Juice it or lose it - a talk by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho

People normally call that making it "juicy". There's this awesome presentation on YouTube showing how a boring game can look awesome with some "juiciness", even if the core gameplay is unchanged: ▶ this video

The talk juice it or lose, by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho, is all about this. Gotta be one of the best talks for anyone trying to make things interactive that also feel good. ▶ this video

▶ this video Here's the presentation. It's a pretty fantastic watch that shows what just a few small design decisions can do for a product's impressions on an audience.

"Juice it or lose it" is the best presentation I've seen on the matter. It's really funny and it clearly show how adding some bouncing or some particles can completely change the feel of a game (or UI) ▶ this video

> With games like this, you might want to spend half the dev time on polish, or the game dev term being juice. see also: 2012 talk "juice it or lose it" ▶ this video "A juicy game feels alive and responds to everything you do tons of cascading action and response for minimal user input."

Resources which helped me get started: "Challenges for Games Designers" by Brathwaite & Schreiber. This was by far the most helpful, as it laid out a process of finding & refining fun game ideas. "Game Feel" by Swink. Examines why jumping feels better in Super Mario than Donkey Kong, why Street Fighter feels the way it does, etc. This way of breaking down & examining mechanics was eye opening and can be applied to other kinds of games. lostgarden.com, especially link , which describes a process for rapidly iterating on ideas, and link , which introduced me to some of the fundamental building blocks of game mechanics. Resources which helped me later: I found "Art of Game Design" to be helpful later, when working on making a good game into a great game. The different lenses were great for finding areas where I could improve a game. ▶ this video really drove home how important polish is. This was useful after I had a game which was already a bit fun. Finally, an observation & a suggestion, if you're open to them: You admit that you don't know game design, yet you're attempting to innovate by removing limits. This seems like an enormous challenge for a beginner, like someone who doesn't know how to play an instrument attempting to make a new style of jazz. I think you'd have more success if you learned to play the instrument first: Practice by making a lot of small games. Spend 2-4 days on each, no more. Learn to use prototypes to explore the design space, searching for ideas with

Don't worry too much about 3D (though Godot will make it easy enough to switch from 2D to 3D and even combine both) but focus on fun instead: ▶ this video

Back in the days when I started with game dev hobby projects: "Juice it or lose it", which I think also includes valueable lessons to making "joyful" UX in apps, too. [1] [1] ▶ this video

I had periods of time where I played nothing but a single game, though those were never more than a few months. Definitely seems like it would be good for your son to broaden his gaming horizons somewhat. Re: "Juicing" - I saw the word and immediately assumed you were using the definition from this classic gamedev talk, well worth a watch: ▶ this video

I'm reminded of the talk "Juice It of Lose It" < ▶ this video >. This looks like a very juicy game. There's also an excellent video by Mark Brown, a fantastic resource for game design discussion < link >

Regarding your second point, there is this talk by Petri Purho (Noita) about making a bland game feel fun to the user: ▶ this video As for your first point, I would suggest aspiring devs to try to prepare themselves to take part in "game jams". The constraints (including a time constraint) help focus on important parts. link

Looks like google needs to watch this video on how to make a good breakout game: ▶ this video -- Juice it or Lose it.