When your game isn't as fun as you imagined¬ fix or cancel..

[Niels]

So when I found out you could use ds_grids and ini's to store and build world chunks I got a idea to make a "endless" digger game. In this game you could mine into the ground and dig up treasures while avoiding traps and mines caving in on you.

In my head it sounded pretty fun for a mobile game...
But now I build a prototype I find it hard to come up with some sort of progression and different puzzles/traps.
Last 2 days I have been trying to mix up the formula (added dynamite to blow up larger area's, but gives a bigger risk on caving in) but I have mixed feelings about it.

I could:
-ditch the project, take what I learned from it and move on (but adding another project to the ever growing pile of unfinished projects).
-At least try to build it into a working/playable game, even if it won't end up as good as I originally planned.

So how do you guys/girls handle these things?

 

[pixeltroid]

You can't tell if your game is fun or not unless you have someone play test your game.

I had a few friends play test my game and they said that the enemy AI could be improved and that the level layout was confusing in some places. Those things would affect the fun factor of the game, so I took their suggestions and fixed the issues. But they also suggested I add in NPCs and flesh out the games story, but I have a different philosophy on those things so I am not doing it.

I might procastinate but I would NEVER cancel or ditch sonething I've spent so much time on. Obviously it's not going to be something as awesome as many other games out ther but it's still my creation, and I know it's better than many poor games (LJN ones especially) that were marketed, packaged and sold in cartridges.

Also, releasing a game, no matter how poor it is, puts the games designer in the 1% elite...of people who have actually designed and released a video game in their life.

I know that once I do that I'd have achieved a life's goal of mine and can move on to other things in life.

 

[Morendral]

1.You can't tell if your game is fun or not unless you have someone play test your game.

2.I might procastinate but I would NEVER cancel or ditch sonething I've spent so much time on.

1. I disagree. That's the whole reason for prototyping. Who knows better than you what your vision is going to be? Most of us here aren't on a team, so others aren't going to be as aware of the final concept playing it and what missing details will be. Feedback is always good but you will always have a sense of if your vision was a good idea or not.

2. Why not? My library is filled with prototypes that I stopped work on because they weren't going to be good. Why continue something if it's going to fail? I'd rather take the experience and move on to a more worthwhile project.

OP, it comes down to how you feel about it. If you feel like you need to go back and do a major rehaul of the game somewhere, go do that. If you think that it's not salvageable, refocus your efforts somewhere else. If you don't that's the waste of time, imo.

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

Your game could be the perfect representation of your vision, doesn't mean anyone else will like it or find it fun.

 

[Dr. Wolf]

I don't think there's really any way to give a general answer to this question.

Sometimes, all a game needs to become fun is a couple of numbers tweaks to get the pacing or balance right. Other times, there's rot down to the core of the design, infecting the whole thing, and the best you can do is file it away somewhere as a repository of code snippets and assets for future use because it'll never really be right, and you'd be better off starting fresh than trying to transform it into something so different that you'd wind up working against whatever architecture was already there. In still other cases, you're looking at something in between.

 

[sitebender]

I built an entire game like that...

just to discover Namco made one like 20+ years ago.

Anyway, at first the game wasn't nearly as fun until I started experimenting with it. I made it play faster and get more rewarding and more addicting.

In the end its being on mobile that seemed to destroy it. I still finished my game and well... added it to the pile of finished games I have. Looking at the download stats, it did worse than I expected and I expected it to do poorly.

With my latest game, for the first 3 months I didn't enjoy it. It felt bland and it was tough to make my tenth side scrolling platformer feel fun when I've had so many mechanics in the past. I would have abandoned it but I felt I owed completing the game for the artist. I remade a lot of mechanics to the point the game is actually fun to me and others... because I know the original test version, one of the testers bluntly said "its boring, but doesn't have any bugs." Well bravo... Then he enjoyed it a lot more once I took time to scrap mechanics and make them fresh.

You can salvage anything with enough time, but how much time are you willing to invest?

 

[rIKmAN]

Your game could be the perfect representation of your vision, doesn't mean anyone else will like it or find it fun.

I kind of disagree with this, as I think that if you build a game that you find fun / interesting yourself, then there are going to be other people just like you out there that will also find it fun / interesting.

That's not to say it will be a hit or anything, it might be a very niche userbase - but they will be out there.

(Note: Obviously I'm assuming your vision isn't a Catch the Clown clone or something of a very poor quality)

 

[Distronaut]

Fun is rather subjective in my experience. Not everyone out there likes the most 'fun' AAA games. Indie gamers often enjoy 'bad' games more than 'good' ones because they find them more interesting. My best advise is stick to making what you love and even if your final product isn't as successful as you hoped, the chances are that the right audience will still find your game fun and compelling. It's kind of the same with music or artwork IMO.

