Comment by dxuh
3 days ago
I think putting off polish for later as the OP and multiple comments here recommend is a fallacy. There are many popular, successful games that would just not be fun if they didn't have good animations, no effects and everything was boxes. Every game that relies on "feeling good to play". It might be fine for an RPG or an RTS, but it's probably not for something like Overwatch or Doom (the new ones). Just imagine Vampire Survivors without sound or effects. Some games live off the art style alone. This is a very controversional opinion, but I think if e.g. Ori and the Blind Forest had bad art, no one would have played the game. Some games you can evaluate really well with bad art and no juice or polish, other games need some and there are even games that need a lot of it, before you know if they can be fun. It's not that simple imho. I remember working on games that were not really fun until I added some effect and suddenly it was really addicting. People like flashing lights and noises and pretty pictures. If good, unique or interesting art was irrelevant, no one would invest in it, but people do.
> Just imagine Vampire Survivors without sound or effects.
I can't help but feel that this completely undermines your point - Vampire Survivors is bashed together using rudimentary knockoffs of sprites from games from the 1990s, in an engine which barely supports the idea of particles let alone proper visual effects.* It is the gameplay that carries Vampire Survivors, not the aesthetic.
Game feel is of course essential to producing a good game all-round, but a competent game designer can and will tell the difference between a good game design and a bad one, way before polish and juice are layered on top.
*I don't say this as a criticism - Vampire Survivors is fantastic - but the idea that it's propped up by its look is just daft.
The point of the OP (which I agree with) with is that the gameplay and the aesthetic are not orthogonal to one another. Even with Vampire Survivors which is not strictly beautiful the aesthetics are a big part of the gameplay. Largely the visuals and audio need to do several things:
- Make the game legible. A good example would be to reduce the whole game to boxes, you still need to differentiate things, so you might want to color them. Aesthetics in support of gameplay to make the game understandable.
- Add 'game feel'. This is where audio is especially important as you tend to notice the lack of good audio rather than its presence. But also 'juice', animations and what not all layer in.
- Support the fantasy. The name Vampire Survivors carries expectations that boxes do not match.
If you've ever done a lot of playtesting with your target audience one thing you'll find is that missing these elements gives you much worse feedback. Most notably legibility because it's so integral to being able to play a game but the others as well.
Game designers to an extent can get past this but it's still an attempt at extrapolation which is necessarily less concrete. Also if you're new to making games then you're going to make it harder to judge your own work.
The good thing about Vampire Survivors as an example is it shows that you don't need to do much but enough.
Overwatch was prototyped by making levels out of plain boxes, using character models ripped from a previous game, then iterating until the game mechanics were fun. Of course, it then received many layers of polish before it was launched, but nonetheless the devs prioritised getting the basics right first.
The dev team had just come off developing Titan, a cancelled MMO where they had trouble making the core game loop engaging after seven years of development, so they had a lot of motivation to start small and make something good first, then polish later.
I don't think anyone is suggesting to ship a version to actual customers without some polish, but foregoing polish is good advice. I've attempted to make games on several occasions and my current is the first to stick because I intentionally decided not to worry about aesthetics too much at first, that allowed me to quite rapidly get to something that's fun to play, which in turn has motivated me to keep going. It also drastically reduces the pain of sunk costs when the entirety of your projectile system is a coloured box shooting spheres rather than a lovingly crafted gun model which isn't actually fun to use.
Having watched/read a few things about the white boxing stage the general advice is to put in as much polish as you need to do that and no more. If you're trying to prove out jump mechanics literally just some boxes for platforms and a sphere as the character is enough. If you're making a stealth game then you'll need some lighting in your level because it's a core game mechanic.
The idea behind postponing polishing is that if you can’t build a strong foundation using the skills you’re most comfortable with (coding), there’s little point in starting with the harder parts. It’s better to make as much progress as possible with the tools you already know, since the areas you’re less familiar with will require more research and move slower.
Most indie projects die before getting there.
I don't think they're saying don't polish it all before you release it, but to not worry about polishing it until you have a solid gameplay foundation
You might spend a ton of time and money on art and polish only to suddenly realize your game isn't fun at all. Many such cases.
I completely agree. Also, working on a game that looks cool is a huge motivation boost. Especially because people get excited when you show them the game. Show them a game full of grey boxes won't do that.