I PLAYED YOUR GAMES! | Let's Talk Game Design.

this week I asked you guys to send me some of your games you're working on at the moment so I can give you some feedback and the first thing I have to say I'm so extremely proud to have a community like this there seem to be so many super talented and creative people watching my videos it's absolutely insane thanks a lot for all of the games you send me unfortunately I got a lot of games which means I won't be able to play all of them it's really strange as my community becomes bigger and bigger I almost feel more and more disconnected from you and back in the days when I had under 1000 subscribers it was completely possible for me to answer every single YouTube comment and to add release check out all of your games now that is not possible anymore which makes me kind of sad I hope you understand one thing I really want to stress is please finish your game regardless of what I say about your game for me personally if my feedback discourages you in a way that stops you from finishing your game for me that would be the worst case scenario at the same time I want to give you some

honest and hopefully helpful feedback so that's a little bit of a dilemma you know I just I don't want to be like oh yeah great game keep doing what you're doing that's not very very useful for you but then discouraging you too much is also not very useful for you even if it's honest feedback so I'm trying to find the balance there don't take anything I say all that serious I'm just a random guy from the internet I don't necessarily know more than you do the whole purpose of this is to keep improving our game development skills as a community and that's what we shall do yeah we have the grand illusion I've already talked to the creator of the game it doesn't really know what will make this game stand out she doesn't really know what the vision for this game is going to be so perhaps we can figure that out the core mechanic of this game is that you have these balls and you basically have to pick your ammunition back up again you throw these bolts and then you have to pick them back up and what are all of these balls that are flying around the cool effect

but if they don't have any gameplay purpose then perhaps they are a bit too distracting oh here have a little bit of decoration I feel like white in this color scheme as a color that stands out quite a lot so I'd really try to think about which color fulfils which purpose especially for those colors who pop out a lot in your color scheme so at the moment white is the color of your enemies right using that same color for this massive line here I'm not sure not quite sure about that maybe it pops out a little too much maybe you can make this line a little darker color and then you know same goes for those particles they just look a bit too important for that for what they actually are oh no now I lost my ball so if I've got a say honestly doesn't really feel all the different from a regular top-down shooter because it's so easy to pick that ball back up again most of the time you know I get a second ball but at this point I'm wondering

what the purpose of the second ball is because getting the ball back is so easy okay this is interesting because now these enemies kind of encourage me to attack them from further away right or do they yeah kind of because if I stand too close to them they instantly hit me that is something you should probably look into a lot more because those rabbit enemies obviously the best strategy to kill them from very very nearby for these Wizards here it's a little smarter to sell Oh far away from them which makes it a little trickier to get your balls back so I'd say we need more of that more enemies where you benefit from ranged combat one thing with the camera movement is at the moment if I move to the top then I can't really see where I'm going they're moving through the top player up in the bottom half of the screen if I'm moving to the right the player should be in the left hand side of the screen so I can always see where I'm going that would be great after admit that the feedback is quite juicy there are not a

lot of sound effects in here but the ones that are I like them [Music] honestly at the moment I'm not quite sure of the background texture you have fits to the style of your game it looks a little out of place compared to all of the other sprites if maybe you maybe the background needs to be even more simplistic also I think you have to find a solution for the parts of the level that is out of bounds maybe you can make it black or something I feel like just having the general background texture here looks looks a little immature you know if you want to turn this into a commercial game which in your case I know you want to do that then find a solution for the out-of-bounds areas here it's definitely fun you're just not taking full advantage of your core mechanics which is throwing these balls okay where are we now and new enemy types I like it but once again this

enemy mostly encourages me to kill them in close range combat oh there's a shield dude I need to get inside his shield but then once again this is a mechanic that encourages me to get close to the enemy which is once again something I'm doing anyways because then it's easier to get back my balls luckily I can just rush through here so what I'm noticing is that this that you're mostly creating these levels by putting different kinds of enemies into different constellations feels like a bunch of mini levels every room too little level and the only way they are different from one another's that they have different enemies inside them I feel like you need some other ways to change up the gameplay a bit so for example the boxes you had were a good place to start because that allows you to do some actual level design I feel like you need more things than just enemies to do level design with maybe having a barrier here that you can't shoot through or some mat on the ground

that slows down your movement or having some mirrors that can reflect your balls or having fire when you shoot a ball through the fire the ball starts burning and deals more damage just more level design elements at the moment you don't really have anything to do level design with X for enemies and just enemies alone are not enough to create a lot of interesting gameplay situations I feel like and I also really feel like you need to make better use of the throwing ball throwing mechanic because at the moment it's so easy to get them back it really encourages close ranged combat so the way you could make that more interesting perhaps is having some sort of trade off using them as a close-range weapon perhaps that could make you a bit more vulnerable you know in some shape or form or maybe you should just add a bit more randomness to how the balls bounce around so it's a little trickier to pick them back up best strategy at the moment just seems we get getting very close to the enemies and then just spamming the fire button that's this guy slowing down the balls I like that

