I’ve been trying to make a game for 4 years now, but I haven’t released any game yet because I suck at game design. I have a few prototypes with working mechanics including multiplayer one and all of them are abandoned because I couldn’t think of a new level or location and just lost any motivation. That said, I’d like to ask you for some game ideas that are more interesting and complicated than tetris or pong but not so complicated in terms of design (like a game with procedural levels or something)
Try making something based on Conway’s Game of Life. Maybe a rhythm game.
Or find a classic game that’s interesting to you, reproduce it, and then change it to make a variation. Even a seemingly simple game like Pac-Man has unexpected complexities.
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Oh, I remember I coded this game back in school
That sounds interesting
The Game of Life is a good foundation to add other ideas. The rules are simple and deterministic. For a rhythm game, for example, imagine using it with something like a simplified Crypt of the Necrodancer or Dance Dance Revolution. Or you could incorporate it into an arcade shooter.
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You explained quite well why you can’t make any game, but you forgot to mention what, specifically, makes you think that you should make any game at all? Is there somebody holding you at gunpoint and forcing to spend years of your life doing something you have no motivation and no ideas for? These threads, which pop up every once in a while, always make me kind of puzzled.
I don’t have any motivation or any ideas for a lot of things. For instance, I have no idea how to make an original plot or characters for a good novel. No motivation and no patience for such task either. That’s why I don’t waste years my of my life attempting to write one. And it would never occur to me to ask strangers online to invent some plot and random characters for my novel.
Even if you persist and force yourself to produce some creative work you never had any original ideas or motivation for, be it a book, a painting, a video game, or whatever, do you really think other people will be interested in it and enjoy it?
Life is short, no need to waste it on something you have no motivation or ideas for. Do instead something you will truly enjoy without expecting some random online people nudging and forcing you to do it.
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I would never waste my time on something I don’t like, I don’t try making music, writing or painting. But I want to make games, I learned Unity, I learned Unreal Engine and I didn’t do this because I was forced to, I just wanted to make something I like. Once in a while an idea pops up in my brain and can’t think of anything else, I think how I’ll do this, how that will work, how do I want my game to feel, etc, I can’t even sleep when I’m like this. But the problem is that the idea itself is just an abstract vision, art I’d say. And when I start making the game I can’t get past details, everything seems amazing in mind, but when it’s actually implemented I start to see a lot of problems and imperfections (sometimes fatal). And then I just dig deeper in this, try to resolve problems until I completely lose motivation and abandone the project.
Because of this I ask for ideas with simple design to not make the same mistake I’ve been doing for years and finally finish at least one game
And for the same reason, I can’t make basic pong-like games, because I just don’t like them and I don’t have any motivation and interest in making them
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Start with something super small, like a tamagotchi type thing. They can be fun projects yet not too big that you run out of steam. Get a couple of small ones under your belt and released, and you will have the mental fortitude to see the big ones through - as well as all the mental techniques to stop you running out of steam.
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Alot of people go through that and it can be tough. Maybe making a topic, asking for ideas for levels and locations, might be a good idea. You might get lots of feed back in it too.
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Just make a clone of a classic arcade/ROM game. Really, its easy to complete a small simple game in < 40 hours.
You can do it.
The key is to finish it.
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Yeah.
Maybe you don’t like game design? Maybe look for a job as a gameplay programmer in an indie, or team up with a friend who does like game design…
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Have you tried participating in game jams?
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I’m not a professional programmer and still a student, so working isn’t a variant now. Thought I have a friend who helps me with story/mechanics, but not with actual level design
They rarely give me ideas, I don’t have enough creativity
What games do you like and why do you like them?
What games do you want to make?
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I love horrors and I have a few prototypes of the, also physics-based games (especially ragdoll)
I know the normal prescription for this type of thing is to make some simple boring clone that nobody cares about (least of all you) but have you considered that the problem is not so much a question of what game you are making, but the fact that you can’t deal with imperfections, and the gap between your perfect vision and your game design skills?
I’m not saying there isn’t some kind of wisdom in eating your veggies, so to speak, but it sounds like the problem for you is how to fix a vision in place and work on it iteratively over a long period of time, rather than skipping to something else.
So if you’re looking for discipline, what I would suggest is to take the biggest and shiniest idea you’ve got, and give yourself a set amount of time (maybe a couple of weeks or a month) to make half an hour of gameplay from it. And don’t stop working (do something, anything each day) until that time is finished. Don’t pass judgement on what you’re doing, don’t worry about what you ‘should’ be doing, just do what seems right and follow the thread of your idea until the clock stops.
The thing is that even if what comes out at the end isn’t really high quality the first time around, you will have at least solved the problem of connecting your imagination to sustained output from your hands.
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Frogger.
Or any classic arcade game.
Heck, even arcanoid.
I just want to reiterate: make what interests you. Find a simple idea. People recommend classic arcade games because they usually have a simple, straightforward game mechanic. If no arcade games interest you, find something else. Take a piece of it, make it new and interesting to you, and make it small. I mentioned Conway’s Game of Life before. A friend recently made a two-player game called Living Chess. It turns the very simple rules of the Game of Life into a competitive game that feels a bit like Go. It’s a classic easy-to-learn, hard-to-master game that didn’t take long to develop.
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@Vefery maybe it is worth to ask yourself a question, why you want to make a game?
What is your motivation and your goal.
By now after 4 years, you should really know, if you can pull off something like a game.
As solo dev, you really need be versatile. Otherwise, you need find someone to stick with, who will feel the gaps. Not easy task however.
Regarding jams, you may want find a team. But maybe better, would be simply look into Open Project, which Unity is running. Learn Content & Certification - Unity Discussions
You can pick an area of your interest and contribute to common goal.
You also got a chance, to learn things.
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Yeah, this part of making a game, the actual interactive design or “game design” part, is something that takes a whole lot of skill in its own right. It’s very different to programming, so I can absolutely see why someone passionate about making games could be strongly drawn to one and not the other.
I’m not an artist, have basically no artistic skill, and so on. That’s also important to making games, but nobody tells me I shouldn’t bother making games if I can’t make good visual art. The same thing applies to the interactive design.
Anyway, here’s what jumps out to me: asking for other peoples’ ideas might not help you.
You described an idea as “just an abstract vision” as if that’s a problem, but that’s exactly what an idea is. An idea is not a design. An idea is just the first step of a rather lengthy design process. Game design (and interactive design in general) is the processes and skills involved in getting from an idea to details, and making appropriate decisions along the way so that you end up with something that has the desired impact on a target audience.
So, if your issue is that you “can’t get past the details”, then that’s still going to be an issue whether the ideas come from you or from someone else.
If you want to code games without designing them then I think that’s actually great, but that means you probably need to work with someone who is interested in the design side of things. If you’re happy following someone else’s lead when it comes to design* then you’re probably quite valuable to the right kind of project team.
- Which will include things like accepting it when they decide to drop something that doesn’t fit with the rest of the design, and making things just to see how they go. You discard far more than you keep.
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