Hi, my name is Mark, and I am
making a video game about magnets.
Okay, so this was the plan: take all of
the levels I made in the previous episode,
bundle them into a demo, slap that demo
onto a Steam Deck, fly to San Francisco,
and give the demo to people attending
the Game Developers Conference.
But with just one week to go
before my flight, I gave my
demo to a key playtester, and he did not enjoy it.
He found it to be frustrating and tedious
and gave up before the demo was even over.
And it was in that moment that I realised
I had made a huge and pretty common mistake
when it came to thinking about
my game's level of difficulty.
What did I do wrong, and critically,
was I able to fix it before flying out to
California? Well, stick around to find out.
[Music]
Okay, let me back up a little bit.
In the previous episode, I showed
you how I used a puzzle matrix to
help generate ideas for about 26 different levels.
Then, after that episode went live, I bundled
them into a pretty chunky hour-long demo,
featuring three different worlds, two different
magnets, and a bunch of different mechanics,
like colour-changing panels,
laser beams, moving platforms,
boxes on wheels, spinning switches, and so on.
As always, the first people to get this
demo were GMTK patrons on my Discord.
They gave me loads of feedback
and advice and unearthed bugs,
exploits, annoyances, and inconsistencies.
As always, I am hugely grateful for their help.
Then, completely out of the blue, I get an
email from one Patrick Traynor, the Patrick
of Patrick's Parabox, the brilliant puzzle game
I showed in the previous episode of this series.
He thanked me for including his game in my
video and wished me luck with my magnet game.
And I said, "Want to play a
demo?" He very kindly said yes,
and then a few days later, I
get an email with a single word:
"played," and a link to a YouTube video:
a two-hour playthrough of the game.
Now, if you're wondering why I'm hesitating,
he gave me no indication of whether or not he
liked the game, and so I would just have
to watch him evaluate it in real-time.
And so, if he hated the game, I would just
have to sit there and watch someone become
more and more disappointed in me, which is,
you know, surely what parents are for, right?
But I finally worked up the
courage to hit play on the video,
and on the whole, he actually really liked it.
He was laughing and smiling.
He complimented me on some
of the puzzles and talked
up the potential behind the game's core mechanics.
PATRICK: "These mechanics make me think like, 'Why
isn't someone else made a magnet platformer
like this before?'"
And any criticisms he
had came with brilliant help and advice.
For example, I should make it more clear what
the player can't do in any individual puzzle.
So, if a gap is too big for the player
to jump, it should be a really big gap.
If a door closes too quickly
for the player to get through,
it should snap shut immediately, stuff like that.
He also gave me another huge piece of advice,
which was to simplify the levels, even
if that meant making the game easier.
Advice which I roundly
ignored, more on that in a bit.
But anyway, there were about
two weeks to go before GDC,
so I decided to use all of the feedback from my
patrons and from Patrick to overhaul the demo.
I removed a bunch of levels
that just didn't quite work.
This one relied way too much on
quick reflexes to be a good puzzle.
This one had a huge exploit
which I couldn't easily fix.
I also snuck in one level which
was not a puzzle but was just
pure platforming to see how players
would react to that change of pace,
but feedback was mixed, so I've left
that on the cutting room floor for now.
I also made some new puzzles
to fill in those gaps.
I worked on improving the readability
of certain mechanics in the game.
For example, these icons which denote
when a button is linked to an object.
I also replaced this weird magnet
sensor thing with a panel on a
pulley which triggers a button when
the rope hits the bottom point.
I also swapped out these simple green buttons
for a more satisfying Frankenstein-style switch.
I made a lock and key for certain types of puzzles
which has a pretty satisfying
animation when you grab the key.
I polished up the pause menu and
added in a better title screen.
And, oh yeah, I made an
entire new dialogue system.
There's only one prototype conversation
in this demo, but it should hopefully
give people an idea of what the story
might look like in the finished game.
So, the demo was done and dusted.
There was just one week to
go before San Francisco,
and so I gave the game to a key playtester.
And as I said in the intro, he was not a fan.
He was frustrated and annoyed.
He found levels overly complicated
and just tedious to play.
And in a lot of cases, he would
simply hand me the controller and say,
"Can you just, like, can you just do this
one?" And that playtester, that was my dad.
What'd I say about parents and disappointment?