that's interesting just the effect looks a little strange and misleading it won't end of level so far low so what could be the unique selling point of this game in my opinion the unique selling point of this games are definitely these bolts that you have to pick up again so I would see if you can somehow shift the focus even more to that make fighting with these balls even more interesting and making something like this more interesting is often about finding out what the currently best strategy is and then creating some interesting trade-offs to encourage different player behaviors depending on the situation at the moment it's really the best strategy to fire enemies or to shoot enemies from very very close by because then you instantly get your balls back and you deal exactly the same amount of damage I wonder what would happen for example if these balls slowly started speeding up and became faster and faster as they go until they hit something and then depending on fast they are did they deal more damage so you were more encouraged

to shoot from further away or you could just design a couple of enemies that encourage you to attack them from from a little further away and then somehow I think it would be cool if it were a little harder to pick those balls back up one thing you could try for example is making these balls fly through enemies and that means you have to be a little more strategic if you want to get your balls back quickly then you have to go to a position where there's a wall behind the enemy and then you can sort of shoot the balls through the end me and get your balls back I feel like that would probably make the game a lot more strategic I like that idea these are my thoughts let's move on grazer meant by sky Qian mmm what do we need to do here and what are these things let's see if we can figure out what we need to do I have no idea what these things are but the leaf behind these tracks I guess we need to get the entire map in that color and I cannot push them over the fields that are already brownish and we start with our

yes okay that is very intuitive let's see then it's quite a simple concept but it works out quite well I like it and it's just a wall I can't move past okay honestly I would kind of like it if the levels looked a little more different from one another especially for the second level and then also why white walls look like this why do they have to be these weird white bubbles I'm not sure I exactly understand the theme of this game perhaps they could just be rocks maybe you can make them grey giant big rocks would make a little more sense also these look a little too similar to these weird car thingy containers I have here actually quite tricky I think I messed up again usually my in my experience it's a very smart idea to make the playing field for puzzle games very very small that allows the player to see and understand the entire puzzle at once I think I did it I don't really

get this down here because I can't move any of these anyway oh they're basically just decoration down there I don't think there needs to be this line of trees in every single level be much more interesting if maybe in some levels there are something else here that you couldn't move past carry in the first level again okay I see and I personally would really like it if the first level was a little easier as well just so you can get the hang of it and get a little get some success a little faster and also if all of those levels looked a little more different from one another I'd really appreciate that as well by the way one very intuitive thing you could also have in your game is just blank grass where everything can move on but also can't be eaten like that would be a very intuitive addition to the game that wouldn't require a lot of explaining and would probably be quite easy to understand so see for example the first level could just look like this instead of this this way it would feel a little bit less overwhelming and also in general if you like mixing it up a little bit making

these levels look a little more different from one another it's just more interesting because then when you go into the next level it feels less like oh god now I have to do the same thing again and it feels more like oh this actually a new and interesting challenge and yes I know all of your levels were actually new and interesting challenges but if they also look more different then the first impression of them is a lot better and I feel like it's a lot more motivating to play the game that way even if it's just a little bit of a visual change you know perhaps removing a couple of trees here at the edge sometimes see why not why not even put a little bit of grass there every now and then I really don't see anything speaking against that you know you can you can move to the edge here anyways you might as well use it for level design as well other than that I've got a say fantastic game once again a very simple concept something I haven't seen before I like that you went for a very small playing field I hope you make more levels let me know when it's done because this is definitely

cool nice nice nice I want to leave a word or two about how I chose the games for this episode because I really got a ton of submissions it's Tuesday and I already got like 30 emails 30 games and then even more on this Court so that's just more games than I can play obviously look if you're sending an email like this the chances are not as high that I'm gonna play it as game developers that is something I want two sensible eyes you - hiya see here somebody just included a screenshot this is a very smart move like if I already see a screenshot in the email look this looks interesting yes I know I didn't say include a screenshot that was not a requirement and I've also played a couple of games that didn't include a screenshot I'm also picking a couple of games at random but I just want two sensible eyes you to that cause it's the exact same thing when reaching out to youtubers to press if your email looks a little more intriguing if your email looks a better than the chance I'm gonna try it it's obviously a lot higher as well may