 

[Niels]

I built an entire game like that...

just to discover Namco made one like 20+ years ago.

Anyway, at first the game wasn't nearly as fun until I started experimenting with it. I made it play faster and get more rewarding and more addicting.

In the end its being on mobile that seemed to destroy it. I still finished my game and well... added it to the pile of finished games I have. Looking at the download stats, it did worse than I expected and I expected it to do poorly.

With my latest game, for the first 3 months I didn't enjoy it. It felt bland and it was tough to make my tenth side scrolling platformer feel fun when I've had so many mechanics in the past. I would have abandoned it but I felt I owed completing the game for the artist. I remade a lot of mechanics to the point the game is actually fun to me and others... because I know the original test version, one of the testers bluntly said "its boring, but doesn't have any bugs." Well bravo... Then he enjoyed it a lot more once I took time to scrap mechanics and make them fresh.

You can salvage anything with enough time, but how much time are you willing to invest?

Haha it's funny because your game kinda looks like the game I was making

 

[Siolfor the Jackal]

I kind of disagree with this, as I think that if you build a game that you find fun / interesting yourself, then there are going to be other people just like you out there that will also find it fun / interesting.

That's not to say it will be a hit or anything, it might be a very niche userbase - but they will be out there.

(Note: Obviously I'm assuming your vision isn't a Catch the Clown clone or something of a very poor quality)

The implication seemed to be that you yourself would know something is fun. But I feel like most creators are obviously a bit biased, so you may find your project fun, but you may be super biased and attached your project, leaves you a little blind. I know I have made things I thought were fantastic... until I saw someone else play it and then I realised I was just used to it, a bit of stockholm syndrome

 

[Cloaked Games]

It sounds like you lack creative ideas more than anything else. I usually spend a long time thinking up a lot of ideas, and only implementing the really good ones (for longer projects. I wish I had that time for a jam!). To be honest, if you're taking the project seriously, you probably need more than 2 days to do proper brainstorming. I usually spend weeks while I work on system level code. (Though my current game has a lot of story elements which takes a lot of extra time). Come up with ideas on paper (a lot of them), before you implement them. If you really feel like there's nothing you can expand on to make it more interesting/fun, then consider moving on.

At least, that's how I handle things. Also play-testing. That's super helpful.

 

[MishMash]

How long are we talking? If the project has been in development for a long time, then its worth investing a fair amount of time to try and work out what you can change first. If this is a small prototype, perhaps just take it as a learning experience. For me, up until the big project im working on now, most of my games were unfinished and I just enjoyed working on them for both the learning experience and because it can be fun to trial ideas. Sometimes, i'd just get bored of ideas, even if they had potential. For example, making puzzle games was never that fun for me because id have a few good ideas for puzzles, but never enough to make a full game. Similarly, sometimes i'd get bored of making a game which could be fun to play, just because developing it is dry.
I started making a physics puzzle game called "Roll" which was basically a line-rider clone, nothing special or fancy, but ultimately, after playing the same puzzles over and over during testing, I got deathly bored of it, did that mean the base game wasn't fun? Who knows. Sometimes phone games can be so simple that they can become boring to test, simply due to the lack of mechanical variety, though it doesn't mean they would make bad games. Lots of "bus-stop" games are objectively crap, but they are fun time killers when you have 10-15 minutes to spare.

If you have only just started, then perhaps its worth just going back to the drawing board and thinking things through. Sometimes, there can be a limiting factor in a games design and you cannot force it to be something its not. In those situations, starting a new game can be the best bet, even if its a similar jist, creating a different setting can be important sometimes. Remember though, knowledge never goes away, and ideas/components of those games can always be re-used!

 

[Guest]

Try "breaking" some mechanics by exaggerating the heck out of them. My current project wasn't much fun. Then I made melee do twice as much damage as shooting, just to give a reason to melee. That was a little better. Then I added a "haste" mechanic. That was a lot better, because it allowed chaining melee attacks, which is unexpectedly satisfying. But I still used it rarely and introduced it only after some progression on the theory that you don't overwhelm the player and do incentivize progress. So, now I bring it in with level one and spawn the player next to a haste powerup. Melee-haste-melee has become the core mechanic of the game; I started with a different core mechanic that's still there, but it just didn't have any legs.

So, before ditching it, exaggerate some mechanics, slap it around, see if any part is fun, and iterate a little bit. If you're still bored, life is short.

