What Makes a Good Game?

Personally I’m not the type of noobish gamer that uses ESP, aim-bot or any kind of third party software. We developers put so much time, sweat and tears into making these games that it’s a shame that some players do not take the time to learn how to play them properly. I can somewhat understand the need for optimal performance and praise especially when it comes to streaming, but what’s the point if it’s at the detriment of others? A good game needs good physics and collision detection for solid objects, or else no tactics or strategies are needed when it comes to player positioning or movements. People wouldn’t watch sports if the players didn’t have to duck, sidestep or run into one another.

Some of my design ideas are from the best game I’ve ever played. Fallout 2 a single player title, the NPC dialogues were captivating, the writing and relevant survivalist nuclear apocalyptic themes really immersed the player into the game’s world. The learning curve was hard but exciting and the items accumulated in the inventory didn’t feel ineffectual, and power armor was a rarity. Oddly enough, it was a turn based based game, but the combat involved collisions, use of strategy and a knockdown mechanism, which impacted the gameplay experience in an amusing way. Additionally the map navigation system was so clever and the animations were simply awesome. The mods made out of this game were even better once they implemented real-time combat and a multiplayer option. I’m not gonna rant about Fallout 76, It was a good attempt at making a Fallout MMO, but I feel like it was oversaturated with content. It would of been nice if it felt more like New Vegas, and maybe restricted fast traveling despite it’s convenience. I played it for a bit but I didn’t understand why they made it possible to sneak in power armor.

So when creating our prototype, from a design and coding perspective, collision detection was absolutely necessary. So we added a knockdown mechanism similar to Fallout 2, the player falls to the ground if a certain amount of damage is taken within a short period of time. Thus dodging/blocking and outplaying your opponent is encouraged from a skilled gameplay perspective. Taking into consideration the reduced computational power of cellphone, non-rigged 2D art is not as much of a heavy toll on the engine’s resources, thus we were able to make the most out of the particles and Unity’s projectile system. It’s a bit of daunting process as everything needs to be reanimated every time an item or action is implemented but it looks so much better.