you can see what what a difference this makes like just imagine getting 30 miles or perhaps even at 100 miles you're not gonna download every single game and see how it looks like having a screen shot is a big advantage especially having a good-looking screen shot is even an even bigger advantage okay let's try it out all right the music is nice I'm not sure if I can show it to you this is where I spawn here we have some environmental storytelling I spawned right in front of that boat ship here training master jet you have to complete training okay so we are here to train another school this Akoo cool start visually speaking what irritates me the most so far is definitely a UI both this health bar as well as these UI sprites in the bottom left corner they look a little bit out of place visually speaking and also for the beginning of the game create a bit of clutter that doesn't necessarily need to be there I'm personally a fan of just adding that UI stuff when you first start playing and slowly introducing UI elements as you go

welcome to blast training I wish I could skip through this text with with a button there any key I can use to confirm now I have to click okay then once again this UI here obviously doesn't look all that nice yet but I guess that is still subject to change right okay the sound effect for that was was slightly underwhelming but other than that quite cool I like it a blast training is complete I see thank you these floating trees here are very well designed I like them at the bottom there's a night sky and here at the top there's a day day light sky my opinion the bright sky looks a little better as a background the skybox is definitely something to think about a little bit though because at the moment you know it has some weird JPEG artifacts the skybox usually has such a massive impact on the look of the game because look how much area of the screen at first usually it fills the skybox fills about 50% of the screen at all times but I think it's definitely worth it to to get a skybox that fits and supports the stylus well

as possible this one is definitely not terrible welcome to in seblak training didn't thought that in seblak would literally trait blots ring bell yes and then perp something you could try as well as perhaps adding a little bit of fork platform at the top has exactly the same color as the platform at the bottom if you had a little bit of in here then would be easier to see what's nearby wooden what's further away just some very very subtle you know nothing nothing too crazy your insta block training is complete awesome any message that you have to complete training yeah I have completed the training land at Sky village okay and my first impression here is once again I would HIGHLY appreciate it if this just looked a bit more different from the first level I've seen I think it's okay that if levels look similar but especially early in the game if levels look this similar it's easy to get the feeling that the game doesn't have a lot more to offer I can see some

interesting stuff in the back there there's some sort of weird building maybe you could try adding a tower to that building back there to pique my interest even more because the first impression when you enter a level is kinda important I feel like something like that what would really help to pique pique my interest and keep me playing with a couple of very small simple changes I feel like the first impression of this level could be a lot more interesting a lot better let's see what this building in the back Terrace oh three people around clown needs some help okay so I basically have three tasks around the town here three people I need to help help which feels very gamey which is okay I think what the games lacking so far is a little bit of erection in terms of story I'm not really working towards anything big you know which might be okay this early on but I also feel like it would probably increase my chance to keep playing if I knew what all of this were about if there is like antagonists or some sort of danger or when you a little more about my character here and what he's trying to accomplish like why is he

training and all that sort of stuff maybe you can at least give me a teaser to some of these answers can you help me test the combat training round of course releasing creature I'd prefer to have a little nicer sound for hitting stuff the feedback for that feels a bit lackluster thank you for helping okay that was an easy task just had to beat up one monster okay I can run that is very nice as well honestly for the mayor he doesn't really have the biggest house whatever salad in the backyard looks like the biggest house on okay it's actually multiple houses maybe the mayor should live back here and have a little bit of a tower I'm not sure let's see what these people want okay so this probably supposed to teach me where my house is honestly I have no idea others seems to be my house okay that's

cool perspective change alike so this taught me that I can go inside houses there you go the animations are quite nice by the way I like check the path to the houses so well done for the tutorial this really awesome do you understand how everything works no let's set the mayor and see if he's happy with what I've done I also like that it's pretty fast to accomplish these tasks like getting all of this tutorial stuff done didn't take me a lot of time a message came in you need to talk to the airship parent okay so this ready action starts new orders just came in okay you are to recover an expected artifact inside see that's a little bit what I mean so far the storyline feels a bit gamey like random tasks are appearing out of nowhere just so I have something to do are you ready to go yes nice see this is what I'm talking about if you land somewhere and you see something that already looks radically different from everything you've seen before it definitely piques your curiosity a lot more oh yeah this is awesome this is epic let's head in there

let's restock cool like this looks nice I like it very very nice of those real-time lights if so poor performance an evil creature sweet alright that works as well the combat is not exactly the most interesting things on fire I say there's only one attack move you have to manually dodge backwards by going backwards whatever will be well well done on the pacing and on the tutorial all of that works pretty well I'm telling you you need some destructible objects here same for those I want to destroy them so badly this looks like I can't go up terrible maybe I can't here we can see switches and what they're connected to so this game seems to feature some puzzles as well which is probably good as the combat isn't all that interesting so far maybe I can break that okay thanks for the hint okay now I disabled one of those