But, as painful as that playtest was,
I think it was also the most important
playtest in this entire development process.
You see, at that moment, it was
like seeing through the Matrix.
I could see exactly why and
how I had messed up so badly.
And I also realized that if
I ever met Patrick in person,
I would need to buy him a drink
for ignoring his brilliant advice.
So, here's what happened.
Every time I would design a level,
I would end up with a pretty simple
layout for the puzzle which just tests the
player on a single, nice little interaction.
But then, I would assume that players
would solve that puzzle immediately.
They would instantly smash through the
puzzle and decide my game was too easy
and thus boring, and thus judge me as a
human being to be inherently worthless.
So, I would be a little bit cheeky and
add in some extra complexity to the level.
I would add in a whole bunch
of steps the player needs to
go through in order to actually solve the puzzle.
And I would add in these devious traps
where if the player did one thing wrong,
they'd be stuck and have to
reset the puzzle back to zero.
And I would obscure the actual
solution to the puzzle with
some red herrings or some other elements.
And in doing this devious, Machiavellian
trickery, I would end up with puzzles
that were messy and convoluted and
frustrating and tedious to actually play.
I was focused so much on making the levels
hard, I had forgotten to make them fun.
Oops.
And here's the thing.
I never actually checked that assumption.
That assumption that players
would immediately and instantly
figure out the solution, was that actually true?
So, I took Patrick's advice and
remade a whole bunch of levels
in the demo with a core focus on
clarity, elegance, and simplicity.
Take this level, for example.
In the original version, you have to use
two magnets to flip two switches simultaneously,
to lift two drill bits, to make a
laser hit an orb to open a door.
It is tedious just describing it.
The actual puzzle in this level is, I think,
pretty good but it's obscured
behind so much extra fluff.
So, I remade it to look like this.
It now requires just one magnet,
has about three or four mechanics,
it's really small, and it's really simple.
Will players immediately figure
out the trick to this puzzle? Well,
I had literally no time to check.
I had to compile the build, chuck it on the Steam
Deck, drive to the airport, board the plane,
and then sit in the same chair for 10 hours
straight like a triple-A Dev in crunch mode.
Is that joke gonna get me in trouble? Is there
going to be an angry
Twitter thread about that?
Okay, so I land in San Francisco, and after a
few days of sightseeing - you know, Alcatraz,
the Golden Gate Bridge, the sea lions on Pier
39, In-N-Out Burger... oh god, no. The chips!
What are you doing? But then it's GDC week, and
I give the game to as many people as possible:
at mixers, at meetups, at a
bring-your-own-game event,
at meetings, and during breakfast over
big stacks of American-style pancakes
(I guess they're not American-style, but
they're just American pancakes. I'm in America).
And feedback on the demo was really pretty good.
People kept saying, "This feels like
a real video game," and people would
refuse to give me the Steam Deck back
until they had finished the entire demo.
And to answer that question
of, was the game now too easy?
No, the game was actually kind
of the right level of challenge.
That puzzle I just talked about, for example,
players would get stuck for like a minute
or two and then figure out the solution
and have that sort of wide-eyed aha
moment I've always been chasing.
I didn't have any of that
confusion and frustration.
They just found it to be a
good, fun, satisfying puzzle.
What turns out, it was completely the
right—Jesus Christ, that's a big spider.
Uh—where was I? Turns out it was completely
the right move to make the game easier,
and in fact, I hadn't gone far enough.
There was one level in the demo
that was still pretty fiddly.
One enthusiastic American described it
as, "Gee, this one's a real stumper."
And there were also just a bunch of
basic, fundamental mechanics in the
game that I had never properly taught to
players, and that was making them stumble.
Like being able to use the magnet to ride up to a
higher platform or change the
magnet's polarity from afar.
These were things that I felt were
so obvious about my game that I
didn't feel the need to have them
as puzzle solutions or tutorials.
But to someone who has never played
my game before, they have no idea.
And so this is the big takeaway from this video:
American cuisine is pretty bad, but they
do know how to make a good breakfast.
Wait, no, sorry, that's the wrong video.
This is the big takeaway from this video: always
challenge your assumptions about your players.
I assumed that players would
find my game to be too easy,
and so ended up making the levels to be
frustrating, complicated, and convoluted.
And I assumed that people
would know how to play my game,
and so forgot to tutorialise
about half of the mechanics.