 

[Niels]

How long are we talking? If the project has been in development for a long time, then its worth investing a fair amount of time to try and work out what you can change first. If this is a small prototype, perhaps just take it as a learning experience. For me, up until the big project im working on now, most of my games were unfinished and I just enjoyed working on them for both the learning experience and because it can be fun to trial ideas. Sometimes, i'd just get bored of ideas, even if they had potential. For example, making puzzle games was never that fun for me because id have a few good ideas for puzzles, but never enough to make a full game. Similarly, sometimes i'd get bored of making a game which could be fun to play, just because developing it is dry.
I started making a physics puzzle game called "Roll" which was basically a line-rider clone, nothing special or fancy, but ultimately, after playing the same puzzles over and over during testing, I got deathly bored of it, did that mean the base game wasn't fun? Who knows. Sometimes phone games can be so simple that they can become boring to test, simply due to the lack of mechanical variety, though it doesn't mean they would make bad games. Lots of "bus-stop" games are objectively crap, but they are fun time killers when you have 10-15 minutes to spare.

If you have only just started, then perhaps its worth just going back to the drawing board and thinking things through. Sometimes, there can be a limiting factor in a games design and you cannot force it to be something its not. In those situations, starting a new game can be the best bet, even if its a similar jist, creating a different setting can be important sometimes. Remember though, knowledge never goes away, and ideas/components of those games can always be re-used!

I'm not that long into development (think about +/- 25 hours) and I learned how chunks and procedural content is created... So didn't lose anything in the progress.
The main problem is that I keep swinging between big projects I can't ever finish alone and small 1 mechanic mobile projects that are fun to prototype, but bore me to death to make a actual game out off...

 

[MishMash]

I'm not that long into development (think about +/- 25 hours) and I learned how chunks and procedural content is created... So didn't lose anything in the progress.
The main problem is that I keep swinging between big projects I can't ever finish alone and small 1 mechanic mobile projects that are fun to prototype, but bore me to death to make a actual game out off...

I would say that with any game, there will always be a part of the process which is boring or tedious. Generally however, with big projects, you can dodge that boring stuff for a long time because there are plenty of mechanics to work on, however that doesn't mean it isn't there! One thing you do need to accept is that when you are working on a big project, you will eventually hit a point where your main focus is on content dev, and a lot of nitty gritty stuff, rather than mechanical dev, this can get cumbersome, especially if you are designing a game with a large open world. It is definitely not unique to small games.

Whilst I wouldn't advocate working on something when that work is boring, it does take a certain amount of discipline to actually finish and release a game vs just working on it. My flatmate for example is infamous for never actually finishing anything. He has been working on the same project for a long time and keeps saying he wants to get towards release, but constantly finds excuses to re-work things, change things or to shift his focus to a different area, rather than packaging up what he has. Whilst it isn't a game he is working on, ultimately, he is someone who enjoys the process and learning far far more than actually creating a project, and whilst he doesn't accept that, it's pretty clear that that is the case, and for some people thats how things are.

Before this project, there were many projects I knew I would never actually release, and sometimes when I did, that was simply marking the end of it. I know this is a bit of a random statement to make, but sometimes you can enjoy development far more if you just let yourself off the hook. There is no obligation to release something, just work on things you enjoy, make something you want to make, and don't necessarily pressure yourself into anything. First and foremost you should be making a game because you find it fun and exciting to work on, not because you immediately want to think about how you are planning on releasing it. All of the best projects i've made are ones which have started out as something just for fun, and then after a few months, or even longer, i've decided that there is a bit of potential behind what i'm working on. I always tended to start things without any intention of release, and just enjoyed seeing how things went.

The good news is that when the right project does eventually roll around, you'll feel it. No point sucking the fun out of game dev by just churning out apps without any love behind them, but hey, that's just my opinion!

 

[Ode Imaginations]

ditch the project, take what I learned from it and move on

This is an interesting subject and something I am struggling with when making music. Sorry for my lack of expertise in game development but I hope I can offer a new perspective through music. Leaving unsatisfying work unfinished was my standard practice. Since then I heard a tip saying "always finish what you write even if it is utter crap". It definitely sounds like solid advice but I'm still on the fence about how deeply one should follow that. What do you think? What's the merit behind it for you? Do you follow that advice or not?

