anatomy-of-a-game

Anatomy of a game

how I break down games so I can build them

Graphics

This is the look and style of a game. The more realist your game the more “graphical debt” you hold because once its set all new content has to match the same style.

Indie games are known of making style more important than highly detail graphics to avoid graphical debt.

Goose Game is 3d and mostly all solid colors so debt was reduced by not including textures

Super hot is 3d but is it very stylised and only uses 3 colors and odd movements so it have a low graphical debt

Monster hunter is very beautiful by it took many many people 4 years full time to make.

Minecraft has simple graphics that allows for simple animations allowing for rapid content additions

Baba is you is basic but beautiful. It’s easy to add more assets and grow the game. which is important in a puzzle game

Imagine if Baba is you had the same Graphics as Monster hunter world,

the time/effort of the game would be huge even though the gameplay didn’t change

Point 1 to remember

Graphical Debt

“the amount of time and effort that goes into creating the visuals of a new component of your game because it has to match the previous style.”

How I have been trying to avoiding this is moving to 2.5D textures like Mario Kart 64 or Doom. I can do all the camera types and it’s easy to make, animate and program

Camera

When designing a new game; the camera will inform your choices on mechanics, physics, graphics and level design. You may not need physics if the camera is isometric or top down like pokemon but making a first person shooter will almost always need physics.

Top down(2d)

Visual Novel

Isometric

Third person

Side scroller

First person

Take camera into account when choosing mechanics

Mechanics

Game mechanics are the tools you give the player to play the game with.

Pacman eats the fruit, kills the ghost

In Animal Crossing you can catch bugs with a net that breaks over time.

In Pokemon, you can try to catch pokemon

In Mario, you jump on enemies to kill them

Systems

systems are groups of game mechanics that work together. For example Pokemon and Final Fantasy have very similar battle systems they just framed differently

Team building
Leveling up

Evolving is basically the same mechanic as Changing Jobs

Magic power (MP vs PP)
Health bars

A lot of games share most of a system but tweak it to keep it interesting.

Framing

This is often a story but not always. Framing is the reason why the player is doing the gameplay loop. Puzzle games often has little to no framing.

Baba is you has no framing just a map.
Original Minecraft has no framing just a map

I find framing also create framing debt

Pokemon: you are on a quest, to catch them all and become world champ.

because of the framing of pokemon, they could reduce framing debt by removing team rocket missions and it won’t effect core gameplay

Thomas was alone: you play as a red rectangle and the narrator does all the framing, even though its not shown on screen.

Point 2 to remember

Framing Debt

“the amount of time and resources that goes into creating the framing of your game, you want a big story? thats has a knockon effect of scripts, cut scenes, cut scene system, in game animations, music, translations and assets“