Hi, Fellow Game Developers,
Making video games have never been an easy task for us, whether we were beginners or top tier ‘GameDevs’,
also everybody thrives to make his game as special and unique as it can be, Mechanics, Story, Art, and every other aspect of it.
And when it comes to making game Mechanics and Ludemes, we often design them around a special feature or theme,
then expand on it and we design the rest of the features around that.
But the problem that i want to talk about today is something i’ve encountered when i was designing ‘Haste’, my first game,
and many of us fall into this trap too.
It’s ‘FEATURE FRENZY’, you know, that moment when that great idea just comes to your mind,
while you were doing something else other than developing your game(because that’s when it usually happens),
And you immediately decide to add that feature to your game!!
Why?
Because it’s cool!
And you keep on repeating that, saying yes to every new cool idea that your brain invent,
adding feature after feature,
sometimes it doesn’t even serve the game in anyway,
but you still insist on it, then your game becomes what’s called ‘Kitchen Sink Design’, and it’s all over the place!
Instead of the 6 months or the year you originally planned for your game, it becomes two years, or more!
Getting caught in ‘FEATURE FRENZY’ might happen to us all, specially when we get bored with our game (It can happen to the best of us).
And in order to actually avoid that there’s something you can do :
Every time a new idea comes to your mind, write it down, think on it a little bit, get back to your original design and see if it adds to it.
If yes, add it, if not, don’t!
Also, set a limit to yourself, to how many new features you might add to your game on a given time,
let’s say as an EXAMPLE you have about 3 new features in your mind,
you should probably limit yourself to adding only one feature per month of development or so,
because you’re already soaked in the working on the other mechanics.
That’s how you may serve your game and yourself for the long run.
If you wanna read more about ‘Game Development’ make sure you follow me on ‘Medium’ or Connect with me on ‘Linkedin’ :
Medium : https://medium.com/@oussikhazmenski
Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/oussama-khazri-38133592
And don’t forget to share it with other beginner game developers,
Thank You For Reading..
-” Oussama Khazri”-
