YOUR GAMES | Game Design Analysis

I played your Indie Games to give you some game design feedback you sent me hundreds of games and prototypes for now I only chose three will disect them to their core and more parts with more games will follow my name is Jonas I'm a full-time indie game developer i co-develop games such as Islanders will you snail and now thrown fall this first game intrigued me cuz it promised to be a puzzle Rog like a genre combination that I certainly haven't seen much of before the game started me off in this room with the mouse sensitivity set way too low the GamePad sensitivity set way too high and no apparent way to change it in the menu it's important to note that these games are not finished yet these are still in a work in progress State please please add sensitivity settings I beg you so I started embarking on my epic adventure through the pyramid as soon as I entered the first room I immediately saw the ceiling coming down and thought this is a very good sign everything's fine I just need to figure out this puzzle I did not figure out the puzzle in my second attempt I could already see some of the Rog likee elements cuz this tunnel was clearly different than the one I played last time unfortunately I suddenly died

without knowing why so I assume something killed me from behind I later found out that there are indeed different things chasing you through the tunnels like the ground just disappearing behind you or the classic a giant boulder being killed from behind typically leads to a lot of frustration cuz as you can see it is not in the player's Vision cone they don't even know what hit them they're just suddenly dead so let's say you're being chased by a wall of fire what you can do add a bit of glow to the fire on top of the fire lighting up the walls we might also have some Spark particles flying around in this area here and you can see now the player actually sees the obstacle coming closer if the obstacle is further away player doesn't see anything but as it gets closer and closer the player sees more and more of the foreshadowing Zone this can easily apply to other obstacles as well for example if we say the ground is disappearing behind the player let's for example say this range right here where the ground is not disappearing yet but it's shaking and it's starting to loosen up a bit when I encountered this puzzle again I had trouble figuring out

what to do I could for some reason not interact with the buttons yet I think I don't want to go into pyramids anymore my third attempt I finally spotted this button and from there the puzzle was pretty straightforward I think the easiest solution to help this would be to make the button a bit brighter cuz it's quite difficult to see especially under time pressure we haven't seen much yet but one thing we can already positively point out is the sound design just listen to this music to my ears very good the second puzzle type I encountered was similarish you once again have to remember the colors and then press the two matching buttons this one I was able to figure out first try one thing you could consider for all of these colored buttons is that in addition to the color you you could also

put icons on them this way they are easier to differentiate for example I personally also confused yellow and orange a couple of times but on top of that it also ensures that no matter which color blindness people may have they can still play the game this next room confused the hell out of me let's watch my real time play test for this one so I found the torch right I try to light it it doesn't work so I'm like clearly I have to light this somewhere right now lighting it on this flame here doesn't work either I'm like what the hell am I supposed to do I can't do anything cry cry cry Emoji the ceiling starts closing in I run around like a wild chicken and realize I can pick up the fire from the corner there why can't I pick up the fire from the corner there there were four kinds of objects in the room zver Bowl zver bow with fire Stone bowl and

stone ball with fire and it turns out the letter two are completely non-interactable now why can I pick up the fire from one bowl and not from the other I think I have a very simple fix for this inconsistency delete the stone bowls from this room just don't have them in this room in my next run it came how it had to I very quickly ended up in the same puzzle room again but this time with my newly acquired knowledge and I thought I had this in the back just light this one right here do the same thing with the other Bowl easy peasy all of the flames in the middle are burning stop tickling me so apparently this is not the solution to the puzzle so I keep going back to all of the other bowls and see if I can do anything every time you restart you play some randomized puzzles but eventually you always get back to the same room