walls oh do I get up over there though there anything I can shoot is there anything I can I remember an ability that I've already forgotten maybe you should put on a reminder for that in here because some people like me are stupid and forget that we can do that I forgot that I can block insta block especially cause I didn't need it in the last tutorial level very nice actually dig this take artifact okay very cool very very cool let's see what we can do with that artifact on different enemy type doors locked just to hit and run because I'm scared okay he had the key for the door I see clever clever looks like you have everything and of the demo

cool very cool see I made it all the way through the demo played this for quite a while cause this game was quite interesting and enjoyable I just wish it had a little slightly more compelling story than just there were orders that you pick up this artifact like maybe give my character some sort of motivation to actually pick up the artifact overall very well done nice nice nice here we have QB by shogi games that dashing downwards effect is pretty cool and a few like this game probably has quite a bit more to offer but I've been playing it for a while now and nothing else seems to happen nothing interesting seems to happen anymore okay now I can finally upgrade stuff so I would definitely tighten down the pacing of that a little bit make sure the player sees that shop a lot sooner oh no I can open my mystery boxes what did I win okay seems like there was nothing really pay attention I thought my price would appear here increased gravity again how's that a good thing maybe you have to play her a

bit more lean way you just lose points when you collide with something it seems like it so your life is basically your currency and one thing that I would critique in this game as well is that it's very hard to see stuff this is a lot a lot of focus on the background where is this egg checked exactly the other way around background stays in the background and the focus is a lot more on the gameplay elements in the foreground this way it should be a lot easier to see what's going on I don't know maybe the fact that you can't see anything is part of the concept but if it isn't then I would definitely go for a color scheme that allows you to see what's happening instead of a color scheme that doesn't allow you to see what's happening at all definitely has some juicy feedback though I really like the way you collect those collectables I would argue that what makes your game interesting and special is the shop there seem to be a lot of cool and interesting upgrades in there that's where the game kind of

starts branching out that's where the player can start experimenting with different strategies yet that cool idea with the mystery boxes that can switch gameplay up a little bit and that is exactly why I think it should appear a lot sooner this way players can get to the interesting part a lot sooner no games but thanks for your submission I hope you keep making games thanks for letting me test it here's a game called snake man let's check it out oh it's a puzzle game seems like I messed up okay okay interesting Z that's a very simple and unique car mechanic that is slowly but surely expanded on now we get some new elements I'm not quite sure what these things are over here oh yeah they make me shorter okay I didn't get that come a little shorter again go in here yeah I'm not sure what to say honestly this is what's a very solid game or when I keep going straight forward the star will

slam close and I will lose which means I have to check the way over this switch and then the levels just come more and more complex honestly this is really good look at the colors as well the color scheme is very nice and clean as a nice clean art style it's an interesting mechanic and the levels also take full advantage of that mechanic which control makes this a very nice and compelling puzzle game okay now we get enemies this is very interesting nice nice nice here we have the ball by a column which is a game made using one of my Unity tutorials I already gave this a shot yesterday to be honest and I've got to say it's super creative this is exactly what I was hoping for when I made my unity tutorial so it's all kind of easy and fun you can smash through these walls here and then here for example a very simple solution for how you can spawn a bunch of spheres after a certain amount of time you just drop them from the sky and then here see they

just put on a slight slope so I have to dodge them all you're very creative solution and I hope nothing else will drop down here or I'll be really angry oh jeez oh so nice so creative just using the tools you have and making the most out of it okay actually if I remember correctly this part is quite tricky because there are magma balls on top of those green blocks oh jeez oh jeez which means I bet I don't push them over oh it's just so creative creative oops what the hell I haven't played that level yet what the hell man survived for 30 seconds and then find the exit okay oh geez oh geez where's the exit mmm oh they all

disappeared was this the exit oh this is awesome Oh am i racing that ball down there oh my god this is so creative I can't handle this thing I found fun a way to cheat a little bit last time let's go really fast phone you can skip a little section of the level oh no oh no no I'm not ahead anymore [Music] let's hope I can do it [Music]

this is so creative I love this nice oh nice I'm really happy to see what you made out of these couple of simple scripts like please please please keep making games you've got what it takes I can tell this was absolutely fantastic I already know a lot of you will be a little disappointed that I didn't manage to play their game I completely understand I'm super sorry and you probably want to know will we do this again the answer is yes we will do this again please do not send me any more games now okay I'll let you know before we do the next video might be a couple of weeks from now one thing you can do if you want to get feedback for your game is to join our discord group and post your game there maybe you'll find a couple of nice people willing to check out your game and maybe in your return you can check out their game as well that'd be cool if you want to support what I'm doing on this channel then there are two things you can do of course hit the subscribe button and then the second thing is to check out

Islanders on Steam if you haven't already it's only 5 bucks it's a fantastic game give it a shot thank you very much and I'll see you in the next one bye bye