9 Game Design Mistakes That Will Kill Your Indie Game 

1. Not starting with a prototype 2. Trying to chase the trends 3. ‎Building a game for everyone 4. ‎Realism over gameplay 5. ‎No focus on UI/UX 6. ‎Inconsistent design choices 7. ‎Not having a clear vision 8. ‎Not getting feedback 9. ‎Improperly valuing feedback

"This feels bad, it needs a bazooka." "Dude, this is a daycare simulator."

I think that one big mistake is thinking that art doesn't matter. I'm not talking about graphics, I'm talking about aesthetics. I've seen developers who say things like "It's and indie game, the art doesn't mater". Imo, this is so wrong. The visuals is the first thing that your players will see. If they don't like what they see they will most likely just move on to something else. Again, I'm NOT talking about HD graphics or anything like that. I'm talking about design. Don't expect to attract many players if you simply grab the first thing you find online and slap it into your game without any thought about a theme.

I have a buddy helping me test a game I'm working on, still prototyping, and every time it goes something like this : Him : Why am I a capsule cutting down this cylinder Me : That's your character, and that's a tree... Him : That's stupid. Me : You're supposed to be testing mechanics, not critiquing the art. Him : Why isn't there a volume slider? Me : Because there's no need to add it to the UI yet. There are other priorities. Him : You should do that. Me : Yes, that, and the 1000 other things on my list.

The first game that I was *really* working on, I mean quitting my job to work full time kind of working on, less than a week before I was going to be showing it off at a local convention I had someone else play it for the first time. I barely even asked him to try it because I felt he wasn't really into this kind of game enough to offer great feedback. But boy howdy how I needed to watch someone else play it. Apart from seeing how super-easily he would fall into pits and how much he really had to struggle to get through the first area (I simply had not been thinking that my platforming might be too hard) I had a huge revelation near the end of the level. There was a segment where the player was jumping on these clouds that were moving platforms; you'd jump on one, it would move you a short distance, then it would fade away and you had to jump to the next one before the one you were on disappeared. He was following the path they were taking him and then he jumped off into nothing. I practically wanted to yell at him for doing that instead of jumping back to where the next cloud was. Thankfully he was a smart individual and could understand and explain to me the pattern he thought he saw, and how he assumed I had placed another platform just off-camera. Meanwhile, I was so deep into this game, knowing it backwards and forwards so well, that I could not see how anyone could miss some slight detail that was going on. There was literally no way to be able to tell that the last cloud was still moving, and I totally missed this because I always understood from the beginning that it was moving. It was a huge and glaring fault that I could have nver seen without watching someone else play my game.

Note: A when it comes to feedback, developer should state their vision of the game before asking for feedback. That makes it much easier to give feedback of what features could be added, removed or altered in order to get closer to that vision. A good game design is also contextual: What works in one game doesn't necessarily work in other game.

10. Avoid Feature Creep. 11. Know when to cut a feature. I say this from experience.

"coding your game is easier than u think........"

Coming from a 20 plus year industry vet, I have to say that this is some of the most solid, boiled down development advice I've ever heard. Good job man

Most of these mistakes apply to business software too. Well done.

10. Putting deadlines way too soon because you expect everything to go smoothly.

3:00 "If you build something for everyone, you've build it for no one." - Albert Einstein

The advice to watch someone else play your game is spot-on. On a recent project I did, that process yielded some of the absolute best QA possible. Seeing the player struggle with things you didn't *intend* to have as puzzles, or seeing them breeze through something you expected to be a challenge, is an irreplaceable data point in tuning the design.

I see the realism part this way, if you're designing something to be completely realistic, it should generally be simulating something that the player couldn't easily go out and do themselves.

Loving the new upbeat content and editing you're doing Tim! Keep up the great work bro!!

Music + transitions are definitely enhancing the video, so good job. I think bumping your background up a notch would be cool too. When you used to film these in front of your desk, it had more of a game dev vibe than the current black curtain does.

I love how this video has your 10 mistakes video suggested up next, which in turn has your 11 mistakes video suggested next. So clicking through them quickly made you sound like a Monty Python sketch. "We're gonna talk about the 9 mistakes.. " "We're gonna talk about 10 mistakes.." "We're gonna talk about 11 game development pitfalls.

Actual real advice! First time I see your content, and im impressed. Subbed 😁 I agree with your number 1. Either your idea doesn't come out as well as you thought or you learn how hard it is to produce a concept.

