Why Some Games Just FEEL Good For Some Reason — Mark Brown @GMTK

there's a reason why Mark Brown's video about game feel or you can call it game juice there's a reason why it has a million views that's because Mark Brown is a genius when it comes to game feel now if you don't know what game feel is it's just basically it makes your game feel good which you know some people might think that that's a small thing it's an incredibly important aspect of your game I would it's probably one of the most important things and Mark did an incredible job putting his knowledge about gamefield into his first commercial release that he made completely alone it's called Mind of magnet so I got to talk to Mark about this and man I learned so much so stick around to the end I think you're going to learn a ton about this crucial aspect of making games I got dude I'm not kidding I got chills about one thing and it was the game feel M it was so I don't know what the word is it's like crunchy and the sound is so crisp and you relied so heavily on delicate almost ASMR sounds in the game like the the the

squeaking of the wheel when you jump and the crunchy falling um plates and the the sound of the moving wheel when you move that stuff is like that's video editing to me like video editing sound is so important when when when you make a cut or when you jump to something or you swell to something and transition to something do you feel like your video editing maybe got gave you ins TI into game feel a little bit I mean part of it was just I've done a lot of videos about game feel and obviously you know looked at games like like Celeste and stuff that just have this this great feel but yeah I mean in terms of video editing I mean one thing that like any video editor especially on YouTube knows it's just like you can never have a a static thing on on YouTube because people will think that your video is buffering so it's like you've always got to have some motion and things so that was like I felt like that was similar with with Game Dev like if your game ever looks like it's a screenshot then that's no

good it's got to always be there's movement so the backgrounds are all animated and there's just like particle systems and stuff like it's got to like look alive and kind of inviting in that way and then yeah sound design sound design was like something that I have I've never done any videos on sound design I have no knowledge about it but it's I'm really I am pleased with the sound design I do think it does like feel like that that is a whole um aspect of it that I think does like add to the feel it it was also something that came in quite late there was like year like probably a year of development with the game was just completely silent and then you put in one sound effect you're like oh wow that's that makes a big difference I should have done that much earlier sure that's one of the first things that I do is when I'm and it's it's it could be a problem because it definitely leads to like some kind of scope creep where you put in all the sounds like right away and then because your game you're changing the mechanics as you're learning what the game is as a developer you end up killing the sound so but I have to put it in for me

because I have to it's the only way I can like feel the game I I had a funny thing where I I showed a like I showing some videos of the game in development to people in my Discord and realized that I had like the microphone on and I was doing the sound effects of the game like with my mouth so I'm just like and like to me it's just like you you know it was so important but yeah like going forward if I do more games like yeah sound is is definitely going to be something I throw in even if it's placeholder like it's it's is vital well I mean it's it's it's definitely I would say it's one of the strongest points or one of the strongest elements of Mind Over magnet is the game feel in my opinion it cuz uh I played a ton of games from Indie developers yesterday and the day before I just do a live stream where I review indie games and most Indie Games suffer because they just feel clunky and chunky and heavy and Bloated and and they don't feel reactive um whereas Mind Over magnet

you you created something that just feels so I I'm coming back to that that that what I said earlier where you it feels so controlled and and it's almost like you're intensely controlling about the game feel and I'm curious if you can is there anything you can share with us about game feel like what what what do what can any game developers do listening right now to create better game feel what are some principles yeah I mean so during like an early prototype of the game I just grabbed a basic character controller off the internet you know already existing chucked it into unity and was like that's good enough and the feedback was it's not good enough like it does it just feels bad and all these sorts things so I took like a good month just on the character controller just like an empty scene in unity with some boxes to jump on and just spent ages just tuning those those you know the jump height and the the the gravity of when you come

down just keep playing it over and over again and sharing builds the Celeste devs actually um no like I sent him a build I'm just like dude is this good enough and he said it was he said it was pretty good so that was nice um so just like you can't spend you can almost you almost can't spend too much time on that just because it's like what is the what is the user doing the most it's like running around and jumping so that better feel damn good and there's yeah like I said there's plenty of indie games where I I've played a game I'm not going to name it just because I started playing and was just like this just doesn't feel nice to move around like it's just turning me off immediately um other things with game feel like yeah sound effects we say particles like dust um all of that sort of stuff I guess that also does kind of come out of of video editing of like you soon realize that if you just have like some graphics on a plain colored background it looks fine but as soon as you start putting in like a little bit of texture and some like background you know element and

