Recently I was thinking with myself "if I made a game using only my personal preferences, what would the game feel like? what if I tried to make a perfect game?", and I got some topics I want to discuss with other game devs (alright yeah my definition of a perfect game is probably different from yours but game design principles still apply):

1 - The perfect game needs to have strong community support

I have a couple points for this one. Firstly, if your game has a strong community, then newcomers will have a reason to play your game - to engage in the community too. Also, if you have a community who also makes content (e.g., fan-made levels, videos, etc), then you won't need to feel like "if I stop this game, the game is dead". Of course a few updates and stuff like that will keep the community, but they will also be making content by their own. 

Btw, fanmades and stuff are good for other reasons too. If your game have a good fanmades support, people will start making fan made stuff, like their own levels, their own content, etc. This will give players another reason to play your game - so that other people consume their content too (like to play their levels or fanmade games). And in order for more people to get to know their content, they may start making videos of their levels, which means more content and promotion for your game

2 - The perfect game needs to have some pro playing field

This will get much easier if you have a community - but not every person in the world is a casual player. Some people (like me) might prefer to do some intense stuff in your game. Maybe they beat a new hardest level, maybe they did a crazy achievement, maybe they did something that deep down inside, you know that even you as the developer of the game would struggle to do so too. Also, if you have a not so small player base, then a pro player might start to make more serious content, as the community will watch them plying and go "oh, dude's good". More serious content can mean live streams, not so small channels, more engagement even for people who don't play your game still...

Also, if your game has a good pro plying field, then becoming a good player will take longer, meaning more playtime. Then you just need to make the learning curve less steep, maybe you can make a "hardest levels list", maybe an introduction on how top playing works in your game, etc. And if becoming a pro player in your game doesn't feel impossible, then some players will have another reason to play your game - they will want to be top players too, to glaze their skill in the community, and to make their content too

3 - The perfect game may be a rhythm game

This is the moment where my personal preferences might start biasing the perfect game, but I still have points. Firstly, music will help making the levels of your game to feel more alive, and more satisfying to watch and play. Also, people will be able to use your game to promote small artists, or even to self promote. But it will be shared promotion: you get more people in your game and more content, the level creator also gets engagement, and the artist will have it's song being shown to more people. Including people who may actually like the song and the artist... (I found the song Crim3s - Lost with a popular red level in a game, never cared that much with the level but the song was one of my favorites for some time)

Just please, don't make another vsrg (vertical scrolling rhythm game). You know those games where you have notes falling on a line, and you need to be a pianist and be getting perfects... the world doesn't need more games like these, these games are too technically hard to make, and you need to be lucky to make your game stand out. Also, games of this kind usually requires lots of music anyways, and I don't assume first-time rhythm game makers have that many songs valiable to use

4 - The perfect game may have a lot of levels

You don't need to scope creep your game (planning more features than what you can add), but you should focus on an easy, fast and good level design system. The more levels = the more content. And having a good amount of levels will help people having more stuff to do in your game. For instance, level grinders (people who strive to beat the most levels, maybe to get the most stats, or to have more videos in their channel) will need to play your game for more time. And level showcasers (people who get very good levels, usually fanmades, and record these levels to other people to watch and find new levels) will have more content to choose from

If you know you cannot make too many levels without scope creep, then that's another reason to support fanmades. You cannot make too many levels, but your community can.

5 - The perfect game... doesn't really exist (yet)

There are some games that got pretty close to this definition of a perfect game. Two games that really impacted the way I see games as a whole were rolling sky and geometry dash, the first was pretty much my introduction to games with strong communities, and the other impacted a lot the game design of my games. But they're not perfect. Rolling sky kinda forces you to have a discord, install weird apps and to have a really good mobile, what's not my case. And geometry dash is *too* hard, taking pretty much hours (if not days) to beat levels that I know that are still far from the top playing field (and demons). 