Your topic is excellent! I'm working on a graphic novel and am amazed how these bullet-points correlate. Great stuff!

Really good thorough video. Thanks! Liked the way you talked and explained things. The pros and cons. 👍❗️

1: I always start with a prototype of every feature to anything, movement, rotating, jumping I start from scratch and test it apart from everything else to make sure the core mechanics works and not fail because of something in the current build which would mean I could be trying to fix a problem in the feature itself rather than make it work with everything else. I have done the basics of movement over 4 times from scratch and changing it each time as I improve even though I completely forgot everything this most recent time. 2: The cancer of game developing. The same people whose most original and imaginative idea is to make an ak 47 by yourself instead of buying it as an asset. I take my concept from the way old 3d platformers, rts and fps games did it. You take the core theme of the genre like fps, and that's it nothing else. You go from there. Doom was about shooting demons on mars and get to the end, Half Life was about traversing a laboratory base while surviving aliens and solving puzzles and Portal was just a portal gun and puzzles with nothing to kill. If you want to make a game that exists then change it so much it's unrecognizable. One fps might be slow and have preset weapons so make yours fast paced with varied weaponry you can change. It's the most important part in my opinion when designing and thinking up a game. 3: Everybody's a critic and you can't please try hards and candy crush addicts in one unless you put two different games under the same title. 4: Why does this smoking pipe spew fire? Why not?. Why does this scaled avian turn the floor to rivers? Cause it's awesome? I have a gun that fires swords that explodes into more tiny exploding swords, your argument is invalid. 5: Case in point, Heartstone. It wouldn't be fun if the cards didn't sway around as you picked them up, it wouldn't be as fun without the visuals. Ghost Of A Tale and Hollow Knight has a distinct style that makes you still feel like you're in the world and not separated into a safe haven that interferes with the world. Psychonauts does this perfectly with the item and ability selection being a cloud above the main character who looks up and looks like he's thinking, that is the same design as Undertale did by making a game feature a thing that exists in the world of the game. Also the main menu is a note book that cycles through pages and the objection text is chalk text with sound effects to further focus on the theme of the setting and immerse every interactive part into the game. And as he said make it easy to navigate and use so you don't scroll through 5 screens to hope you find the one that holds what you want. Ghost Of A Tale has this problem with multiple windows for keys, quests, texts, food, inventory, clothes, tools it's all separated and annoying to navigate through. 6: Um Painkiller and Rayman. Stay true to the style and design but change it so it varies. But what he might be referring to is when it's the same object but they look so different in different parts that you can't tell which is which. But about the core mechanics, Nitro Rad talks about this in some reviews and points out changes. You can't have a shoot em up and end the boss with a fucking quick time event, yet triple A studios fuck up harder than Richard Williams with his magnum opus. One of the best examples is Rayman 2 where Nitro Rad specifically points out in his review of it and Rayman 3 that the combat doesn't go with the game. In Rayman 2 the combat is treated as a separate thing from the rest of the game and puts the platforming and fun to a halt to simply go left and right while shooting the enemy, but in Rayman 3 as he says the mechanics in the combat are the exact same as in the platforming which you do most of the game, the power ups and attacks are used the same in the combat as in the platforming. You don't run in an fps and suddenly it turns into a stationed turret section. 7: Yeah I have this problem too, I have the gameplay and some mechanics figured out but I don't have the actual exploration. On one hand I want a clear goal but on the other I want to wander the world and explore new places but I need a reason and always know where to go and not like coming back to an mmo after weeks and not knowing wtf I was supposed to do in the middle of nowhere without an objective. 8: Quite. It's a hard thing to do not because they might steal it but because you might be afraid of their opinion or criticism. Others might feel like they would be ruining their game by showing too much or doing too little and some might say it's not enough. Or you just don't have anyone to show it to. 9: Constructive criticism. Some might focus on the bad and it's a main feature some don't like and you get obsessed with removing it or you're an idiot and only care about the positives and try to have the negative removed while starting a controversy of infamous reputation for trying to go to court with a famous youtube critic "cough" Jim Sterling and Homicide Studios "cough"

I love the new video format / editing Tim. It's much more engaging now.

man you have great videos, you get to the point and really present real day to day topics.