Only fairly recently I've started to act according to that advice. Most of what I start as junk gets finished as junk, but I have discovered a new phenomenon: how failing to meet one's internal expectations can make one's work seems worse than it actually is. Sometimes, I would start composing and thinking "this is garbage!" But-- but the advice said to finish it! I can't get it to work no matter what... Fine! I'll make the worst piece of **** song anyone has ever heard. At least it's a finished piece. Surprisingly, after completing the song, it doesn't sound that bad - even the first parts I thought were trash! So what changed? I'm theorizing it's probably just my own expectations that changed (from "this needs to be excellent" to "let's make junk!"). Once it happened, it was possible to see some genuinely good aspects of the song. Sorry for the lengthy piece. Did it make any sense? This is something that could be rewarding to try in game design. If something doesn't work, why not finish it with a big middle finger to high expectations? I hope this helps in any way

 

[MishMash]

This is an interesting subject and something I am struggling with when making music. Sorry for my lack of expertise in game development but I hope I can offer a new perspective through music. Leaving unsatisfying work unfinished was my standard practice. Since then I heard a tip saying "always finish what you write even if it is utter crap". It definitely sounds like solid advice but I'm still on the fence about how deeply one should follow that. What do you think? What's the merit behind it for you? Do you follow that advice or not?

Only fairly recently I've started to act according to that advice. Most of what I start as junk gets finished as junk, but I have discovered a new phenomenon: how failing to meet one's internal expectations can make one's work seems worse than it actually is. Sometimes, I would start composing and thinking "this is garbage!" But-- but the advice said to finish it! I can't get it to work no matter what... Fine! I'll make the worst piece of **** song anyone has ever heard. At least it's a finished piece. Surprisingly, after completing the song, it doesn't sound that bad - even the first parts I thought were trash! So what changed? I'm theorizing it's probably just my own expectations that changed (from "this needs to be excellent" to "let's make junk!"). Once it happened, it was possible to see some genuinely good aspects of the song. Sorry for the lengthy piece. Did it make any sense? This is something that could be rewarding to try in game design. If something doesn't work, why not finish it with a big middle finger to high expectations? I hope this helps in any way

I have two different perspectives on this ! The first is with regard to the fact that learning to finish something is an important skill, regardless of what you are working on. I'm currently finding that finishing a game is a real challenge. Whilst I have done it in the past, it has always been on a smaller scale. Yes, in some senses, finishing something that you know wont amount to much can be counter-productive to learning, but at the same time, at some point, it is valuable to learn how to finish a project in its entirety. With regard to programming, polishing, optimisation, packaging up and release/distritbution are parts of the development pipeline that you rarely touch thoroughly when just prototyping or working for fun. I imagine this is similar to music with regard to cleaning up/tweaking up and mastering the final track. What I would say here is that you should perhaps finish projects some of the time just to get the right experience when it comes to having an expectation of the last stage of development, and knowing all the random things you need to do. This can also be important for learning how to create things like save systems, options menus, help files and tutorials which a lot of people neglect to do during prototyping as its completely unnecessary at that point.

The second answer is more in line with your own personal experience, and i've definitely had the same thing with game dev. We were close to giving up on our project around 2.5 years ago. It was taking ages and not really shaping up to how we pictured it, but now, I'm really chuffed with where it is at. There was a time where it felt underwhelming because it was never as good as our own vision. Sometimes though, when coming back to it, i'd be like "actually, that's not too bad". After a bit of discipline and powering through, we are now at a point where the game has pretty much surpassed my own expectations, and now its exciting to work on again With games, sometimes a seemingly bad game can become a good game just with a good bit of polish. Similarly, I think from doing that you can also learn that its okay for games not to look great during development. I used to over-polish early on, whereas now I trust that I know visuals can really improve later on, and there's no rush to waste time on things early on. I wouldn't have learned that unless I stuck through some mediocre projects.

Though its definitely an interesting take, drawing parallels between other projects and creative media!

 

[Yal]

If you can't evolve a concept any further, you could still ship the game (if there's enough content in it). Most people don't finish games anymore these days, and others play so casually they don't need or want depth. You could always update the game later when you start getting feedback, or make a sequel that's bigger and better. Having a finished project you can put on your CV is better than having an unfinished project that nobody will ever know about, especially if you put a nontrivial amount of effort into it.

 

[YanBG]

If you scrap it, what game are you going to make instead? Keep in mind any genre is hard to pull off. I had ideas for different types and usually hit the same wall.

So maybe the game(any) itself is not the issue, but you finsihing it. For me filling in the puzzles is boring i like figuring how to make the chunks and other systems like you did more. Working in team could be better, to cover the areas you are weaker at, i think fewer one man games gets finsihed.

Often i see good games and songs that are very similar or built upon an earlier versions from the same author. Basically you can keep re-releasing the same game until it gets good.

 

[Genetix]

In all reality, I'd most likely scrap it. Often times I'll design what seems like a 'fun' prototype only to realize it's boring and I have no passion to keep working on it anymore. That is just the truth - but It's not a waste by any means, it's like going to the gym or practicing the piano - it makes you better.