So I started searching games on itch.io, it would be cool to find a really good game on itch made by some indie, and helping the developer of the game to grow - and to pretty much start a community in a game (which in turn, the community of the game would know me lol). The closest I got was with my own game Paradox Space (no, I'm not self promoting no time to play), and I also found a cool platformer called RED CLAW by Cookie-Crumb. Other than that, I really didn't found that many games that satisfied me, even though there are millions of games in itch

This is my point of view in the "perfect game". I know such definition doesn't exist, and you probably disagree with a lot of stuff I said, so let me know your thoughts on your visions of perfect games!

Oh man what a topic. First and foremost, I would say the "perfect" game is VERY subjective. I mean, games these days are so varied from each other can you even compare them? Take a game like Baldur's Gate 3 with its (what feels like infinite) possible story and character combinations allows it to be pretty perfectly tailored to the player's experience, and then compare it to something like that first Five Night's at Freddy's. I would say both games are fantastic and I don't have any complaints for either but you can obviously tell that I haven't taken into consideration the scale of each game. The problem is that you can make a near perfectly executed smaller game, and as long as it excels in what it set out to do it will rival even bigger triple A titles.

I'm of the opinion that a perfect game should be one that takes advantage of every aspect of it's game design and narrative. For me, a game I like to look to for inspiration is Deltarune. That game masterfully blends the lines between the gameplay and the story. And both aspects are used interchangeably to further the experience. It's the type of experience that would be good as a standalone novel, and would be good in terms of it's gameplay alone. But specifically the way the creator merges aspects of the battle system with the thematic elements of the world, and how the encounters allow for in depth explorations of character really speak to me.

I personally believe that a game should have just as much plot as gameplay, of course I know many who would disagree and that's my take as a writer and coder. But even then I know someone who would be able to confidently defend a battle royal type or an open world exploration as 'the perfect game' and I can't argue that much because a lot of the deciding factors are opinions. For me a competitive experience isn't what I come to seek but I understand that it's similar in nature to sporting and that there's a high demand for those types of experiences.

TLDR: I think it's very very difficult to make or even conceive of a 'perfect' game because it's like trying to come up with a 'perfect' food or a 'perfect' human personality type. And My message to any readers is to not try and get lost on making a game perfect. As a developer your Magnum Opus will be perfect to you, because it's the combined effort of your experiences, biases, and passions. So while it is fun to propose ideas like I did earlier don't let it bring you down if your game isn't a cult following or held in high praise because out there lies a game for everyone.

friendly reminder that's my vision of a perfect game, go easy on me lol (and mostly as a player)

Wow, we disagree almost completely on what makes a game good! For me:

The perfect game is complete. It doesn’t have or need updates. It doesn’t have or need fan content. It doesn’t need online walkthroughs or strategy guides. It doesn’t need internet access and it doesn’t need other players. It is perfect the way it is, with no extras, just me and my computer with the game on my computer.

The perfect game has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And when I reach the end, I feel satisfied. I can put the game aside and start playing another game. I should treasure the time I spent playing the game, but I shouldn’t feel compelled to return to it.

The perfect game doesn’t block my way to the end. The game can require skill, but it can never require more skill than I can give it. If I get stuck, it’s the responsibility of the game to get me unstuck before I give up on the game.

The perfect game is a story where I play the main character. Which means both having a story in the first place and giving me the choices to do what I think the main character would do. It doesn’t mean giving me the freedom to deliberately sabotage the story, but it does mean that the game should never force the idiot ball on me.

The perfect game is a story in which I am emotionally invested. Just having a story is not enough. It must be a story that I actually care about.

The perfect game doesn’t judge. It’s OK for actions in the game to have natural consequences, but I don’t want my performance to be rated.

The perfect game is fun. Which is a really vague criterion because there are many types of fun. It’s also only one criterion among many.

The perfect game is beautiful. Another really vague criterion, but one that rules out the far-too-many games that think “ugly” is a valid aesthetic choice.

The perfect game is just fun. There's some games where on paper shouldn't work at all, but playing them just results in hours sunk and a bunch of laughs or fun had. Crab game is one example. 

I glazz my skill GiftCardMall/MyGift

Click on my off topic or know the problem?