Great video! To the point, clean, and very good editing. Love it

Love your videos Tim! Glad to see new ones ! :)

Thank you so much good sir. I had this idea forever that no one has dared worked on because they expect a company to continue or people just dont want to but everyone 100% do want it. Got 2 others interested already and super excited for this following week. Thank you so much.

SCOPE scope is the biggest issue every other indie i've worked with had. whether their initial vision is too complicated or weekly design meetings lead to insane feature creep, tons of indie devs have a problem with letting features go.

That number one part is the reason why I have many unfinished and abandoned projects.

Focusing on UI is a lot more important than I realized from my experience so far. My friend and I when making our game focused on having the levels of our demo work perfectly so that we can upload it on itch.io and gamejolt for people to try, putting the controls and info in the description of the game page. Turns out though that people generally don't read descriptions. If the information is not clearly conveyed in the game itself, the players will most likely not know about it.

Good vids. I'd suggest putting timestamps and recaps for lists so people can get the whole picture if they phase out

please make a video on how to delegate work on your game to your team!! I am developing a game with my friend, I have built basic architecture on my own as we both agreed that I have more experience for that. Now, when the basic architecture is built, I need to start delegating some work to him, but I am afraid of code cleanliness, I feel like only I can implement a feature with a good quality, but at the same time I am sure, that a team can do much more than just a single person

Good day, nice video, I want to make a game like Child or Light 2d turn based rpg game. What free game engine and character creation software do you recommend? thanks

Excellent tips, I remember the first game we wanted to do during our 2 years student project it was soooo impossible to realise and we were 10 on the team. It's good to make mistakes to understand better.

Appreciate this a lot as well as other videos you've done. I'm about to do the testing phase on my video game first level with friends and the public and this is great wisdom to chew on.

Great video I'm subscribbing right away! Is there any game dev hub/forums to share ideas and get feedback from other game devs? Would be great to get feed back from people all around the world.

I think I may be guilty of mechanics! I have the same enemy that moves randomly in my endless runner game. I have had a lot of feedback to say my game is too hard

new game dev and long time music producer here. just subscribed to your channel. thanks for your content. i thinks its really going to help me out

Point 7 is also called Feature Creep. There are so many features you see that are cool and would play well with your game, but if you don't have a clear vision as Tim said you could end up with too many features and a longer development cycle. And the longer a game is in development the more unlikely it will finish.

How do you get players to test your game? I have an idea of a game I'm thinking about and basically have nothing but I was wondering about this step. Is there a site or a forum or something? Does a forum on steam somewhere has this "option" or rule that allows you to? reddit?

In regards to having a clear vision, I kind of did that without developing a Mantra. I ended up developing (in essence not actually building the models but just the idea of them) the world, the characters, bosses, and overall plot. Which kind of ended up keeping me on the straight an narrow as I play games on my off time (what little off time I seem to have) and I'll get the occasional, "Should I do this?" Then I look at my storyline and either laugh it off or just consider it but in the end say "no it wouldn't be a good fit for his/her personality."

Got to admit, this WAY exceeded my expectations. Good stuff!

This is great advice. This is the first time I am hearing you or seeing your channel. Well done.

I fall in love on what ever you saying from your first tip. Great highlights man. Good job, totally agree.

Since I do UI/UX design and development with accessibility testing for a living the first thing for me is: 1. Make games the work for everyone which means your game should it should be accessible to user with disabilities as well. 2. Knowing your audience and design for them first 3. Great UX and UI is a must because if that does not work then it will hurt the experience 4. Your game story and concept should be clear and to the point. 5. Branding is really important and should start in the concept stage. 6. Your game mechanic makes the game the interaction between the protagonist and antagonist should really sell the story and make the game intriguing and fun to play 7. Clear documented code this help when updating and modifying the games iterations 8. User testing, debug and release management to ensure your game is meeting the needs of the user base 9. Delivering on time to your audience keeping your promises

"I have to *nod* my head no" Then proceeds to shake his head instead of nodding.

You're absolutely right about the fear of someone stealing your game or it's ideas, and that's why many indie devs (myself included) wait until a solid demo is done. Since you have experience, how would you handle it if someone copied or stole your game?

bro can u please give me an advice i want start creating my games and i'm learning programming and unity engine but i feel so lost .. any advice please and what should i do ?

Awesome tips. Thanks for all these! 🤗😊👌

I found your video useful and informative. Thank you!

