What makes a good game

[Raol]

Here is a list of what I think that makes a good game.
(They are in random order)

1- Custom textures
I think that a game can't be enjoyed or remembered if its textures are the boring default rpg maker textures. If you aren't that good at drawing/pixel art, you can always download some tilesets, characters etc. from the web.

2- Story
What's an RPG without a good story? Of course there are some exceptions, but story is important. If you can't get the inspiration, try to watch some films, read some books or just ask your friends.

3- Do things differently
Be creative, make your own ideas, try to not repeat things made by others. If your game isn't creative, nobody will notice it.

4- Capture the interest of the player
Secrets, sidequests and unanswered questions make the player love a game because he wants to know (like Mimikyu of Pokémon or Shy Guy of Mario Bros.). Remember to not to make a game based on sidequests because some players prefer skipping all the optional things and only do the main story. So try to make a game for everyone.

5- Balance your game and make it funny!
Good games, with good textures and a good story can't be played if they are too hard! This doesn't mean that It should be as easy as spamming Attack button. It should be funny enough to not to hate random encounters, so try to make skills based to be played in combo or with strategy and make lots of different enemies each of them with different weak and strong points. Change the battle system, make passive skills, add lots of states and skills and make amazing animations! Then playtest your game and see if it's balanced.

6-Prevent cheating and fix game over
Try to prevent the player to skip boss battles, random encounter etc. Also don't forget to fix the game over.
Think of a player that is in a dangerous dungeon. He presses the save button, then he walks then he dies and reloads the save file. Now he tries to avoid random encounters, but he dies again and so his save file is broken and he needs to make a new save file. The simplest solutions are 2: the first is removing the save button from the menu and making checkpoints, the second is using a game over plugin so when the player dies he starts from his home or a checkpoint, he loses some money but he doesn't lose the experience points, the items etc. gained before dying. If you do so, remember to make that if you lose a boss battle you need to do it again, and not that you can continue your adventure without killing the boss. If you want, you can make a bank so the player loses less money when dying.

Remember, this is only my opinion.

(Sorry for bad English)
(I hope that this time I posted in the correct place)

What do you think?

 

[TheoAllen]

This topic is very broad and might have different answers based on different perspective, different goal, and different target audience. However, what makes a game good is when they reached the fundamental goal

Spoiler

to make it fun to play

Also, unless it's online game, I think cheating is ok as long as have fun playing. Think of bethesda games where you could spam console command to spam a deathclaw inside the settlement just for the lols, as long as it makes you fun, why not

 

[573Games]

Good thoughts. Building off what you two guys said, I think a good game is

1. Fun
2. Unique

To me, I don't care if it has custom textures, 8-bit or looks like Horizon Zero Dawn. It needs to be fun and have at least one original idea/concept/system.

I like this topic!

 

[Poryg]

I cannot count how many times I've seen this kind of a post. Everytime it's opinion driven, incredibly shallow... But most of the time it shows little understanding of games and game making, either by the inability of the poster to formulate thoughts properly, or just due to really not understanding. So I'll try my best to debunk your post point by point.

1- Custom textures
I think that a game can't be enjoyed or remembered if its textures are the boring default rpg maker textures. If you aren't that good at drawing/pixel art, you can always download some tilesets, characters etc. from the web.

is wrong. You can do wonders with default art and I see it quite often that I don't mind default art as long as it fits the game. I'd say default characters, default music and default menu are the three things that are kind of uneccaptable for me, but default tilesets are completely fine if you know how to use them.
Also, many tilesets and tiles you can get for free are RTP edits and recolors, so you're not really giving yourself a "deRTPzation" by that
And you have to watch out where you download these things. If the tileset has an unspecified way of credit, it is unusable and if it looks overly good, there is a potential they are rips, in other words illegal to use.
I have, however, invested in some materials. So far the price I've paid for assets is more than $200. I'm pretty well stocked.

What's an RPG without a good story? Of course there are some exceptions, but story is important. If you can't get the inspiration, try to watch some films, read some books or just ask your friends.

What's an RPG without a good story? An RPG that is not driven by story or based on story. There are plenty of things you can base your RPG on. Of course many people create story driven RPG, but that doesn't mean you need one.

3- Do things differently
Be creative, make your own ideas, try to not repeat things made by others. If your game isn't creative, nobody will notice it.

I guess the only point I 100% agree with, although this point is more or less a given.

4- Capture the interest of the player
Secrets, sidequests and unanswered questions make the player love a game because he wants to know (like Mimikyu of Pokémon or Shy Guy of Mario Bros.). Remember to not to make a game based on sidequests because some players prefer skipping all the optional things and only do the main story. So try to make a game for everyone.

