I’m over 100 rated games and I’ve just started to go over my rating again, starting with “fun” because it’s the easiest thing to judge. I understand “Fun” as the entertainment value of the game. Apparentlyn, most people will give “overall” high ratings when they give “fun” high ratings. However, I think there should be much more to games than entertainment. But for now, let’s check the fun.

One thing that spoils the “fun” in games is the waste of time, especially in games where you lose a lot. If you make a game where the player will lose often  (and if you still want to make it “fun”), you should allow him to retry immediately. Don’t add transitions, fade in, scrolling, etc. Just do : 1. play 2. die 3. repeat, and then it becomes addictive.

Three examples of 5/5 “FUN” ratings :

Go long!

I thought “Go long” was really fun because it really engaged me in its absurdly intense mood.

Fighter’s last hope

I was 12 years old again when playing this game. Ok, push the button, kill the enemies, jump, jump, more enemies, kill, kill. This game is exactly what it wants to be.

PUSH

No way I could stop playing this before beating the last level. Because of : the music, easy movement, mechanics are simple to understand, the way the game responds to the controls is very neat, I had to actually “stop and think” about how to solve the puzzles, no waste of time when loosing, starting over, or even winning. Transitions are fast.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 19th, 2013 at 11:41 am and is filed under LD #28. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.