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Lecture 5:�Game Feel

Game Design

Fall 2023

M Charity and Julian Togelius

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What is game feel?

  • “The tactile sensation of manipulating a digital agent. The thing that makes your mom lean in her chair as she plays Rad Racer.” (Steve Swink)
  • Various effects that add weight and “juice” to the game
  • Context -> What’s going on inside the game right now
  • Responsiveness to player input
  • An aesthetic

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Ingredients

  • Input
  • Response
  • Context
  • Polish
  • Metaphor
  • Rules

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Examples of

Game Feel

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Disney Animation

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Principles of Animation

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Cannabalt

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Cannabalt

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“Coyote Time”

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Cannabalt

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Screen Shake

  • Wow, something really happened!
  • Collision effects
  • Hard turns

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Screen Shake

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Tweening

  • Interpolating between extreme values
  • acceleration and velocity
  • changes in friction
  • gravity

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Easing out and in

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Rubberbanding

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Health Bar Warping

50%

10%

40%

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Sound

  • Music and background ambiance
  • SFX
    • Explosions!
    • Footsteps
    • Engines running
    • Mechanics moving

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Sound

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Screen Flash + Sound

(007 Goldeneye)

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Motif Sounds

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Particle Effects

  • Gravel/Dust kicked up when starting to run
  • Comic-book style punch effect
  • Blood spatter (or weird colored goop) for taking damage
  • Confetti for winning

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Particle Effects

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Expressivity

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Expressivity

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Compare

  • Slide/match games (2048 vs. Bejeweled vs. Candy Crush)
  • Platformers and jumping (Mega Man, Mario, Kirby)
  • Action games (Double Dragon vs Batman Arkham Knight)
  • Turn-based RPG Games (Pokemon vs. Final Fantasy 7)

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Match Games

Candy Crush

2048

vs

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Platformers

Kirby

MegaMan

vs

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Action Games

Batman: Arkham City

Double Dragon

vs

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Turn-based Games

Pokemon (Gen 8)

Pokemon (Gen 1)

vs

Final Fantasy 7

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Make losing fun

​

Make moving fun

�Make interacting fun

​

…

Make playing fun

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Videos and Links

  • Juice it or lose it (Jonasson and Purho)�https://www.youtube.com/watch/Fy0aCDmgnxg
  • The art of screenshake (Nijman)
  • [Insert any game] longplay (search on YouTube)
    • Analyze for game feel
  • Read this twitter thread
  • Many more posted in the Discord soon!

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Prototype 5: Game Feel

  • Create a game, or toy, or plaything
  • Should use simple shapes (not a strong requirement) but any controls are allowed
  • Illustrate the layers of effects or game feel-amplifiers
    • Make toggles for the player to use to turn the features on and off
    • Minimum of 4 game feel effects should be shown