good sound effects so make sure your sound effects have a lot of Basse in them a lot of treble if you feel like maybe your gun sounds or your sword sound or jump sounds aren't very good and don't have good game feel chances are there're too much treble or too much

base or not enough of either I really can't stress enough about watching the videos in the links in the description make sure you're checking out these lectures and hopefully they'll help you better understand game feel and ultimately how to make your game viral again my name is Thomas brush I make games for a living and I love what I do if you like these videos and you want to see them daily hit the Subscribe button the but the Bell button the blah blah blah the Bell button and also leave a comment and I'll try and answer as best as I can if you want to support this channel see more videos please head on over to patreon and support for $5 or more and I'll put your name in the next video thanks again guys I'll see you later bye