Um, that not only contradicts itself, but also makes no sense given how it is formulated. You are mixing three points, two of them completely irrelevant regarding the main point, to one. However, I'll address them one by one.
Trying to create a game for everyone is useless, because you can never satisfy everyone and the more you try, the more the quality of your game suffers, because trying to create a game for everyone means sacrificing some of its aspects for some other aspects for a different group of people. Imagine if Dark sould tried some easier things so that no skill is necessary or if it created a clicker minigame where clicker game lovers could earn souls in their free time. It would completely destroy the Dark souls world as we know it!
If you make a game based on side quests, then they aren't side quests anymore. Side quests are side quests, because they are optional and are on the background, possibly in many cases not even interfering with the main story at all. But the moment you base your game on side quests, they aren't side quests anymore. It becomes a game based on quests with story being a secondary aspect. Many MMORPG use this concept and it's a valid one. People are just kind of tired of this from what I've heard. But again, that doesn't mean it's completely unviable and that there still aren't people who don't love these kinds of games. Or another example, I love Huniepop even though I don't particularly like match three games, and the fact that it's an R15 game is not the reason.
Secrets and sidequests aren't what makes the player love the game. It's the game as a whole what makes them love it. Just like you love a girl because of her overall character and visual traits, not because she has 180 cm and blond hair. So yeah, there must be something that makes you love the game. But you won't love the game just because of that something.

5- Balance your game and make it funny!
Good games, with good textures and a good story can't be played if they are too hard! This doesn't mean that It should be as easy as spamming Attack button. It should be funny enough to not to hate random encounters, so try to make skills based to be played in combo or with strategy and make lots of different enemies each of them with different weak and strong points. Change the battle system, make passive skills, add lots of states and skills and make amazing animations! Then playtest your game and see if it's balanced.

I think you meant "fun", not "funny". Nevermind that though.
"Be original." "Try to make skills to be played in combo or with strategy" "make passive skills, add lots of states and skills and make amazing animations"... Don't tell me to be original and then give completely generic examples.
So, first of all, it isn't difficulty what turns a good game into a bad game. A good game is a good game when its difficulty fits in well. Some games are better suited to be easy, for example I can't expect an uplifting platformer to be hard, but I can't expect a bullet hell to be easy. This also brings the topic of random encounters to question. I don't think random encounters should be annoying, but there are hundreds of ways you can design them. For example some design them to be easy all the time. Some design them to be progressively more and more difficult. Some make you really challenged by random encounters and you take a hit to your gold, because you always need to keep a stock of healing items. Some take away your ability to grind. Some don't use them at all. Some use other strategies I haven't named. There are so many things you can do with random encounters and they completely twist the aspect of difficulty. But which one of them is correct?
Many of them.
Because that is what makes the game.
Also, battle animations are a nice eye candy, but get boring quickly, so I prefer fast and animations more than good looking ones.

Also, making skills that are usable in strategy or combos has a tendency to make the aspect repetitive. And while having many monsters can save you from repetitiveness, most games have at least one viable strategy that completely breaks the difficulty of the game no matter what it is. It is only about finding that aspect, that strategy.

6-Prevent cheating and fix game over

You're contradicting yourself again. "Try to make a game for everyone."
Some people like to skip difficult tasks. For that cheating is a great help. I don't like it when I have to grind in front of a boss to meet an "artificial difficulty", so I give myself a couple of levels. I don't like when the aspect of difficulty is only artificial. That leads me to cheating the game, because I don't want to waste time with combats. And when you combat my cheating, I fight back.
I don't try to prevent cheating. Only to regulate it and allow cheating caps. This way I ensure the player won't jump too high in his cheating. Not to mention, rpg makers have a bad cheating protection. 2000 and 2003 don't have variable value obfuscation, XP, VX, VXAce and MV have readable game code.
As for game over, that is again depending on a game. A normal game over screen is often justifiable well enough.

But I will provide my points as to what makes a good game.
1. Story, game features, music and graphics harmony
You can't have beautiful resources if you can't make good use of them! You don't need to have beautiful resources or even high quality ones, but you need to have resources that enhance the story of the game if it is story driven or that go well with the story and you also need features that feel as a part of a game (for example as I mentioned that clicker minigame in dark souls thing, which is an example of a feature that doesn't belong in the game). I can't count how many times I've seen resources that look completely awful, but they were used in a cute game, so they fitted in well and enhanced the game's cuteness. And of course I have seen many cases of completely unfitting resources that completely ruined the game for me despite looking beautiful.

2. Game consistency and balance
If it throws challenges, it should throw challenges all game, not just one time. If there's an OP boss, there should be always an OP boss. Else that OP boss feels out of place. Of course there are exceptions in cases of for example minigames and stuff, but if you have a gimmick, either make it clear it's a gimmick or make it a part of the game, otherwise it feels out of place. This goes well with game balance. It should be on the same pace throughout the game. If a game is progressively getting difficult, it should keep getting difficult progressively, not have sudden jumps. If you need to grind in front of a boss, you should need to grind in front of all bosses. It's an aspect of a game some hate, but as I said, it's useless to make a game for everyone.