stuff like every little tiny bit like adds so much more Sim like um like music where if you just have one instrument it sounds bad but you got to have the bass in there and the drums it's just like it's all this layering and so I find that with with gamefield it's like it's the the the animation and the sound and the the movement controls and the particles all together you you can't have it without all of those ingredients exactly you know I I I think that game feel is something like trying to replicate the human body The Human Experience right we've got all these senses and so when I when I put my hand up in the air and I put my fingers together in a in a game that's not enough like let's say the Char like I've been learning this with first-person shooters and that's what we're working on right now if I move my fingers up in a game let's say I want to animate the character like snapping his fingers m in the game

a a normal sound like a normal volume of a snap is not enough um because the what I'm feeling right now personally when I snap my fingers there's a vibration I can feel the touch of my fingers I can hear it right um so there's like there's a there's there's a vibration that goes through my body and so the goal with games in my opinion is to replicate those senses in the game and so if that means you got to bump up the volume volum of a single snap of fingers that's almost unrealistic right if the if the hand like um the way I animate my guns in in Twisted Tower is they're really quick and snappy right so a snap in real life might be like this but in a game it's like this you know just to replicate that Human Experience um the problem with that and I wanted to ask you about this I there there's something like a balance of reactivity and challenge so for example

um if if when I first started playing Hollow night it did feel heavy I felt like it was I felt it didn't feel reactive and game feel one of the cheat codes with game feel is reactivity giving instant gratification of the player fast movement the jump height is really high there's um the fall speed isn't floaty and slow the problem with that is that if you're giving too much reactivity and giving giving the player too much control then it's not difficult M did you find that to be a challenge with with Mind Over magnet uh well I mean so for that game like it was I didn't want moving around to ever really be difficult so I wanted the player to have as much control as possible I think we do see this where it's like you look at like something like holl night or like spelunk is like one of my favorite games and I don't think spun has like amazing game feel like it is kind of weird when you first start playing that it does move a bit strange but that's kind of what the whole vibe of the game

is going for it's going for a more deliberate pace so I think it really does come down to and I think maybe this is something that perhaps as like YouTube people talking about games we can sometimes fall into the Trap of is just like oh your game has to feel extremely slick and extremely responsive and stuff and it's just like yeah if that's the type of game you're going for but if you're making something like um like limbo and inside again like they they do not they they feel almost objectively kind of bad to play you know the characters move so slowly and stuff but that is like the whole point and it's just it makes the game like it is what it is like that is you couldn't have you wouldn't want to have limbo where you're like dashing around and you've got like super slick response so it's it kind of comes down to what type of game you're you're going for so Spelunky does get like difficulty out of the fact that your character is kind of weird to move maneuver and like the whole thing like this balun is when you press attack in that game like the character has like a windup animation of

his whip that it adds this like weird timing thing where in any other game you'd want it where you press attack and the whip just immediately snaps out and and kills the enemy AB but like Derek you like realized like it's so much more interesting in his very deliberately paced game to like have that wind up where you have to like time the backat coming down so it's like what do where where do you want the challenge to be in the game like also you know we talk about sorry I'm going off an absolute ran here about the great but like Celeste you know we talk about CH like Celeste is super challenging but also has incredibly tight controls so how how do we square that well it's just like it's in the level design it's in the challenges so it's like it's not ever hard to n your character and Celeste it feels amazing but it's just like and then how do where do they make you maneuver and what crazy spikes are they going to throw at you and stuff sure that was a complete rant I'm so sorry hey thanks for watching this clip from the full podcast link is below by the way if you want to watch that I also want to let you know I have this really cool character art tutorial

below it's going to teach you how to make jawdropping character art in 2D in just 40 minutes hey it's totally free there's there's no gimmicks or anything just check it out below I think you going to learn a ton honestly I wish I knew this stuff when I was making my first 2D game so click below check it out learn from a Time Magazine featured artist that's me