Sometimes you'll end up coming back to that project months later with fresh eyes and new ideas - but don't be afraid to shelf it. If you don't love it, more then likely your players won't either.

 

[teamrocketboyz]

I believe you need to get people to play it and give their honest feedback. remember your the creator, you find it boring but you need to figure out the reason for the boredom, there are many factors, is it because you know the room your in like the back of your hand?, is it because you know every unlockable and ability? is it because youve been working on the game for so long its simply lost any charm? these are all very common when it comes to game making.

i once created a game based on reflexes that i could complete every single time, as soon as i got a few people to playtest it, every single person said it was way too hard and noone could do it. then i realised that over the 2 weeks of making it i must have tried to complete it over 400 times.

the difference is i could complete it but i didnt smile once doing it. they couldnt complete it but was all happy with the game. it lost alot of its charm on me based on the fact i was staring at it for 2 weeks.

i actually dread to think howmuch i would hate a project i worked years on.

 

[Ode Imaginations]

What I would say here is that you should perhaps finish projects some of the time just to get the right experience when it comes to having an expectation of the last stage of development, and knowing all the random things you need to do.

I agree with this! If one has never finished a game before, it's most likely definitely worth completing one even if it doesn't match expectations. Then at least estimations on time and effort on creating a complete game will be more accurate thanks to experience.

 

[CleanWater]

The concept of fun is very relative. While someone might think a certain game is good, others may find it boring, or just "fine".

You may also be tired of working on this project, so you can't really enjoy it. It happened with me with some games I play tested several times during development. After some years without working on them, I decided to play again and realized how they are actually fun to play.

My best advice for you:

1 - Get different persons to play test your game
2 - Take a break

 

[BaBiA Game Studio]

I shelved my last game because it turned out that it didn't play as well as I thought it would, and was not as much fun as I had hoped either. But I actually had a lot of fun just making it, and I get to reuse some of the technical stuff I built in my other game instead. So even by shelving/cancelling a game, you can still get something positive out of it that you can use elsewhere.

 

[arty]

I feel that if your idea doesn't excite you anymore, you shouldn't try to artificially keep it alive. Just shelve it, and maybe one day you'll feel like revisiting. Maybe not.
In any case you won't have wasted time on working on something you don't enjoy - after all, if not even you enjoy it, then who will? The time is better spent working on a new idea, keeping the lessons your old idea taught you in mind.

 

[Jabbers]

I worked on a multiplayer game for about four years that turned out to be somewhat boring. We had a chicken and egg situation where customers were requesting refunds because there weren't enough players online. It was a valuable learning experience, but never again would I let a project deteriorate like ours did.

If you are making games for fun, or to learn new skills, and you don't intend to sell the product, then the consequences of building a boring game are very few. If you are serious about your game, then you need to think about why the game isn't enjoyable, and if it can be salvaged. It may be that the idea itself is flawed, or that it isn't viable to rebuild the game-- and that is when you consider cancelling it.

If you release it as an unfinished game (which I personally wouldn't recommend) then consider labelling it abandonware, assuming you don't intend to maintain it.

 

[Smiechu]

I worked on a multiplayer game for about four years that turned out to be somewhat boring. We had a chicken and egg situation where customers were requesting refunds because there weren't enough players online. It was a valuable learning experience, but never again would I let a project deteriorate like ours did.

If you are making games for fun, or to learn new skills, and you don't intend to sell the product, then the consequences of building a boring game are very few. If you are serious about your game, then you need to think about why the game isn't enjoyable, and if it can be salvaged. It may be that the idea itself is flawed, or that it isn't viable to rebuild the game-- and that is when you consider cancelling it.

If you release it as an unfinished game (which I personally wouldn't recommend) then consider labelling it abandonware, assuming you don't intend to maintain it.

What you've described is a typical task of the project manager (no matter what industry branch), to observe and analyse the project situation and it's advancement, and when the risk of failure (not meeting the customer expactations and/or requirements, the budget, deadline or income target) is to high, to make a proper (not easy) decision.

The most typical fail here is to continiue the project (and take no countermeasures) knowing the risk is already to high. Loosing money(and/or time) is not nice but loosing even more money (and/or time) is even worse.

 

[Jabbers]

The most typical fail here is to continiue the project (and take no countermeasures) knowing the risk is already to high. Loosing money(and/or time) is not nice but loosing even more money (and/or time) is even worse.

It's also a problem that I didn't follow even a basic software engineering process. The whole thing was a mess from design to execution, and the risks weren't analysed at all. Developing and selling a multiplayer game on a budget of peanuts is very audacious, to say the least.