This ties in to prototyping out your game - Focusing on art before the core gameplay mechanics are implemented. I'm notoriously bad for working on art as I go or even before I even start coding anything, but recently when I was working on a new game idea my friend made me promise not to spend any time on the art before the core mechanics were finished and I'm so glad that I did. You don't need art for the game to be playable and it can save you loads of wasted time if either the game isn't fun or if things just need to be tweaked and changed. You don't have to have all of your code implemented but the core mechanics. If you're making a first person shooter then this means the ability to shoot your gun, damage enemies, simple enemy ai, pickups/power ups, a damage system for the player, death, respawning, aim down sights etc. If you're making a platformer then running, jumping, double jumping, dashing, wall jumping/sliding etc. etc. You can literally just use cubes to flesh out all of the artwork including your player and their weapon. This will also help you to focus only on your core gameplay loop. If it's still fun with cubes, it'll be even better with proper art but if it's not fun with cubes then no art in the world will save it. P.S. I got excited and started typing this out as soon as the author said to leave a comment and now I realize he's saying pretty much the same thing :P

GREAT video! I finished my first game, Children of Apollo, in 2017 and now I'm working on my second game. I think if I had seen this before making Children of Apollo it would've been a much better game. I think the information about how to deal with feedback especially is going to be very useful on future projects. Thanks for making this video! :)

Good stuff. Really considering taking the plunge into solo game dev, with goal to future team dev. All new skills in this process. Just a gamer at heart and feel I can bring joy to many with designs I’ve thought of.

Thank you so much for this! I was about to do #1 without noticing it (my thought process was that my game was gonna be so short it didn't matter that I didn't choose to start with a prototype).

Nice layout of the information and nice, quick and concise explanation on your points. I like the video man Only thing is, maybe zoom out your camera a little bit, or maybe the lighting is a little off and the contrast between you and the background is too high. It just doesn't feel nice to look at right now

Are there any websites that share gameplay ideas for games and/or movies?

The big mistake that puts me off when trying indie games (and also mobile games) is when the gameplay and the in world explaination of what the game is don't match. I've seen games where the art shows the player as an anime warrior chick fighting monsters, but none of any of the mechanics have anything to do with human movement or combat, the game was basically a marbles/pool type thing, so why wheren't they just honest and make the player look like a magic ball? That's just an example, but this is a common issue where the picture on the website sells me an a completely different experience than the one the game has to offer, leaving me disappointed. One common subset of this is the assumption that the player needs to be a person. You see, in any given situation a human has a massive array of things they could possibly do, and there is no game that contains all of them. Instead you should think of a real world thing that is described by your mechanics, or think of something and then describe it with your mechanics, but if the mechanics are too abstract for that then just be honest with the art and make the game completely abstract.

9:24 OMG THAT IS EXACTLY ME!! Thanks for the tip! Rather wish I had that several years ago before I *kinda* figured it out on my own.

New subscriber and bell clicker straight from Jabrils reference channel. and i do not regret being here. i just wish i knew your channel long ago.

Really good tips! I am aspiering to be a game desginer and most of your points directly landed on my list of "best of game design philosophy". 😉

i would say having way to large a scope is a super common problem a lot of creators have. Its related to the problem of not prototyping. So so SOOOO often i see a guy saying he wants to creat a grand space epic and rpg without understanding the level of work that would have to go into such a project. I tried to make a binding of isaac clone, and that alone turned out to be too big a scope for my small team, i dont know how these teams of 3-4 expect to make half the ideas they come up with.

Nice, thanks for the enlightening video Tim.

Is it possible to find someone that will basically make me their game making apprentice? Like I struggle with following tutorials, but if I had someone there teaching me I feel like I could get it so much easier.

Great stuff. Been fiddling with board game design, and this is equally as applicable.

Thanks for the info, I'm thinking of starting to develop a 2D game from scratch. Good info for beginners. I have extremely basic coding knowledge, but I've been wanting to test my skills and ability to learn by making something with zero previous experience.

Great video! But my bigest mistake was to actually decide a release date right from the start! It's not a good idea, specialy if this is your first game... you have absolutely no time scale references, and if you are trying prototypes, it can take a long time to find the right balanced gameplay. What's happening then, is that you run out of time and money... so it's time to find some funding now lol.

Thank you! The most truthful advise I've heard on RU-vid. You get a subscriber.

My only suggestion would be for you to focus less on "Top X" type videos and instead just discuss the topic at hand. Or at least put what the X things are in the description (with timestamps preferably).

it would be cool to hear your opinion on trademarking names for companies or games titles

Good video!

this was super helpful thank you!!!!

