As I learned though all these years of gaming I could say that. I would be talking about big companies how they are using their stuff.
IMPROVING: SPRITE(IMAGE). (16% Important)
- Don't use scaling, use cutting:
If you using (scaling the image), it will be blurred and buggy, but if you want to make it good, cut it to the most important part. I've played Valve games and Blizzard games, and some others. So they do that. What they do is, the image is very big and has many details, you can't just scale it down to be best, They cut it.
As request by RangerX:
A image of character contains environment and the character, when you downscale from 100% to 50% with (environment and the character) it will blur, but when you only show the character and little environment it will be better.
Look below between image 6 and 2.
wallpaper is normal.
When you downscale a image
USING GUI: (Game user interface). (14% Important)
- They do use shaders a lot, it could lag the game (Particle Flare (that's what they do most, if you want to buy something that is expensive they put a smart Particle Flare)), (Advanced blurring) and sweet buttons between the PLAY Button ETC... by just using the default TEXT FONT.
You could do a lot of Sweet buttons. GMS editor has limit to it, so I use other softwares.
- Adding black lines to the button, making a cool Gradient, and shadows.
Shadows are important they make stuff look real.
- Adding too many sub images to the sprite. like:
HOVER:SPRITE0
CLICKING: SPRITE1;
HOLDING: SPRITE2;
REMOVING CURSOR: SPRITE3
And so on.
- THE GAME PLAY: (55% Important)
As you know the graphics don't matter, but sometimes it matter depends on the game, when you play a game, you want the game to be good, so let's say the game has a story and good graphics and bad gameplay, how would you rate that? Like life is strange(semi good graphic, 90% postive review) or rise of the tomb raider they also have a good game play.
So they have a story and good game play and a good story and mystery people give that 90% postive.
So you want to make a good game game?
put all genres combined.
Mystery.
Good gameplay.
Good Story.
Good graphics.
Good sound effects.
Good horror.
And all that.
and polish that all.
All these big companies do that same thing and people love it.
SHOWING HEALTH ETC...
Big companies hide their hp when no longer needed and so on. so they know what people like or don't like and they do it great.
Thanks, hope I helped you, I may edit this post for more polshing stuff!
EDIT: They use also lighting in images to make it look good.
EDIT: You can use fancy font, I didn't say you shouldn't, I just said that because default font is ugly and only the button they is good.