3. Reason to play the game and game immersion
Every game needs to give me a reason to continue in it, otherwise I will end. A game that is just good graphics, but sucks on other aspect, will not keep me in for too long. I mentioned up there that I like Huniepop. In practice it's a match 3 game connected with dating simulator. I have made a giant progress in it though, because
1. I am attached to some of the characters
2. It's got an extra strategy gimmick over normal match 3 games
3. I have great fun playing that game
4. Replay value and replayability
But it's not that I like only these three aspects in the game. I like the game as a whole, these are the just the aspects that made me love the game.

4. Price/performance ratio
An obvious one. But I won't be a happy for a game that cannot justify its price. I've given a negative review to MV, because while I don't think it's bad, it just is not worth 80€ in my book, because for 80€ I gain a poorly optimized engine with resources I can use only in RPG makers and need to invest more money in resources that I can essentially use only in RPG maker series (including majority of DLCs!). Which I definitely don't welcome, especially since Unity asset store for example doesn't limit you only to Unity, but can't do anything about it, can I...

 

[Raol]

You are right
(remember that it was only my opinion, a game can be good if it doesn't follow what I wrote in the topic too)

 

[Matseb2611]

I'd say most of it can boil down to a couple or so points and you can pull it off in a variety of ways. Those points are:

1) It needs to be functional and bug-free.
Too many bugs, glitches, and other problems absolutely ruin any degree of fun or immersion.

2) It needs to have a good reward loop.
What this means is that it needs to create intrigue/anticipation/challenge for which the player gains a meaningful reward, and it needs to do this on a regular basis. If this reward loop is too slow, players get bored. If the rewards are too trivial for the challenge, players get bored. The manner of challenge and reward will differ from game to game of course. Challenge can be anything ranging from a hard battle, to exploration, to making meaningful choices or strategy. Reward can be anything ranging from shiny loot and levelling up to getting to watch an interesting or emotionally-driven scene or even getting to see some eye candy.

 

[The Mighty Palm]

We do. The people at these forums.

We make good games.

 

[HexMozart88]

Personally, I don't think you need to go entirely new in order to make something different. A lot of games have features that are definitely nothing new, but the way they are implemented makes them feel like a change. My game uses RTP for all of its maps, but the way I customize it and add lighting effects and different colours makes it more unique.
If it's a game, it needs to be fun. I'm not trying to read a book or watch a movie, I'm playing a game. Having 6 million 45 minute cut scenes is not what makes the game fun. It's the game play, and possibly the story in moderation, that is what gives the game its charm. Part of this is also making sure that you don't become obsessed with realism, because then you may have to take away a lot of features that contribute to the fun, and you may just end up with one of those pretty games that lack any form of substance.

 

[bgillisp]

A game I enjoy when I play it. Everything else is secondary, and that includes graphics. I've gotten a ton of fun out of those old ASCII games where you move a smiley face around and the enemy is D for dragon. So make the game enjoyable, and the rest will become secondary.

 

[SweetMeltyLove]

I love this quote from Reggie. It's so simple but I love it

 

[Robin Hoot]

If we are talking exclusively RPG Maker games, only the story really matters to me when I play a game. As long as the game works properly, everything else is secondary.

 

[SOC]

For me, I've decided it comes down to two major things:

1. While you're playing, are you captivated? Is it releasing enough dopamine that you feel rewarded to play it, achieve a flow state and keep wanting to come back and continue playing?

2. When you finish the game, was it memorable? Would you replay it again in the future? Did it teach you aspects of game design that you will utilize in the future? A year or more from now, will it have a lasting impact that you still hold on to like older games in your childhood did?

Those are what matter the most to me in order to say a game is "good" or not.

 

[Windows i7]

Those are what matter the most to me in order to say a game is "good" or not.

I decided to try Eternal Senia today, and I'd say that's pretty much a perfect example of an RPG Maker game with those qualities. Rarely do I ever finish a game in one long session, but I did for this one.

 

[Alex Nearwoods]

okay so, first things first it's hard to say what a ''good game is'' because no one has the same opinion, anyway, if we're talking about rpg then without doubt that the 2 main aspects should be the story and the game mechanics (a example: your battle system doesn't have to be something completly new that was never seen before, but it should never be boring!), the characters are also important, a good game should have characters with unique personalities, a good balance between comedy and sad moments, custom graphics can be kind of nice too because they give a ''unique feeling'' to a game, and last but not least, the soundtrack, it's just crazy how a good soundtrack can make a shine.