This is a great video! Helps me a ton! I'm always afraid to show my game, because I think people are gonna steal it or say something mean about it. I guess I just shouldn't let that bug me and only focus on the helpful comments.

This is a very helpful and relevant video, thank you very much

My problem as a developer has been the opposite, only doing the gameplay and not much bells and whistles LOL but it's still more fun than all frills but boring gameplay.

Realism in games is such a strange thing, amazing how games can get away with super contrived abstractions like how there are platforms everywhere, and you get items just as you need them, but then something far less unrealistic snaps us out of our suspense of disbelief. I wonder, have we simply been desensitized to these things through repetitions? It was a lot easier to justify abstractions back in the day, so maybe that's why most abstractions are really retro.

Great! Thanks for sharing your views, you are amazing :)

I see that last one so much as a Warframe fan. Players constantly ask for faster, lower-engagement ways to get things done, then complain about how bored they are when they speed through new content.

I want to make my own game but im just a truck driver/gamer and have zero experience. But it has been a dream of mine since I was a kid and life just happened and I never pursued it. Now that im in my 30's, I want to make more time for doing things im passionate about. I watch alot of random videos on game development but I still just dont know where to begin. I want to first start by making a 2d game to learn the process and the ins and outs of development. My ultimate goal would be to learn the process and make it a hobby and something I can always work on after work and on my days off. What kind of computer should I have and should it be desktop over laptop? What is the best programs for creating 2d games and do you have a youtube playlist you recommend that gives me a full walkthrough of game development? I would love to make a game similar in style to Salt & Sanctuary eventually but I really just wanna learn where to start and the basics for now. Thanks!

"We are going to be talking about the 9 design mistakes..." only 8 fingers are on the frame XD

This was good information. Thank you.

Amazing video!

Ah yes, UI. The bane of all indie devs.

One thing that stood out to me in regards to consistency in design: One of the Tomb Raider games had mice running back and forth on any ledge she could interact with. Once the player realized that, the level stood out to them without breaking the immersion. That was ingenious to me.

I'm learning Unity, and hope to develop an unorthodox 3D platformer I dreamed about when I was a kid. Some of these should be obvious, but others I definitely needed. Definitely gotta get a prototype ready and let people play it ASAP and hope they can navigate the AI. I've also gotta further refine and narrow the focus of the vision.

GREAT VIDEO MAN!.. -New Subscriber

Hi sir I am CHANDRASEKHAR I intrastad build video games I am studying in this time in polytechnic last year next I plan to go Pune Veda extensionan institution sir I know wich type of programs to use in game designer ex: c,c++,and I no reply me sir please

3:02 I came to that conclusion independently a couple of years ago, so thank you for compliment. But jokes aside. I agree with all points you bringed in this video. I will try to keep an eye on your channel.

I got a question given point 1. That all seems reasonable when it comes to testing out some gameplay ideas, but say you know what you're building (think of a board game being ported). Don't you think that your perception of a "prototype" is not only based on how it plays, but also on how it looks and how it feels? So isn't it worth to invest a bit into the details so it's gonna be s satisfying t every stage of existence on most aspects?

Great video!

I'm starting off by building a platformer because I love the genre and I feel like I can add to it as a whole.

0:23 Not starting with a prototype 1:57 Trying to chase the trends 3:00 Building a game for everyone 4:41 Realism over Gameplay 6:05 No focus on UI/UX 7:25 Inconsistent design decisions 9:07 Not having a clear vision 10:54 Not getting feedback 13:00 Improperly valuing feedback

Very useful informations

Getting feedback can be pain in the arse too. Sometimes people just don't seem to get round checking your thing out and you have to keep asking them to do it and so forth.

If you fail, you can always make -> Giant Convoluted Mess: The Game

This question is for anyone: When it comes to the prototype do the shapes matter as in do you assign one shape to a specific game object or asset, or is it just for foundational purposes?

Hey that was great. thanks for the video.

9:48 no link?

"1. Not starting with a prototype " The amount of teams I've worked with that are "nah yo, DEEP LORE first! double Tolkien!!"

When it comes to prototyping... can you use an already existing game as a prototype?

Music is way too loud. Can't hear you talk over the music.

Thanks for the info. I'm in the process of learning on my own (poor and don't have money for college) and hopefully I can eventually with trial and error make games that are fun.