finally I had an idea yes I cracked the code you have to put the torch back well I'm an idiot I guess but you also have to assume that there are more idiots like me out there I think one thing you could do to make this part of the puzzle feel a lot fairer would be to turn this construction into something that looks more like a switch this way it firstly stands out more and secondly it's also more believable that something would happen when I put the torch back by the way this is not a suggestion for the final Design This is what you call a mockup just to get the point across my favorite puzzle type was this one here there's a pillar in the middle that tells you in which order to press the buttons and then you just press the buttons in that order I think what you should be aiming for with these puzzles is it should always be obvious what you're supposed to do but doing it that should be the challenge and this puzzle nails that perfectly there's one more puzzle where you just have to extinguish all of the flames in the room it's probably not even really meant as a puzzle I think it's probably more meant like as a speed challenge which is fine and then there's a variation on the

puzzle where you have to remember the color combination but this time all of the buttons are spread out across the room so you have to move a little more [Applause] [Music] [Music] okay that's that's it that's it take me feedback obviously the game needs more content but also I think the difficulty needs to pick up faster after a while I just got bored and committed not living there's so much more to say but we're running out of time so let's do a speed round what's awesome about pyramids is that the interior can

stretch into all Dimensions without any problems you can go left right up down Meanwhile your pyramid felt very flat it's essentially a 2d game with a 3D skin I wish we had more three dimensionality both in the tunnels as well as in the puzzle rooms the art style is overall very nice for an indie game I like it a lot the most important setting you could turn on is this screen space ambient occlusion as that makes everything pop a little more makes it feel more three-dimensional currently you're only using about one/ third of the color spectrum available if we stretch that over the entire color spectrum we see that the game gets a lot less muddy and we can see more clearly in fact I color corrected most of this video so far just to make sure we can at the very least see what's going on cuz it's very muddy otherwise by just adjusting the brightness down a little more you can also go for a more mysterious look if that's what you want the game could also benefit from more visual variety and I think lighting is by far the easiest way to achieve that light rooms with different colors different brightness levels and you get a lot of visual variety essentially for free visual variety is surprisingly important for getting your games played for example imagine you a store Page and

all of the screenshots look like this then you visit the next store Page and it has a lot more visual variety which are you more likely to play lighting is such a cheap way to achieve this speaking of variety one very important problem you still have to solve is how do you actually randomize these puzzles in a way that feels meaningful and that makes them feel different and unique every time you encounter them you can add more puzzle types but that only fights the symptom cuz the root cause of the problem is that the randomizations of these puzzles are not interesting enough yet let's take the torch puzzle for example what did you randomize here maybe which fires are burning maybe where some of these wall blocks are placed maybe some of these sent puddles on the ground not really interesting enough you need to randomize bigger things so to visualize this from a top down perspective I think this is what you're currently doing your randomizing Minor Details that players are not even going to notice what I would recommend you try to do instead is randomize bigger level features more important level features that players definitely are not going to miss randomizing puzzles in a way that feels meaning full is actually very very difficult but it's

also a very big make or break for your game so I hope you manag to figure it out all in all your game still gets a very big thumbs up and I hope I get to play more of it in the future I really enjoyed it please keep edit this game started out as a game gem submission from what I can tell the team is now trying to turn it into a commercial product I'm happy to help with some advice if I can the game starts us out with a quick tutorial for a game gam tutorial this is actually very very good on actual release I think it would be a bit better to have the player try all of these interactions themselves instead of just watching these animations luckily we get into the game soon enough and the controls are fairly intuitive the game Loop is simple you have your crew pick up water and then use that water to put out the fires before they spread everywhere one thing this game gets absolutely right in my opinion is the pacing it's super important for these kind of games not to be too fast or too slow and damn it this game manages to hit that sweet spot it's slow enough that you don't feel stressed and at the same time it's fast enough that you don't feel bored watching it the fire even shows you where it's about to spread awesome design decision in my play test I sent my troops around I

