Lens #1: The Lens of Emotion

The first article of my game design diary, probably not daily. If you have recommendations or ideas you want to share let me know in the comments section below.

I look through the first lens of the book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses written by Jesse Schell on our game, the emotion lens. There are three questions

  • What emotion shall my player experience?
  • What emotion do they have now?
  • How can I bridge the gap between these emotions?

The player should experience a powerful feeling using the guns, it’s a gun porn game and everything should be around these guns and ammo. The better the experience of these guns the better.
Cute characters should provide a playful experience.
As well it should have a badass experience with those badass comments.

When I play the game using the guns is already very nice, the kickback (camera and player), shell ejection, and also the sound is nicely put together and it feels really good to fire the weapons. As well the enemies are easy to kill which makes the feel of powerful guns even stronger. I have to be care full not to rush to the more powerful guns as this is the trophy of finishing levels. I probably need a lot of guns
I need to add more cuteness to it, the heart emoji is just one that needs to be improved. I like the minion’s way of speaking, so I want to add more of that to improve that "it is cute" emotion.

To improve it I have the following points on my list

  • Add more bass
  • Improve the flashlight
  • Add more weapons
  • Design the levels that I can use the weapons a lot
  • Add badass comments
  • Add more cute sound and animations if we accomplished something.

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The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses

This book is an awesome guide with more than 100 lenses to look at your game. Written by Jesse Schell a professor of entertainment technology for Carnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center (ETC).

I like the concept of the lenses in this book, it let you look at your game from different angles to assure you have a fun game in the end. The lenses are summarized in orange boxes which makes this book an awesome guide through your process crafting a fun game. It’s like having an instructor on tap.

Laughing While Shooting

The little hero starts to laugh when shooting a lot. It is bound to the number of rounds per second to make him start laughing, every weapon has his threshold. Or when he shoots two or more targets in a row.

It makes the game more fun.

I’m thinking of more little animations like the love it animation for picking up ammo. Currently, I’m thinking of a cursing animation, unfortunately, I can not use the hits I get because we die too easy and I don’t want to change that. He curses when he stucks somewhere maybe. Or when he struggles with something.


Game Feeling

I read and watched a lot about game feeling beyond many I liked these best

Game feeling is how you experience your interaction within a game. Does jumping feel good? Does the gun have a powerful feeling when using it? Is it satisfying when you destroy or kill something? Does it have a snappy control? Was it exciting to solve that puzzle?

The 30 Tricks of Jan Willem Nijman

I made my self a list of the 30 tricks to make a game feel good by Jan Willem Nijam:

  1. Basic Animations & Sounds: Makes the walking, jumping, pick up things, and shooting more fun.
  2. Lower Enemy HP: It’s more fun.
  3. Higher Rate of Fire: It’s a video game about shooting so put more bullets in there.
  4. More Enemies: Because of trick 2. you need more enemies to shoot.
  5. Bigger Bullets: Don’t use realistically sized bullets as it looks so silly, make them big.
  6. Muzzle Flash: Just make the first bullet frame a circle.
  7. Faster Bullets: Slow bullets are lame, make it faster.
  8. Less Accuracy: If your gun is not too accurate it looks more realistic and is more fun.
  9. Impact Effects: Let the player know he hit something, don’t just remove the bullets.
  10. Hit Animation: Let the player know that he damaged the enemies.
  11. Enemy Knockback: But knockback force if you hit enemies.
  12. Permanence: Don’t remove dead bodies, it helps you remember if you come back in a room with a huge pile of dead bodies in it.
  13. Camera Lerp: Smoother cameras make the character feel more in-motion.
  14. Camera Position: Your your camera to focus on important things in your video game.
  15. Screen Shake: This is an important rule add screen shake on explosions it looks so much more powerful than without.
  16. Player recoil: Shooting feels much more powerful with recoil on the player and you can use it to avoid that player do not shoot all the time as it has a drawback.
  17. Sleep: If you set a deadly hit sleep for 100 or 200 ms, it puts more meaning in that action, brawl games do that a lot.
  18. Gun Delay: Make the character and its props look like they have weight/momentum when moving.
  19. Gun Kick: Add recoil to things that would have it.
  20. Strafing: If you shoot and change the direction the shooting will be still in the same direction until you stop shooting to turn around the gun.
  21. More Permanence: Put ejecting shells in your game and make them permanent, it also helps to remember that you were in that room and that you did shoot a lot.
  22. More Bass: Add bass to your shooting and explosions they get much more meaning and power.
  23. Super Machinegun: Try ridiculous variations on how shooting performs, maybe three bullets a time, go crazy.
  24. Random Explosions: That is a funny one but it puts more action in your game if you put some random explosions to your game when you shoot enemies, don’t overdo it.
  25. More Enemies: You tuned up your gameplay so that you got the feeling you have not enough to shoot at.
  26. Even Higher Rate of Fire: Because it is more fun to shoot
  27. Even Higher Rate of Camera Kick: Make your camera kick in the direction of the action/shooting.
  28. Bigger Explosions: Seriously, who doesn’t like explosions.
  29. Even More Permanence: Put some dust after your gigantic explosions and let it fade slowly.
  30. Meaning: Let your player win or loos.

My Personal Addition

I have some more points for this list.

  1. Flashlight: Add a short bright light flash on explosions it feels more realistic and more boom, it looks good even without sound.
  2. Add more light: Attach light on rockets, it makes it more vivid.
  3. Hitpoints: Visualize hitpoints instantly on the location of the hit.
  4. Add a camera kickback: When you fire a gun add kickback to the camera, it looks more fun.