Now I don't feel too bad because I know
that this is actually a really
common mistake in game design.
It's so easy to assume that players
will have the same skill, knowledge,
and understanding as you, the uh designer who's
been playing the game every day for months on end,
knows literally all of the solutions to all of the
puzzles and literally wrote the rules of the game.
Mark, you fool!
And so it's no surprise that developers can
end up tuning the game to be too difficult
or to not properly communicate
some of the game's mechanics.
And as a game designer, it's one of your key jobs
to fight this urge and to really try and
put yourself in the shoes of the player.
So, I want to close out this video with some tips
and techniques that I have learned for
doing a much more effective job at this.
For one, Mario's maker Shigeru Miyamoto
tells his new designers to try playing
the games with their left and right
hands switched on the controller,
which should hopefully give you an
experience of being an inexperienced player.
That's quite a bold one, but perhaps you
can think of ways to simulate the experience
of being someone who doesn't have all of
your skills and knowledge about the game.
Also, Patrick, we actually did meet up
at GDC, and I bought him that drink.
Patrick assured me that thinking like a player is
a skill that you can hone and develop over time.
And as I've shown in this video,
I think the best way to achieve this is
to watch other people play your game.
If possible, you want to be
in the same room as them.
There's nothing more humbling
than sitting next to someone who
absolutely doesn't understand what
the heck your game is even about.
You also want to play with people of all
sorts of experience levels and skill levels.
Some of my absolute best playtests come
from my two nephews, aged seven and ten,
though I do have to watch out for bias.
MARK: "Jack, what are your thoughts on the game?"
JACK:"One million out of-- I love it!"
MARK: "Thank you. Rory, what do you think of Untitled Magnet Game?"
RORY:"I love it".
MARK: "Thank you".
That is, of course, a good reminder
to spend more time watching how your
playtesters play than listening to what they say.
Oh, that's like I should put
on like a t-shirt or something.
Another tip is to think about your
target audience for your game.
Have an idea of the sort of person,
the sort of skill level, experience
level, and games they like to play.
Have that in mind and make sure
you're designing the game for them.
And make sure you're picking
appropriate playtesters.
A big part of this problem was that I was
getting really worried that puzzle game experts,
people who played and completed
Stephen's Sausage Roll and Baba is You,
that those people would play my game and
think it was simple and dumb and bad.
But they're not in my target audience.
I want this game to appeal to a much wider
group of people and players who have enjoyed
more gentle puzzle adventures like Toki Tori,
Box Boy, Inside, Limbo, and Portal.
Having a target audience in mind is a
great way to keep your design on track.
And of course, there are ways to
appeal to a broader audience, too.
If you've made a really hard game,
you could chuck in an assist mode.
If you've made a really easy game, you could put
in optional harder content or post-game stuff.
And finally, don't be afraid
to start stuff from scratch.
When you're making a level, there's a lot of
discovery involved, and that usually ends up with
you accumulating a lot of fluff and other garbage
as you're figuring out what this level even is.
My recommendation, then, is
to start the level again but
with the knowledge you have acquired
while doing that rushed first draft.
You will no doubt end up with a much more
elegant and coherent version of the level.
I mean, I always do this with
episodes of Game Maker's Toolkit.
The script goes through five or six
different revisions before I hit record.
Why wasn't I doing this with the level design?
So, I came back from GDC with loads of motivation,
great ideas for where to take the
game next, and really bad jet lag.
I want to say a huge thank you to everyone
who said hi or hung out with me at GDC.
It was amazing to meet so many people
who watch Game Maker's Toolkit,
participate in the game jam, or are following
me here on this game development journey.
It was even cool to meet that one
guy who kept showing me his NFTs.
Cool dude, you're killing it, bro.
I was also just made to feel like part of
this wonderful community of game makers,
and so I can't wait to go back next
year with hopefully maybe a finished
game or something much closer
to being done than it is now.
Until then, my next job is to take
another step back and make a demo
that explores even more basic,
fundamental concepts of my game,
and then get that demo in front of
people in my key target audience.
For now, if you want to play any of the
three demos I described in this video,
they're available for free on itch.io.
I'm not taking any more feedback on these demos,
but it might be interesting to
see how the game is coming along.
Thank you so much for watching,
and I'll see you again soon.