collected water I tried to put out the fire eventually I managed to contain the fire to one side but unfortunately it was already too late and I suddenly lost why well apparently I lost because of percentages why did you kill me percentages why jokes aside I think the mechanic that only a certain percentage of the ground is allowed to burn is fine what I find confusing is just the UI so I have a suggestion let's just turn it into a health bar health bars are easy to understand we don't need any percentages on the screen and when the health is running low we can make it flash a little bit so that the loose screen is not coming as a surprise there are two win and two loose conditions in the game you win when there's no more fire or when the timer runs out so yes this timer running out is a a good thing you lose when either a certain percentage of the ground has been burned or when the mayor's house has been burned I did very much like the double loose condition because it had an impact on how I played the game the double win condition nah not as much you know I'm trying to put out all of the fire anyway

so the timer doesn't really do anything extra I personally would just remove the timer putting out all of the fires is a very intuitive win Condition it's a satisfying win condition we don't really need any more than that for my second run my strategy was already way more optimized I managed to contain some of the fires pretty much immediately So Easy Clip and I was able to move on to the next level so in every level I got an additional villager all the way up to six eventually we' got one more new game mechanic with these bury bushes that spread fire over a large distance that's pretty much it that's all you have to know about the game so now let's see how my playthrough went [Music] [Music]

[Music] hey awesome first of all I had a blast I played all the way to the end but I also spotted a couple more things no where are you going ah freak me they can't go there ah Dear Santa I hope you can make it so I can walk behind trees I've always wanted to be behind the tree also for me personally this game has a clear fantasy problem fantasy is the story you keep telling yourself while playing the game for example I'm a treasure hunter or Explorer in a pyramid very cool fantasy I command a troop of firefighters protecting the Village from being burnt down very very cool fantasy as well the problem is just where the is the village I'm sorry but this pathetic guy is calling himself a mayor like a

mayor of what a mayor of six trees I would like to feel like an epic troop of firefighters how I'm feeling now it's more like uh the baboons of a pathetic man sitting on a roof here's one idea for a solution give the mayor an actual Village to work with and you can see how this immediately changes the vibe of the scene now it feels a lot more like I'm actually doing something useful and a lot less like I'm just protecting a rich man who decided to build this mansion in the worst place possible or a different solution we literally turn the mayor of trees into the mayor of trees it's already a very nature focused game so I believe a solution like this would be plausible as well now we need to explain how all of these people got here so let's add a boat or something I don't really care which story you want to tell me I just want it to be believable so that I can feel good about myself while playing I also want to point out that these very strong symmetries on a level hurt the believability as well I much prefer levels like this that look way more naturally grown another thing you probably want to rework for the final game is the UI the golden rule for UI is less is more the best part no part this

pause button has no right to be as big as it is not even in the web version throughout my entire playthrough I never even had a look at the timer I really don't think we need it the only new information we have in the bottom right here that we don't have Elsewhere on the screen are the hot Keys let's put the hot keys right over our characters that actually makes the hot Keys easier to use as we don't have to look back and forth and we free up more space on screen last but not least we have our confusing percentages as discussed let's turn them into an easy to understand health bar all of the new space we have available now we can use for actual level design which is wonderful and there you go your game gam game suddenly looks like something you could already sell with just these small couple of changes it's so funny how the UI is such a big giveaway you can totally see that this is a game Jam game and suddenly you don't see it anymore it's really funny let me just tell you you are in the perfect situation to turn this into a commercial release you already have a game that is fun it already works it doesn't need much more I'm sure you have plenty of ideas and your players have plenty of ideas you could give your

character special abilities they could have like different stats from each other there could be a fire Tru there can be all kinds of different things on the map that can burn down and spread fire in different ways there are so many ideas the difficult part will just be filtering through that that is a that is a luxury problem cuz your game is already fun it already works one thing I would definitely recommend you add as different biomes just because it helps a ton with marketing you just have more variety to go this way and then at the same time be very careful not to overs scope your game does not need much at all put quality over quantity and just make it a tiny but very very polished experience that's what I would recommend it's awesome it's awesome really really good starting point I'm very optimistic for you this next game is what I would call an atmospheric game so I want to give it a bit more time to breathe without disrespect to the Creator I'll still speed through it here and there and cut it down a bit since we are born we are

full of imagination and dreams without the influence of the outer world we discover we wonder and we feel the freedom of the unknown we see a world full of beautiful and imaginary things sometimes only we could see inside of us we have a never- ending power to dream but if we grow older we slowly lost our ability to see the world through the eyes of a child we are influenced by opinions and concepts by things that steal us energy and hinder Us in advancing further until we are running out of our power to dream but inside of us there will always be a spark that can be rekindled into a flame to me it sounds like this game is about rediscovering your inner child your ability to imagine and dream like a child we see our main character very cute very adorable and here comes another cutscene and the most confusing section of the game for me personally you have the ability to take on the form of other dream Guardians you got in contact with with them you will find ways and

solutions that you would not normally find I give you a part of myself for your journey until you find me the very first thing the game makes me do is change my form with the most unintuitive button combination possible you see me struggle for a while till eventually I click the correct buttons probably by accident the next thing I'm forced to learn is to look around to look around a lot I did look around I did look around at this point it's apparently already time to switch back I had the feeling that the game taught me something very important but I did not know what or what the point of it was at all and here comes the strange part that really confused me I never needed this mechanic ever again this was the only time I used that game mechanic and I'm just like uh

that seems strange why would you teach me that if I don't need it I like maybe one way I could possibly make sense of it now in hindsight is maybe I was taught to change forms here and this is like an optional feature and I just forgot about it and never had to use it if it was an introduction to an important mechanic then to be honest at this point I had already forgotten all about it and I think the main problem with that introduction was that you taught me a solution for a problem I did not encounter yet if you were like okay here's a problem and now you can solve it by changing your form then I think I would understand much more easily but now it was like okay you forced me to change my form whatever this part of the cut scene let's forget about it the jump sound sounds like somebody saying phop into a microphone I want to point out two things for quick cuz it got overshadowed by this confusing moment a bit firstly the visuals are really nice and secondly the sounds are really nice as well so

the atmosphere overall is definitely there to activate this pillar you need to find the lost Spirit first I received my first objective I found out that you're not supposed to jump into the purple stuff and then I just continued searching looking around for the Lost [Music] Spirit the game finally taught me how to jump so I knew I was on the correct path I would say this path should definitely be marked a bit more all of the stones look kind of the same here this one doesn't really stand out as the one you should clim this is one of the last Spirits you need to wake up to use their [Music] [Music] energy not a big fan of the two sound effects we just heard they sound a little bit out of context like they they

don't sound very Spirit they sound like they've been pulled from free zound actually the same goes for the landing sound of the player probably seems a bit sparkly for what it is doesn't really match the visuals but here we are about to activate our first pillar let's see what happens [Music] okay I just realized we have to talk about the sound effects the visuals are so freaking pretty but I literally can't focus on them when I hear sounds like that I think you're wasting a lot of potential here sound really carries scenes like this I made a little mockup for you

[Music] Man the game looks so nice in color that I wish we'd always see it in color this is really pretty maybe the sky should also get a color when we're standing in one of those colored zones gray can unfortunately look a little unfinished whether it's intentional or not do you see that tree in the distance get there and find out why it is not blooming this feels a little bit like players didn't spot the tree so let's add a cut scene to point that out I think preferably the tree would just be big and noticeable enough that I would be driven there by my own curiosity to activate this pillar you need to find the lost spirit for the game is rather concerned with me not finding the correct direction which I guess is fair cuz as we've already established I'm an [Music] idiot as the game slowly faded out the handholding a bit I started having some pretty good moments the visuals and the

atmosphere are beautiful the main character is adorable sometimes parts of the level suddenly become colorful and you have not the slightest clue why but it looks pretty so I'm not complaining to activate this pillar you need to find the lost spe [Music] [Music] this tree is your connection to the other dream Guardians its energy seems to be corrupted find a way to restore it I am an idiot however when I play a game I don't want to feel like an idiot so what you somehow need to manage to do is you need to tell me all of the information I need to know but without making me feel like an idiot maybe put the information

into the subtext and let me use my brain at least a little bit this tree has been corrupted ever since I've been a child I wish I would still be alive to see it carry leaves again you know what I mean the challenge is tell me what to do without telling me what to do because nobody likes being told what to do I carried some glowy things into holdy things typical game stuff actually I'm starting to believe that these might be placeholder sound effects cuzz I can't quite believe it otherwise you restored the tree's energy now you should be able to reach the tree of origin for that you have to use the energy of your spirit followers oh my goodness I'm feeling like I'm 10 years old again I used to sit below this tree with my imaginary friends they could take me anywhere I want story and not Exposition what differentiates story from Exposition I'm telling you story requires you to read between the lines

and Exposition assumes you're an idiot I want to read between the lines a little bit otherwise it really just feels like endless Exposition we don't want that it's not a onetime occurrence either it immediately happens again this is the tree of origin like your dream it has been corrupted you restored your own dream but to restore the tree of origin you need the help of the other Guardians for now find the guardian of curiosity lean I'm also thinking especially when you're trying to make a point about rediscovering your curiosity then how about letting players Express that Curiosity by not constantly telling them what to do for now find the guardian of curiosity lean we get a super pretty Temple section that is absolutely gorgeous actually my favorite section of the game so far to activate this pillar you need to find the lost Spirit that's what I

thought okay now here we have a puzzle [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you finally found her but she seems not

to be able to wake up this evil energy seems to prevent her from doing so you need to go deeper in order to find a way to help her we made it all the way through the demo and we're prompted to wish list the game very nice on the positive side this game is not going to struggle to find some beautiful marketing screenshots it looks gorgeous it's also one of the reasons why out of 500 submissions this was one of the games I wanted to play I will however say that the screenshots in color look significantly better than the screenshots without color that your coloring in the world as you go seems to be a metaphor for rediscovering your inner child your curiosity your imagination it's a really beautiful message I love the message however for it to really land properly I feel like it would have to be reflected in gam playay a bit more you can't ask me to be curious and at the same time constantly tell me what to do and you also can't ask me to use my imagination while constantly giving me Exposition there's a little bit of a mismatch there for me personally the game still seems to be struggling with its own identity a little bit for example there's a form

shifting mechanic that we never had to use another example the world is already black and white but then there's a form shifting mechanic that makes the world even more black and white it's almost a bit much we fix the corruption on a small tree we fix the corruption on a big tree then we figure out that we need to go deeper into the dream and fix the big tree again you see what I mean it's a bit too complicated for its own good if the game was just like hey fix the big tree from the very beginning I think that would be way easier to understand and and would also require a lot less Exposition the game was genuinely at its best when it left me alone for a bit when it let me explore when it let me wander for the final game I would love to see much more of that so that I can hopefully ReDiscover my inner child please support the developers shown in this video by checking out the links in the descriptions whatever links they gave me I put down their wish list their games how do you submit your game to the show please don't uh if you haven't already whenever I make these videos I give you very clear instructions on how to submit your game if you missed the submission period then please don't

submit your game I have way too many games already if you want to submit then please wait for the next submission period I announced these on YouTube Twitter /x and Discord can you send me an updated version of your game if you have submitted in the last submission period yes you definitely can cuz making these videos as you can see takes a very long time if you want me to play a more upto-date version then just reply to your initial email with an update that's completely fine how many more games will I play from the last submission period I don't know there are a bunch more I want to play so this is not going to be the only video there will be at least one more video playing games maybe more but I don't want to Promise Too Much I just want to say the submissions were really strong this time I'm completely blown away by all of the awesome stuff you sent me and I'm really sorry that I didn't get to play all of them or not even close I think the best way to think about these videos is basically a mind upload right I upload how I think about video games you get to download how I think about video games it's not really about specific games it's more like

about the general ideas I would say the same things for 90% of the games like the same mistakes are repeated over and over again and a lot of the things I say apply to many many many submissions I got so hopefully you got something useful out of this whether I played your game or not but that's enough rambling see you next time